Parliamentary Writer
Parliament did not cover itself in glory in its oversight of the State Security Agency (SSA), chief justice Raymond Zondo concluded in his fifth report of the commission of inquiry into state capture handed to President Cyril Ramaphosa last week.
Parliament’s joint standing committee on intelligence (JSCI) is supposed to oversee intelligence services including the SSA, defence intelligence, police crime intelligence and the inspector-general of intelligence, but it failed to act on reports of malfeasance and lack of compliance with legislation.
"Parliament’s JSCI failed to properly perform its oversight duties in respect of the SSA," the report said. "Parliament has at least to some extent contributed towards state capture because its failure to do its job meant that acts of state capture and corruption were allowed to spread and deepen."
Zondo’s fifth report highlights the rot that set in at the SSA under former director-general Arthur Fraser, who — together with ex-state security minister David Mahlobo and head of special operations Thulani Dlomo — was found to be at the heart of a scheme to use the SSA to advance former president Jacob Zuma’s personal and political interests.
The report recommends law enforcement agencies investigate bringing criminal charges against Fraser over a secretive intelligence programme, as well as Mahlobo, now deputy minister of human settlements, water & sanitation, and Dlomo for handling large sums of money.
Zondo noted that in 2009 Zuma restructured the country’s intelligence services by amalgamating the National Intelligence Agency and the SA Secret Service to form the SSA.
The restructuring resulted in SSA resources being channelled towards state security, including the security of Zuma in particular, rather than national security and led to a breakdown of governance systems and processes.
Zuma implemented this restructuring by way of a mere proclamation in 2010 when it properly required a law. The law was passed only in 2013. This meant the SSA was functioning illegally during this period. But there was no evidence, Zondo said, that the JSCI did anything about the illegal functioning of the SSA. The illegality was highlighted only in a JSCI report for the year ending March 2020 and for the period up to December 2020 that dealt with the challenges facing the SSA, including looting of money.
"The new structure created a powerful director-general with powers concentrated on a single individual. The amalgamation also enabled some members of the executive to issue illegal instructions to members of the SSA. These instructions amounted to executive overreach," the 2020 JSCI report said.
Zondo said the JSCI could not have justified "its failure to raise its voice or to exercise its oversight on the excuse that it would have acted in breach of any law relating to secrecy. Nor is there any evidence that the JSCI dealt with the matter of the executive’s illegal instructions and overreach."
Zondo said information was given to the committee about corruption, the irregular recruitment of some members of the special operations unit, parallel vetting structures that issued fake top-secret clearance certificates and sniper training for non-SSA members.
Another failure was for about 22 months, the JSCI failed to appoint an inspector of intelligence, who plays an important oversight role. The commission was told that much of the malpractice that occurred in the SSA occurred during this period. Zondo said there was "absolutely no justification" for this failure.
The committee failed to act on the reports submitted to it by the inspector-general of intelligence that described the misuse of money. And it did not act on reports by a former SSA director-general that the agency was in "deep trouble".
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