Johannesburg – There are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, only permanent interests, so we have been told by those who practise the craft.
I guess the same holds true in other sectors of society. This is what was so fascinating about the testimony, or let me be frank, the presentation by former minister of intelligence David Mahlobo before Justice Raymond Zondo on Friday.
His testimony was simple yet effective at warding off questions: spies do what they must do to get information and can get from anyone.
He intimated that even friendly nations spy on one another, if only for this reality: a friend today may not be a friend tomorrow.
Who can forget the summer of 2013 when intelligence operative Edward Snowden embarrassed the US government? His leaks revealed that the National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders including those of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then Mexico president Enrique Pena Nieto – US “allies”.
The surveillance went as far as listening in on French private citizens. You would think the Yankees have forgotten that these are their “allies” who gifted them the Statue of Liberty.
But such conduct talks to Mahlobo’s point – information is key in the world of spooks and there is no distinction between friend and foe.
Spying is as old as the hills. If one took the Bible’s teaching to heart as Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng does, one would know that God told Moses to send spies into the land of Canaan to learn what the Israelites were facing in conquering it.
No country in the world is without intelligence services to protect and further its economic and political interests. Intelligence gathering is a key component of foreign policy in a globalised world.
What is unholy about South Africa’s spy agencies is that the politics of the governing party have captured the entities.
The rot runs deep, exposing national security. South Africa needs its Snowden moment. The tentacles of the intelligence service and its reach in domestic affairs need to be examined and abuses exposed.
Mahlobo, as smooth as he was, failed to condemn the detrimental role our intelligence services have played in ANC factional politics and their turning a blind eye on why the state was sold to the highest bidder. He also failed dismally to allay the fears of the public that the intelligence services itself was (is) captured to further corrupt ends.
Public scepticism about the means and aims of a potentially money-grubbing, thuggish and self-interested caste of spooks has grown.
Spymasters must increasingly justify what they do and accept unprecedented levels of legislative and judicial scrutiny.
This is one of the ways to arrest the abuses of the past. In the world of spooks, everyone is guilty until proven innocent, and innocence does not last.
In the age of cybersecurity and other national security, the country’s spooks need to get their act together and stop behaving like hoodlums.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
Sunday World
