The National Intelligence Agency’s (NIA) counsel at the Khampepe commission, George Bizos, struck the right note this week on the question of oversight of the specialised crime-fighting unit, the Scorpions. If there were problems with controls over the Scorpions, Bizos argued, these could be specifically addressed, without the police having to swallow the unit — head, body and sting.
The trouble is that all South Africa’s crime-fighting and intelligence-gathering agencies have been so thoroughly politicised that is hard to see disinterested motives behind the demand for the Scorpions’ incorporation into the police. Police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi appears far less interested in improving South Africa’s crime-busting capacity than in expanding his personal empire and bolstering the cause of former deputy president Jacob Zuma, whose fraud and corruption prosecution the Scorpions spearheaded. Other enemies of the Scorpions’ independence are apparently outraged by the mere notion of investigating and prosecuting African National Congress and government high-ups like Zuma and former ANC chief whip in Parliament Tony Yengeni. Under-lying this may be the profoundly anti-democratic idea that Very Important People should be above the ordinary law of the land. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Scorpions have been selectively used by elements to settle personal and political feuds, as NIA director general Billy Masetlha argued at the commission this week. But again, the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater.
There is a strong argument for an autonomous specialised unit, with its own hiring and remuneration policy independent of public service pay scales and regulations, to supplement the police — particularly in the investigation of the complex economic crimes that are becoming increasingly common in South Africa. By projecting themselves as an elite outfit uncontaminated by a lumbering public service ethos, and through their flexible pay policy, the Scorpions have been able to make police work attractive to the young, bright, highly qualified and upwardly mobile. They have been refreshingly uncowed by the political, social and financial prominence of crime suspects. And they have broken new ground in tackling the cancerous growth of organised crime, and of graft and influence-peddling, in South Africa.
As Masetlha told the Khampepe commission, there may well be an argument for curtailing the Scorpions’ exceptional independence in the intelligence-gathering field. Where citizens’ right to freedom of thought and belief, and privacy, are at issue, oversight and accountability are indeed critical. One solution would be to restrict intelligence-gathering to organisations like the NIA and the police that are subject to statutory controls, and to compel the Scorpions to operate through them. Another would be to introduce legislation to bring the unit under the supervision of the inspector general of intelligence and Parliament’s intelligence oversight committee.
Finally, there is the question of whether South Africa’s democracy will be better served by the consolidation or diversification of power in the law-enforcement arena. The politicisation of agencies is probably unavoidable and irreversible in our politically charged environment. But citizens can feel safer where there are many centres of power, each monitoring the activities and influence of the others.
Nepad gets real
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) was taken out of the realm of philosophy, PowerPoint presentations and conferences this week with two remarkable events.
In Johannesburg, the Standard Bank Gallery exhibited a set of the Timbuktu manuscripts, which are being painstakingly saved by a joint project involving South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki and Mali’s President Abdoulaye Wade.
It is an archival and political feat, organised under the banner of Nepad, which aims to preserve for future generations the manuscripts, some of which date back to the 13th century.
Contained in them is evidence of early African thought on astronomy, medicine and even human relationships.
The manuscripts, says Aslam Farouk-Alli, the chief archivist, represent “a retrieval of our authentic past”. Symbol of hope and of potential, they put paid to the nonsense of talk of “international trusteeship” for Africa that is again gaining ground amid suggestions that Africa’s weakest states should be placed under the watch of Western guardians.
In Kenya this week, another event showed that Africa would be its own guardian. The East African giant is hosting a two-week visit by the leaders of the African peer review mechanism, a rather awkward title for the structure set up to ensure that African governments keep each other on their toes.
The peer reviewers visit to check that the democracy checklists submitted to the mechanism are as healthy as claimed. Graca Machel is a key democracy doctor, and she was accompanied by her husband Nelson Mandela, a vital symbolic steward of this path-breaking policy.
It is good to see Nepad getting real, and we look forward to seeing the peer reviewers visiting South Africa. Democracy here is in ruddy good health, but it can always get better.