It has been just more than three weeks since former president Jacob Zuma took to the stand at the Zondo inquiry into state capture — and essentially suggested that the current leadership of the ANC had been put into their positions by two shadowy foreign intelligence agencies.
Those agencies, Zuma claimed he was told, had collaborated with apartheid spy networks in various attempts to thwart him from assuming leadership of the ANC, precisely because of the information he had gained access to while serving as ANC chief of intelligence.
Testifying at the inquiry, Zuma claimed he had managed to find out, from the these spy agencies themselves, what had motivated their attempts to “assassinate” his character.
At their heart, these spy claims don’t appear to be informed by a desire to expose long-buried truth.
He claimed they had told him, while not knowing that they were in fact providing politically explosive information to a man they wanted to neutralise, that they had planted spies in “whom we want to nurture that they grow within the structures of the ANC to a point that at some point they will have to lead the ANC”.
Zuma said they had unwittingly told him “we don’t know when will he use this information to stop that process, that plan of theirs and therefore they took a decision that Zuma must be removed from decision-making structures of the ANC. And that’s why the character assassination began. That’s the beginning of the process that has put me where I am today”.
Zuma went on to name two of his own former cabinet ministers, Simphiwe Nyanda and Ngoako Ramatlhodi, as suspected apartheid spies. Both denied those claims, which at this stage seems to be unsupported by any real evidence. The damage, however, has arguably been done.
Calling someone an apartheid spy in the toxic political climate of modern-day SA is much like calling someone a witch in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. The more those accused deny the claims, the more certain (largely online) mobs are convinced of their guilt. And any real evidence of who the apartheid police and intelligence authorities actually did use as informers remains classified, and almost impossible to access.
People such as Gaongalelwe Tiro, who has spent nearly a year fighting to access the classified State Security Agency (SSA) and police files on the brutal parcel bomb murder of his student activist uncle Onkgopotse Abram Tiro, knows this painful truth all too well.
An apartheid Bureau of State Security (Boss) hit squad, also known as the Z-Squad, was allegedly responsible for sending Tiro the parcel bomb — but the police and SSA have not declassified the files that could finally give the murdered man’s family some answers.
While certain members of the ANC, including Zuma, say the ruling party must investigate whether there are indeed still “apartheid spies” within its ranks, the state’s security agencies have done almost nothing to enable access to apartheid records that may provide real answers to the grieving families of murdered activists.
Maybe that’s the point.
Much like the “Stratcom” accusations levelled at a number of investigative journalists by certain members of the ANC and EFF, and most recently by public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, it often seems as if there is almost no requirement to back up these very dangerous “apartheid spy” claims with any proof.
In a tweet on Friday, Mkhwebane compared her recent treatment by the media to that of struggle icon Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who was famously targeted in a “Stratcom” disinformation campaign by the National Party government. That tweet did not specify any particular report, but instead cast any journalism critical of her as being racist, agenda-driven and illegitimate.
Zuma identified those who challenged his leadership of the ANC, most notably Ramatlhodi, as alleged apartheid spies or the agents of shadowy foreign intelligence services. Their criticism, according to his testimony, is not legitimate — it is a sign of treasonous betrayal.
These accusations may be informed by genuine fears of persecution, but they are also dangerous and democracy-threatening. Because, ultimately, they appear to equate criticism and opposition with treason — the ultimate betrayal of a nation state.
At their heart, these spy claims don’t appear to be informed by a desire to expose long-buried truth. They are, very simply, about silencing voices that those making the claims do not want to hear.
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