ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula has been warned that possible sleeper agents in the ANC loyal to their apartheid-era handlers could still be operating and covertly influencing the current political dynamics, including orchestrating the governing party’s electoral demise.
ANC veterans Thami Ntenteni, Malixole Mahlathi, Zakes Tolo, Maholi Phala and Phakamile Ximiya raised these concerns in a document sent to Mbalula, as a first recipient, that the governing party needed to be wary of party insiders who, apart from “askaris”, collaborated with the apartheid regime and its agencies and continued to be active.
The document, titled “The 2024 Election Results Signal Threats to the Democratic Revolution and its Leader, the ANC”, cautions that the National Security Management System, a structure from apartheid-era South Africa, originally designed for state security and control, was never fully decommissioned and might have been repurposed for contemporary political manoeuvring.
Without providing evidence, they suggest that former president Jacob Zuma and his MK Party could even have benefitted from this covert apartheid support in the recent May 29 elections.
“It would not be surprising later to establish that Jacob Zuma’s principal supporters used the machinery established under the National Security Management System during the apartheid years and [which was] never fully dismantled, to help the MK Party garner the votes it did in KwaZulu-Natal and elsewhere, consistent with the objective of ensuring that the ANC falls below 50% in the 2024 NGE [national general elections].”
Ntenteni, when approached for further comment, remained reticent about the allegations within the document.
He did, however, confirm that its initial recipient was Mbalula. Ntenteni added that his group had already discussed the document with the ANC provincial executive committee in Free State, as well as with the Gauteng executive two weekends ago.
The document’s metadata indicates its creation on July 27.
The veterans group recounted that former president Nelson Mandela tasked two ANC leaders to persuade the heads of apartheid-era security organisations – the National Intelligence Service, the SAP, and the SADF – to reveal their agents within the ANC. These heads included Dr Neil Barnard, the old SAP General Johan van der Merwe, and General George Meiring of the former SADF.
The ANC leaders proposed a private approach where they assured each identified agent of no repercussions and promised confidentiality regarding their identities, thereby nullifying their obligations to their apartheid-era handlers.
The ANC leaders saw this as a strategic move to neutralise any remaining influence of apartheid-era handlers within the liberation movement.
“The proposal advanced by the two ANC leaders was that they would speak privately to each of the agents as disclosed to them by the former apartheid securocrats to inform them that they no longer owed any obligations to their former handlers.
“The ANC leaders assured the former apartheid ‘securocrats’ that no negative consequences would be visited on the disclosed agents, and that the two would keep the identities of the agents to themselves, without ever disclosing these to the ANC or any other person.”
However, the apartheid security heads rebuffed the ANC leaders’ request, leading to suspicions of a continuing agenda.
The authors of the document claim that the 2007 ANC -national conference in Polokwane demonstrated the presence of counter-revolutionary forces, who were able to overthrow the ANC leadership because of unidentified allies within the movement.
“This is because when the counter-revolution decided to intervene at the 2007 ANC national conference to change our leadership, it was because there were ‘collaborators’ within our movement, agents infiltrated by the apartheid intelligence services whom we had not discovered,” they wrote.
“What happened at the 2007 ANC Polokwane conference confirmed that this suspicion was correct. Our discussion of what happened to the ANC after the 2007 intervention of the counter-revolution must include, at a later date and after proper preparations, a presentation of how the counter-revolution corrupted and compromised the ANC Youth League.”
