President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla homestead. (Madelene Cronje, M&G)
Justice Minister Jeff Radebe on Saturday was adamant that public protector Thuli Madonsela would have the final say over what would go in the final version of her report into the R206-million upgrade to President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla home. But that is not what security cluster ministers said in court papers.
Radebe is not an applicant in the court case. Madonsela is expected to give her version of events at a press conference "in due course".
Radebe stated that the justice, crime prevention and security cluster had no intention of trying to interfere with Madonsela's work, but that it merely wanted more time to study the Nkandla report to identify potential threats to national security.
But in papers, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa indicated that an initial reading of the report had deemed it to be so replete with security-sensitive information that releasing it in its current form would be unlawful. Mthethwa indicated that, already, on a cursory reading of the report, the cluster believes entire swathes of the report will have to be stripped in order to protect the security of the state and the president.
"The respondent [Madonsela] is precluded by law from releasing classified, top secret and confidential information, which may compromise the security of the state and the president, and she is interdicted from releasing her provisional report until such time as she has received comments from the applicants on matters which ought to be omitted from the provisional report," the ministers said.
The ministers provided no proof for their claims in court papers, and the language used indicates that they will not allow the report to be released until their concerns are addressed by Madonsela. If she disagrees and refuses to delete sections of the report, the ministers believe the report will threaten state security, while Mthethwa believes she will be guilty of a criminal offence.
This raises questions about Radebe's attempts on Saturday to limit the security cluster's court action to a mere extension of time. The papers seem to indicate that the security cluster would be loathe to release the report if Madonsela does not edit the report according to their liking.
'Top secret'
On Friday, the ministers (via their lawyers) are due back in court to have their application to interdict Madonsela heard. But by agreeing to Madonsela's request for a postponement last week, the ministers were de facto granted the relief they sought. It remains unclear what the purpose of the hearing of the main application would be, unless the ministers want to interdict the release of the report on other grounds.
The ministers' papers make it clear that their main concern is the "top secret" nature of the information Madonsela's provisional report would reveal without proper vetting.
As the Mail & Guardian reported in July, "top secret" is a term that appears on many innocuous documents that probably form part of Madonsela's probe, including meetings with contractors. Contractors were sworn to secrecy in writing and the main justification for the labelling of minutes as "top secret" being that they concerned a matter where the president was involved.
Or were they? Documents also show that the term "top secret" may have been used to avoid the leaking of embarrassing information to the press, and not to protect anyone's legitimate security.
The M&G has previously reported on a top-secret memo from Durban regional manager Kenneth Khanyile to his superiors at the public works department, dated March 15 2012, which sets out proposals for managing prestige projects (including Nkandla).
Khanyile noted: "In order to ensure security, it is essential that the project be removed from the 'public eye' due to security reasons."
'Engineer an attack'
He said the "scope of works" included "information that may be used by the enemies of the state to engineer an attack", but added that "these projects are further targeted by journalists in an attempt to discredit the government in general".
Whether or not the security concerns of the ministers are the result of a legitimate threat to state security, or are underlined by a more cynical attempt to protect government from embarrassment, is thus thrown into question.