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Citizens urged to read the State Security Agency Report

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President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged South Africans to familiarise themselves with the High Level Panel Report on the State Security Agency released over the weekend.

The report highlights the increasing politicisation of the agency from 2009 which saw amongst others the organisation being used to settle factional battles with the African National Congress (ANC).

It also points to departments within the agency that had become a law unto themselves engaging in unconstitutional and illegal operations and using its resources as their own personal cash cow.

Ramaphosa explains, “”It’s good to be transparent and let these things come out so that we can repair whatever damage has been done in the past. So I am really relaxed that we are on a good and strong path and this is how we continue to build the state. State-craft is about making sure that you repair whatever damage has been done and you move forward; and I am assured that we are now going to have a properly realigned state security agency.”

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Opposition parties react to the report 

UDM president Bantu Holomisa says he is not surprised by the findings of the High Level Panel on the State Security Agency. He says Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence failed to provide effective oversight of the intelligence services.

Holomisa serves on the Joint Standing Committee on intelligence. Meetings of that committee are closed to the media and public.  Holomisa says the findings of the panel are to be expected.

He says this is typical of parliamentary committees as they are dominated by ANC members.

The panel found among other things that the committee was itself affected by the politicisation and factionalisation seen in the ANC, in Parliament, in the intelligence community and in other arms of government.

Holomisa says he hopes the intelligence services will no longer be used for ANC factional battles.

UDM president Bantu Holomisa says, ” Take this thing out of the cabinet. It must be an independent agent with no cabinet minister but accountable to parliament only.”

EFF Spokesperson Dr Mbuyiseni Ndlozi says, “When the inspector general reports the malfunctions that are happening, he is dismissed. The ANC protects the politicians implicated and the general. There is a lot of corruption that happens which should have been uncovered by that committee. But it’s not so when you go to that committee it’s a big joke. Half the time these people are complicit; they don’t do a rigorous scrutiny on the reports and they don’t even refer the issues that come out of that report or the breaking of the law – so that the law breakers can be criminally prosecuted.”

 

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