President Thabo Mbeki believed some parts of the controversial ”Browse Mole” report, says suspended national director of public prosecutions Vusi Pikoli. The report alleged that Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos and Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi gave covert funding and support to Jacob Zuma, who is now ANC president.
But it is not clear which of the allegations he believed were true.
This and other insights into the Browse Mole report emerged from evidence Pikoli gave to the Ginwala inquiry into his fitness for office.
The internal report, drawn up by Scorpions investigator Ivor Powell in 2006, caused a political storm when it was leaked to Cosatu a year ago. Mbeki’s office launched a damage-control exercise, dismissing the information it contains as the work of former apartheid agents now engaged as private ”information pedlars” intent on creating conflict within government.
The Browse Mole affair forms part of the government’s complaint against Pikoli, whom it accuses of allowing the Scorpions to gather intelligence without authorisation.
But Pikoli denies approving the Scorpions investigation. He told the Ginwala commission that when he received the report from Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy in July 2006 he was concerned that it was based on ”raw intelligence” and should not be taken too seriously.
Pikoli passed on the report to the directors general of the South African Secret Service (SASS) and the National Intelligence Agency. He said: ”There was consensus that there were huge question marks about the authenticity of some of the information — in the report.”
An investigation by Parliament’s joint standing committee on intelligence accused McCarthy of continuing to believe in the credibility of the Browse Mole report.
It seems he was not alone in this.
In his affidavit to the commission Pikoli reveals that when it became known that the Browse Mole document had been leaked to Cosatu, he mentioned it to Mbeki at a meeting on May 20 last year.
”The president said that he already knew about the report from [his former spokesperson] Mr [Smuts] Ngonyama and from the director general of SASS. The president also said that part of what was contained in the report was true, but the difficulty was that the report intertwined fact with fiction.”
Attempts by the Mail & Guardian to find out which parts of the report Mbeki thought were true were rebuffed by presidential spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga, who refused to approach Mbeki about the issue.
Neither the government nor the Zuma camp has publicly discussed the contents of the Browse Mole report. The only allegation specifically denied is the most extreme in the report: that former members of Umkhonto weSizwe held a meeting at which the former chief of the South African National Defence Force, Siphiwe Nyanda, was said to have mentioned the possibility that the military might support Zuma and that there could be a military coup to force Mbeki to stand down.
A government statement on the Browse Mole report noted that while the meeting was held, ”there is no truth to the allegation that the said meeting also conspired to violently and unconstitutionally remove the current government from office”.
Sparking a browse
Pikoli provided further insight into how the Browse Mole report came about.
In his affidavit he says McCarthy ”received information — that during the course of investigations in Switzerland, [an] investigating judge came across a number of corrupt transactions that involved government officials in Angola and it appeared that some money had been laundered through South African banks.
”The DSO [Directorate of Special Operations – the Scorpions] was monitoring Mr Zuma’s bail conditions and had noted that in a span of approximately five months (between August and December 2005), Mr Zuma travelled on — about five occasions to Libya, Angola and Mozambique.
”The DSO established that Mr Zuma received into his bank accounts what the DSO regarded as unexplained income; there was media speculation about Mr Zuma’s relationship with Libya.
”Mr McCarthy received two reports from informants and thereafter raised the matter with a senior special investigator from the DSO — Mindful of the fact that the information from the informants could give rise to charges of money laundering, Mr McCarthy asked the — investigator to assess the information and to provide him with a report.”
Although the Browse Mole report draws no link between the Swiss investigation and Zuma, it does concentrate on allegations of Angolan government efforts to manipulate the ANC succession battle.
It notes: ”A well-sourced private sector intelligence report in the possession of the DSO alleges that some time in 2005, the President of Angola, [José] Eduardo dos Santos, directly tasked the then chief of Angola’s external intelligence service, General Fernando Miala, with identifying and reporting on ways in which Angola could provide support to Jacob Zuma and further his presidential aspirations.”
Observers regard the claim as plausible — Dos Santos’s antipathy towards Mbeki is well known.
Less plausibly, the report tried to link the support Zuma was receiving from mining magnate Brett Kebble with Kebble’s attempts to break into the Angolan diamond industry. It did not establish that Zuma took money from the Angolans.
The Ginwala hearings have been adjourned until June 23.