With his energy and tough-minded approach, Robert McBride’s appointment as director of the foreign branch of the State Security Agency (SSA) presents a welcome opportunity to bring much-needed discipline to our dysfunctional spy world. It was in effect disabled during the Zuma years. The former president was more intent on using his spooks to protect himself and snoop on party rivals.
Ironically, McBride himself has been the victim of disinformation from SA intelligence agencies, first under apartheid, then more recently — and alarmingly — from rogue elements within the new regime, many of whom are still in place.
The spy mayhem was exposed by the report of the high-level review panel commissioned by President Cyril Ramaphosa and published last year. This laid bare the rampant lawlessness among our spy agencies, including the abuse of covert funds for personal gain and involvement in ANC factional politics.
The last extraordinary attempt to smear McBride came from high up within the State Security Agency itself. Eighteen months ago a senior adviser to the then intelligence minister made a secretive, unauthorised trip to Paris to meet people who, it had been claimed, had evidence that McBride, then head of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid), was selling state secrets. This appears to have been part of a campaign to remove McBride from investigating cases of corruption against high-ranking police officials.
“The trip was unauthorised,” former state security minister Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba told me. “When I discovered this person was in Paris I was shocked. What was also strange was the other man who was in Paris with him. We only discovered that when we investigated.”
The man accompanying the SA spy, it seems, was a Durban business person at the centre of a web of fake tenders worth many millions, with a number of senior police officials.
Though the illicit Paris trip produced no evidence, it appears to have been cynically used months later by police minister Bheki Cele in his determined efforts to remove McBride as head of Ipid.
I went to see Bheki Cele about something else, and Cele told me that Robert was selling information to foreign agents … he was vilified for absolutely nothing
— Phillip Mhlongo, EFF MP
When the matter went before the parliamentary police portfolio committee, Cele quietly circulated bogus allegations against McBride to the committee’s ANC MPs, who turned on him in unison like in a Stalinist show trial. One of the slurs whispered in their ear seems to have been from that sinister Paris trip.
Opposition MPs on the committee say Cele passed on the misinformation as though it was fact. Phillip Mhlongo, an EFF MP on the committee, told me: “I went to see Bheki Cele about something else, and Cele told me that Robert was selling information to foreign agents … he was vilified for absolutely nothing.”
One reason for Cele’s animosity, it has been alleged, is that McBride’s Ipid investigations may have threatened to expose skeletons in the police minister’s own background — questions he has failed to answer.
Proven liar
The public protector appears to share Cele’s hostile crusade, recycling bogus claims — also exploited by Cele — from another utterly discredited source. Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s bizarre and erratic report on McBride in 2019 reads like a clumsy hatchet job, introducing an equally untrue and absurd treasonous plot.
Mkhwebane gratuitously published comic book accusations about a conspiracy, from the same previously disgraced source — a proven liar — though it had nothing to do with her investigation. This plot supposedly involved, among others, “a white lady called Candice … two white males (representatives of AfriForum and Democratic Alliance/DA), a white lady (journalist) and one black male who was busy preparing fire for the braai.” AfriForum also “guaranteed that the funds were available to carry out this mission”.
With absurdities like this circulated and swallowed unquestioningly by ANC MPs, we desperately need a resolute and honest team in the intelligence services. Some of those rogue spy elements remain in place and it will be up to McBride to face them down and winkle them out. Given his record at Ipid, he has the focus and will to tackle them.
The agency remains plagued with internal battles and multiple vacancies. It is this that McBride will have to help intelligence minister Ayanda Dlodlo clean up.
His experience at Ipid shows he has the requisite nerve, and he has demonstrated that he has leadership and administrative skills. As McBride clearly has the confidence of President Cyril Ramaphosa, whether he and Dlodlo succeed will show how deeply the rot — and rogue elements — remain embedded.
• Rostron is a journalist and author of ‘Robert McBride: The Struggle Continues’.
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