When Billy Masetlha presented then president Thabo Mbeki with intelligence about an anti-Zuma plot — allegedly involving key Mbeki allies — his life swiftly came apart. Within 24 hours he was suspended. Within months he was sacked and facing a crippling series of court cases, including two criminal charges relating to his conduct as NIA boss.
He saw off the charges and won compensation in the Constitutional Court for his dismissal. The revelation of the ‘Zuma tapes†appears to have completed his vindication.
You must be pleased about the information that has come out?
I am elated by the fact that it has come to pass that the actual plots [against Zuma] were there. There never was a conspiracy by a Billy Masetlha-held intelligence agency to protect Zuma. Instead there was a plot to destroy Zuma and as a result render the ANC ineffective and destroy its legacy.
I went not to the ANC but to the president and said: ‘This is happening, you must stop this thing.†If that report to him is ever declassified it will show that I identified the plot, the people behind it, their modus operandi and their plan, which sadly circulated around Zuma. I did that to protect the state, the ruling party and the stability of this country.
Why haven’t you made that information public? Would you have leaked the McCarthy intercepts?
I have taken an oath of office. I took that information to the president and no one else. I will keep my oath of honour until my grave. We asked the courts to get the president to disclose the report, as part of my defence, but he refused.
As to the intercepts, if there is evidence about which you cannot stay silent, that threatens our democracy, then there are other avenues. The speaker of the National Assembly has certain constitutional powers, the chief justice as well.
At the same time, in the past seven years we have experienced certain legal decisions — to quash certain cases, to charge certain people. One perhaps cannot blame anyone for deciding: ‘I don’t have much confidence in the courts, let’s pass this on to a lawyer.â€
You believe the legal process was used against you?
It was my duty to let the president know. I served him with loyalty and integrity, yet they had nothing but insults for me. I decided I wasn’t going to lie down and take it, but if it were not for the generosity of my lawyers — and donations to my legal costs — I would have been dismissed in disgrace.
Doesn’t this whole experience show the security services are open to abuse — that the NIA, for instance, has too wide a mandate?
I don’t believe the NIA has too broad a mandate. The state has a right and a duty to protect its sovereignty and security against internal and external threats. All states do this. Some in South Africa seem to think we don’t face any threats and that we shouldn’t do certain intelligence gathering.
But if the Chinese are putting $165-million into the Industrial Development Corporation, who will look to see if there are hidden strings attached? Intelligence. If Telkom and Vodacom are national assets and they are being disposed of to foreign interests, who must look at the threats, advantages and disadvantages of hiving off such assets? I think there are sufficient checks and balances within the legislation governing the NIA, but the issue is to implement and enforce that accountability. For me that’s the fundamental challenge we face — enforcement capacity. That goes for the police, for service delivery, for corruption.
You need to make sure people stick to the rules, and some of that enforcement is going to ‘encroach†on our other rights. Take the [Jackie] Selebi case — how is it possible for the police to be still resisting cooperation with the prosecuting authorities?
But isn’t there a need to improve oversight — to protect the intelligence agencies themselves from abuse?
FW de Klerk once said to me there should be room for opposition parties to be involved in the process of setting the annual national intelligence estimates that set out our threat assessments and priorities. I agree with him. People need to be aware of the threats and that knowledge must inform the conduct of all our elected representatives.
And we must ask: shouldn’t we have these estimates made public — in edited form — so that people know there are sleepers for al-Qaeda in our country, there are undeclared foreign intelligence agents — so we create a sense of national interest, of national belonging?
What about your role?
What the ANC has gone through is unprecedented. It happened because we took our eye from the main thing, which is making the ANC a strong institution for creating a better life for our people. It must not be allowed to fall from our hands as a people until there is a genuine alternative that can deliver on those needs. We found the ANC strong, we must leave it strong — and strong in the morals, values, traditions and ideals on which the ANC was founded. I want to spend what remains of my life doing that.