National Intelligence Agency (NIA) director general Billy Masetlha has been suspended by Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils pending the outcome of an inquiry, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Friday.
The minister told journalists in Pretoria that this followed his meeting with NIA management on Friday morning.
The inquiry will be conducted by the inspector general of intelligence, Zolile Ngakani.
Manala Manzini has been appointed as acting director general in the interim.
The suspension comes after Kasrils suspended NIA deputy director general Gibson Njenje and the agency’s general manager, Bob Mhlanga, for allegedly placing businessman Saki Macozoma under illegal surveillance.
Macozoma, a member of the African National Congress’s decision-making national executive committee, has been punted as one of the heavyweights in President Thabo Mbeki’s inner circle, a body that could have a say in who becomes South Africa’s next leader in 2009.
NIA mandate ‘must be redefined’
Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance has called for urgent redefinition of the NIA’s political-intelligence mandate to prevent abuse.
The suspension of top NIA officials is cause for grave concern, DA chief whip Douglas Gibson said on Friday.
Their suspension for allegedly ordering the illegal surveillance of Macozoma illustrates again ”how infighting within the ANC is threatening to undermine national security”.
”While the minister is to be commended for his swift action in dealing with this matter, it is clear that all is not well with the management of the NIA if abuses such as these could take place.
”In particular, the conduct of NIA director general Billy Masetlha must be urgently investigated, to determine whether he sanctioned illegal activity of this sort,” Gibson said.
The allegations of illegal surveillance also serves to reinforce concerns previously raised about the NIA’s overly broad political-intelligence mandate.
Because the distinction between party and state is so blurred in South Africa, the NIA’s mandate could be easily used by the ruling party as a tool to infiltrate its political enemies.
Despite many assurances from Kasrils that this could not happen, it is now clear the system is open to abuse.
”Therefore, urgent steps must be taken to redefine the political-intelligence mandate of the NIA so that it cannot be abused to pursue narrow political agendas,” Gibson said.
Factional warfare
The Mail & Guardian reported on Friday that Kasrils moved to suspend the senior officials as the bitter succession battle in the ANC reached into the highest levels of the country’s security apparatus.
The purge comes against a backdrop of the NIA being drawn into the ANC’s vicious factional warfare. A senior intelligence source told the M&G this week the agency regarded the power struggle in the party as the pre-eminent current threat to national security.
Masetlha has previously denied coming under any pressure to take sides. But Kasrils’s move against his departmental chiefs has thrust the political rifts into the open.
Details of the NIA investigation of Macozoma remain sketchy, but the former Transnet boss has been one of the figures at the centre of the power struggle in the party.
Murdered mining magnate Brett Kebble had long claimed that Macozoma had presidential ambitions and was part of an ”ANC elite” grouping that was plotting to prevent ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma from succeeding Mbeki.
Kebble’s allegations recently resurfaced when police confirmed to the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Rapport that they had obtained a copy of a controversial documentary which has not yet been broadcast, ”the Zuma media trial”, in which Kebble repeated his claims on camera.