Kasrils slams ‘Disneyland’ Billy

The day he realised that former spy boss Billy Masetlha was ‘ingratiating” himself with ANC president Jacob Zuma, it dawned on Intelligence
Minister Ronnie Kasrils that he could no longer trust the man he once ‘valued”.

Shortly after this breakdown of trust, Masetlha was axed by President Thabo Mbeki.

This week Kasrils took the stand against his former confidant and former director general of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). Masetlha is accused of falsifying emails and cyber chat-room conversations to ‘prove” Mbeki and his confidants were plotting
against Zuma.

Masetlha, former NIA IT manager Funi Madlala and IT expert Muzi Kunene are on trial in the Pretoria Commercial Crimes Court for fraudulently creating and distributing these documents within the NIA and the ANC.

An aggrieved and sometimes emotional Kasrils told the court he became ‘deeply suspicious” of Masetlha’s actions when he learned of the NIA’s botched surveillance of businessman Saki Macozoma. He was not aware of the investigation.
Kasrils also confirmed the existence of an official presidential investigation into leaks to the media from government agencies, including the Scorpions.

Attached to this presidential special investigation team’s (PSIT) report were four pages of emails, allegedly put together by Masetlha. This was the first time Kasrils became aware of the documents’ existence. The contents of the PSIT report were discussed in-camera, but Kasrils was cross-examined in open court by Masetlha’s counsel,
Neil Tuchten.

Kasrils described the report as ‘pathetic” and accused Masetlha of hiding it from him on several occasions. Tuchten said that the report was not solely Masetlha’s work, but a joint report by the NIA, South African Police Service, the National Prosecuting Authority and the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee.

It was, however, the botched Macozoma surveillance operation that concerned Kasrils most. ‘I then realised who I was dealing with. He [Masetlha] came to mislead me about the surveillance of Mr Macozoma. I became very suspicious.”

On Thursday Kasrils testified that Masetlha told him the Macozoma surveillance was part of Operation Fairwood, an intelligence investigation into the activities of an unnamed foreign intelligence agent.

This justification was apparently made after a NIA agent saw Macozoma greeting the foreign agent in a Johannesburg coffee shop.

Kasrils rejected this explanation and later agreed with the findings of the inspector general of intelligence, who found that surveillance of Macozoma was part of Operation Avani, a NIA investigation into service delivery protests.

Kasrils slammed Masetlha’s justification of the Macozoma investigation as baseless. ‘This is not Stalin’s Russia, Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa. Do we conclude [that surveillance is warranted] if an agent is sitting in the same coffee bar as Mr Macozoma? They are not even sitting together; they are nodding at each other.

‘Foreign agents are very sociable people. There is no way that this minister will play Cold War spy games, in which I’m told that a man is a suspect because he was in the same coffee bar. Please, this is not Mickey Mouse or Disneyland, this is very serious stuff.”

Tuchten then questioned Kasrils extensively on what he thought Masetlha’s motives might have been for the Macozoma surveillance, if it did not form part of a legitimate intelligence operation.

‘I wasn’t sure. I’ve asked the question: why didn’t they take Macozoma into their confidence and tell him we believe that he will be contacted by a foreign agent who will try to influence him?” Kasrils asked.

Kasrils said he was ‘bewildered and disappointed” by Masetlha and became even more suspicious when the ‘hoax emails” surfaced.

‘A deep-rooted suspicion emerged in various ways. It seemed that Mr Masetlha became extremely involved in the trafficking of these emails.I became deeply suspicious of what this man was up to. On the one hand there was incompetence, but on the other, he was not reporting to me.

‘Mr Masetlha was playing into the conspiracy theory of ANC president Zuma, one that he’s been advancing for the past few years, claiming that there is a conspiracy to prevent him from becoming president.”
Kasrils said Masetlha increasingly ‘ingratiated” himself with Zuma’s cause by using the emails to provide proof of the conspiracy’s existence.
He told Mbeki about his suspicion and the president allegedly shared his feelings. Shortly afterwards Masetlha was fired.

Asked by Tuchten whether he was a Zuma supporter, Kasrils answered positively. ‘He is now the president of my party. He is my president. The fact that I didn’t vote for him at Polokwane doesn’t mean I will not serve him as my president. I pledged allegiance to the ANC in 1960 and have known Mr Zuma from that time. I like him.”