No one should be surprised any longer to learn that South Africa is a front in the United States-led war on terror.
The revelation that Khalid Rashid has been detained in Pakistan for alleged links to the London Underground bombings of July 7 2005 is only the most recent indication of the quiet battle going on in this country.
It began before 9/11, when local authorities were still jittery about the vigilante group Pagad and its Islamist links. KK Mohammed was arrested in Cape Town in 1999 in a joint operation of the South African Police Service and the FBI. He was deported to the US where he was convicted of involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and is serving a life term in a Colorado prison.
The AQ Khan network of nuclear technology smugglers, which supplied governments in Libya, and perhaps Iran and North Korea, with the wherewithal to build nuclear bombs, was also cracked with local help. Some of its alleged members operated an engineering facility in Gauteng that the state will claim was used to supply clients of the network. Daniel Geiges and Gerhard Wisser are to stand trial on charges of violating the Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act and the Nuclear Energy Act. Their arrest, too, was a product of close collaboration between the CIA, British intelligence and the South African authorities. Less dramatically, there is a persistent focus by the National Intelligence Agency and other spooks on suspected local nodes in al-Qaeda’s global network.
Whatever we feel about the Bush administration and its war on terror, this is perfectly defensible. Terrorists and weapons smugglers who want to use South Africa as a base or refuge need to be prevented from doing so, for obvious reasons. But cooperating with Western intelligence agencies must not extend to adopting their illegal tactics.
Rashid was handed over to Pakistani and British intelligence officials in what looked like a covert “rendition”. The home affairs department, whose corrupt and incompetent officials had allowed him to buy his way into the country, provided slender cover by “deporting” him on what they claimed were immigration grounds. Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula was extremely economical with the truth throughout, and has never accounted fully for what took place. Rashid, it now seems, has been held without charge in Pakistan for 18 months.
The Constitutional Court ruled that KK Mohammed’s deportation was illegal because he might face the death penalty the US. By that time, he was already in American custody.
As for Geiges and Wisser, the state is bidding to hear their trial in a closed court, claiming that dangerous nuclear secrets need to be kept from the public. If they succeed, much else will be kept from the public too. Secret trials, as the M&G and other opponents of this move will argue, are inimical to the administration of justice.
That the government had credible evidence to back allegations against Mohammed, the AQ Khan suspects and Rashid is not at issue. What is at stake is their willingness to be party to violations of international and local law, as well as human rights.
The government needs to do its immigration control job at our borders and, if necessary, in midnight raids. But its officials must not expect us to look the other way as they sign up for a war without limits that is making the world more dangerous for all of us.
Mind-boggling inconsistency
South Africa’s performance in the Cricket World Cup can be captured in a few words — it has been one of mind-boggling inconsistency. The directionless rabble humbled by Bangladesh was simply not the same brutally efficient unit that destroyed England with nine wickets in hand and 30 overs to spare. And the contrast between the two speaks volumes about the weaknesses of our cricket.
Andrew Hall, the hero of the England game, hit the nail on the head when he remarked after the match that the pitch conditions, with the ball “pinging through”, had been substantially similar to those in South Africa. This has been the root cause of the ludicrously uneven record of Graeme Smith’s squad. When conditions are familiar and suit South Africa’s batsmen and bowlers, they are virtually unbeatable. But on the slow, low wickets that have dominated the World Cup in the Caribbean, they are all at sea.
The deficiency is well known to cricket-watchers who have tracked South Africa’s general underperformance on the Indian sub-continent, culminating in last year’s slaughter of Andre Nel and others by Sri Lanka’s batsmen. Relying as it does on pace, bounce and seam movement, our attack has largely been neutralised in the West Indies, and our batsmen, who like to hit through the line, have frequently struggled to make headway. Unlike Australia, South Africans find it very difficult to adapt to alien conditions. The ineffectiveness of Makhaya Ntini, who has very little up his sleeve if he cannot extract pace and lift, has been particularly distressing to witness.
The fault lies not with affirmative action in South African sport — all the black players, with the possible exception of Robin Peterson, deserve their places. It lies with South Africa’s macho cricketing culture, which has historically scorned spin bowling as something for sissies, and with South African wickets, which almost uniformly favour the pacemen. When Smith and company get home — and it is likely to be sooner rather than later — the local cricket world must be begin to focus on how to nurture a more versatile, creative and multiskilled national side.