Читать книгу The President's Keepers - Jacques Pauw - Страница 8

Cabinet – and therefore Jacob Zuma – must have been informed about the PAN investigation. Paul Engelke saw security minister Siyabonga Cwele at least ten times during the two years that he investigated the PAN project. The minister was initially shocked and in disbelief and instructed the investigators to get to the bottom of the rot. At a meeting at OR Tambo International Airport in November 2010, Cwele agreed that the PAN matter should be referred to the relevant authorities for possible prosecution.

The investigators also made a presentation to the minister of justice, Jeff Radebe, in his office in Cape Town. Cwele was also present. The investigators said in their report that even before the conclusion of their presentation, Radebe indicated that he had “heard and seen enough and that it is a prima facie case that must be dealt with by law enforcement”.

In January 2011, Lieutenant-General Anwa Dramat, the head of the Hawks (which by then had replaced the Scorpions), arranged a meeting for the investigators with Major-General Hans Meiring, in charge of the Hawks' commercial crimes unit. Meiring allocated a Hawks colonel to evaluate the evidence. He concluded that the case was “too big for us” and recommended that the matter be taken further by a multidisciplinary task team comprising the police's commercial crimes unit, the Crimes Against the State unit of the Hawks, the Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) and the Special Investigating Unit (SIU). It was agreed that the SIU was best suited for the investigation.

Two months later, the SIU presented a “business plan” to the State Security Agency (SSA) that included an independent forensic investigation by PricewaterhouseCoopers that would cost R15 million. Gibson Njenje, head of domestic intelligence, personally entered the negotiations and later told the investigators that he had managed to bring down the cost of the audit to R6 million.

Although Engelke believed there was already enough evidence to charge and convict the PAN top structure, he realised that nobody, except for Njenje, had the stomach to take on the might of the SSA. Can you imagine charging one of the most powerful people in the country with treason and those around him with fraud and corruption?

Such trials had the potential to rip open the underbelly of the SSA and unmask those we entrust to guard the Republic as nothing but a coterie of thieving and squandering thugs. Although the state could cite national security to hold prosecutions behind closed doors, details of the debauchery would leak to the media and prompt uncomfortable questions about the antics at “the Farm”. Spooks prefer to skulk in the shadows of anonymity for as long as possible.

Engelke refused to capitulate and turned to the only law enforcement agency that at the time would have the guts to cross swords with the SSA: the South African Revenue Service (SARS). The service was by far the most efficient law enforcement agency in the country and had pursued the like of Julius Malema, Radovan Krejčíř and Lolly Jackson with a hyena-like relentlessness and would have gone where the Hawks and the SIU feared to tread.

Furthermore, NIA and SARS had signed a cooperation agreement whereby they would share information and engage in joint operations. In April 2011, Engelke wrote to the SARS forensic service investigations and requested them to probe nine senior PAN managers and agents and several companies for their declared income and the taxes they had paid. Among them were Fraser, Engel, Makhwathana and Wallace.

SARS investigators and analysts compiled profiles of the managers/agents as well as their spouses and connected the dots between the companies and their directors. Although most of the PAN transactions and payments were done in cash, it was clear that several of the “persons of interest” had feasted greedily during their terms at PAN.

One of the PAN agents who acted as a service provider had eight vehicles registered in his name, including a R1.3 million Mercedes-Benz, a Range Rover Sport, an Audi A4, a Pajero and a Harley-Davidson. He was an active and former director of more than twenty companies. One of these companies received 27 government payments worth R5.6 million; another 57 government payments worth R10 million. The latter company still owed R5.6 million in unpaid taxes.

The profiles of the other persons of interest showed how millions of rand of taxpayers' money flowed into the bank accounts of their companies, which had service provider contracts with PAN. They bought farms, jet skis, imported motorcycles and 4x4s.

The profile of Arthur Fraser, however, didn't show excessive wealth. He owned two BMWs and a house in Observatory in Johannesburg and was a director of a couple of companies. He did, though, receive two government tenders of R81,000 while he was the operations director of the NIA. But the profile of his wife, Natasha Fraser, made for more interesting reading. She became a director of a security company by using her maiden name of Taylor. After she resigned from the company, it received 240 government payments between 2005 and 2010 to the value of R7.4 million. It also owed SARS almost R4 million in unpaid taxes.

I have no doubt that there was great anxiety in the security agency around the SARS investigation. It had to be stopped.

* * *

When Zuma came to power, he was dealt an enviable hand because he had vacancies to fill in most of the key criminal justice institutions, which meant he could appoint his allies and cronies to them. He had to select a new police chief, a new national director of public prosecutions, a new intelligence chief and the head of the Hawks.

A former intelligence hand himself, Zuma has always relied on his intelligence and security chieftains to infiltrate the state apparatus while at the same time safeguarding him from revolt and overthrow. These stooges have little regard for law and order and for keeping the Republic safe. Instead, they have mostly been reduced to squads of hooligans that are prepared to harass and hound any Zuma adversary into submission.

A pattern of appointing cronies and loyalists in key positions emerged at the outset of Zuma's presidency. He was mindful that he could still be brought to book for corruption in the future, and set in motion a shadow security state that would undermine the independence of the police and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

After Siyabonga Cwele became state security minister, Zuma appointed three loyalists as his intelligence chiefs: Gibson Njenje as head of domestic intelligence, Moe Shaik as head of foreign intelligence, and Jeff Maqetuka as so-called super-director-general. Unexpectedly, the trio soon showed an alarming sense of independence when they became intent on investigating the influence of the Gupta family on the government and the state. This was after press reports that the family had offered former ANC Youth League leader Fikile Mbalula a ministerial post. Cwele flew his three administrative heads to Cape Town and ordered them to halt the project. They refused and he ordered them to resign.

With Njenje gone, Engelke had lost one of his only allies. He wasn't ready yet to throw in the towel. He had a further appointment with the SIU, who told him that they were awaiting authorisation from the new spy boss, acting SSA director-general Dennis Dhlomo, to request the audit. Nothing was forthcoming.

Cwele also began to change his attitude towards the investigators during the latter half of their probe. He told Paul Engelke that he didn't trust him any longer and that he held a vendetta against Fraser. The investigation was on the rocks. At the time Cwele himself was under siege. His wife, Sheryl, was convicted of drug smuggling and sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment, later increased by the Appeal Court to 20 years. Opposition parties called for Cwele to step down, arguing that if he was not aware of his wife's illegal activities, he should no longer oversee the country's intelligence-gathering. There were also reports that the minister ordered that his wife be afforded intelligence protection for the duration of her trial. She was transported to and from court in official vehicles and protected by intelligence agency officers.

When Cwele received the final PAN report, he referred it to the inspector-general of intelligence (IGI) for “further investigation”. This made no sense. PAN was already being investigated by the best legal brains in the SSA. What more was there to uncover? By doing so, Cwele ensured that the mire of PAN would be entombed in Musanda's boneyard and would ultimately disappear in the hidden workings of the inspector-general. This included the SARS investigation into the tax affairs of the PAN beneficiaries.

Only two bodies have oversight over the intelligence agencies: the Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence. The IGI is constitutionally mandated to protect the public from abuses by the intelligence services. Its activities are cloaked in secrecy, however; its reports are not made public and it doesn't engage with the media.

Engelke and Meiring had stored their evidence in an office at Musanda which they referred to as the “war room”. The IGI never interrogated this evidence. Engelke appeared before inspector-general Faith Radebe and Jay Govender, the IGI's legal adviser, and was grilled about his apparent feud with Fraser and whether it had clouded his forensic appraisal.

The Office of the IGI has for many years been a blunt constitutional tool. The IGI investigates complaints against the SSA, the police's crime intelligence unit and the Defence Force's defence intelligence division. The IGI must also monitor their compliance with the Constitution, especially section 198, which states that national security must “reflect the resolve of South Africans, as individuals and as a nation, to live as equals, to live in peace and harmony, to be free from fear and want and to seek a better life”.

The choice of IGIs since 1994 has not evoked any confidence in the office. Faith Radebe, appointed in April 2010, was a former spook herself. A trained lawyer, she was also a special projects manager at the NIA. This alone should have disqualified her from the job.

A glance at the IGI's website is indicative of the dismal state of affairs during Radebe's reign. She hadn't released or declassified a single report after her appointment in 2010. In fact, the last declassified report on the website dated to March 2006. The last speech of Radebe was posted on the website in August 2010 and the last press release in April 2010, when she was sworn in. Radebe's term expired in March 2015 and her successor was only appointed at the end of 2016. For almost two years there was no oversight over the intelligence services and the IGI's office barely functioned. It meant in practice that the country's intelligence agencies accounted to no one.

IGI legal adviser Advocate Jay Govender, who was one of the candidates for IG after Radebe left, admitted at the parliamentary hearings that the office “was clearly not without its problems” and was operational only “to a certain extent”. Her colleague, Mampogoane Nchabeleng‚ who also sat on the executive committee‚ reported that they had been “managing the office as a collective” but could not say what they had been doing in the past year.

Setlhomamaru Dintwe, an associate professor of forensics at the University of South Africa, was appointed as IGI in March 2017. Five months later, the IGI website still stated that the process of appointing someone was under way. Dintwe said during his interview that the “role of the oversight officer is that you have to become a snake that eats the other snakes. That is the role of the inspector general of intelligence.”

Security and intelligence expert Professor Laurie Nathan commented to Daily Maverick that the IG has the potential for great oversight because he or she is not answerable to the minister or the intelligence services. They can walk into any building and open any file or attach any computer. It is a criminal offence not to comply. There is incredible power in the position but it has unfortunately been squandered over the years. Said Nathan: “We have no idea what they do. The IG has no sense of accountability to Parliament or the people. It is every bit as secret as intelligence and is in fact in thrall of secrecy.”

During the writing of this book, I sat down with a top-level intelligence guru who has intimate knowledge of the major role players in this saga: Jacob Zuma, Siyabonga Cwele and Arthur Fraser. “Did you really think that anything was ever going to happen to Arthur?” he said to me. “Did you think that JZ was going to sacrifice him? No way! There is something that you must understand about the president: it is all about how useful you are to him. And Arthur is very useful. I think he was always going to be JZ's intelligence chief, and PAN was just a klein fokôppie [little fuck-up] that had to be handled.”

He reckoned that initially Cwele had no idea about the relationship between Zuma and Fraser, which dated back to the “Spy Tapes” saga. That was why he spurred on his investigators to sniff out the culpable and bring them to book. He then lost his appetite because he was instructed “to make a plan”.

As my source said: “Fraser went to Zuma and said, ‘Sir, there is big trouble here; lots of secret things are going to be compromised.' Zuma instructed Cwele to look after Fraser. A strategy was devised to circumvent other law enforcement agencies and to deliver the findings of Engelke and Meiring to Faith Radebe, who they knew would kill everything.”

* * *

As Zuma's first term ended in 2014, none of his original justice and security appointees remained in their jobs. Zuma made two loyal lieutenants, Bheki Cele and Menzi Simelane, national police commissioner and national director of public prosecutions, respectively. They were both controversial, Cele because of his “shoot-to-kill” policy and Simelane because his evidence before the Ginwala inquiry was branded “contradictory and without basis in fact or in law”.

It didn't take long for both to become toast. The Constitutional Court found that Zuma didn't apply his mind when he decided Simelane was “fit and proper” and declared his appointment invalid. A board of inquiry found Cele unfit for office and recommended his firing after he became embroiled in a R1.7 billion police lease deals scandal. Zuma's choice as head of the Special Investigating Unit, Willem Heath, was also forced to resign.

Zuma's selection of ministers didn't do much better. Justice minister Jeff Radebe was a mere onlooker at the destruction of the NPA, police minister Nathi Mthethwa was exposed as a beneficiary of a dodgy crime intelligence slush fund, and Cwele oversaw a divided and fragmented intelligence structure.

As political challenges against Zuma intensified, he obviously felt the need for new blood and in May 2014 announced a cabinet reshuffle. He demoted Siyabonga Cwele to the telecommunications portfolio and elevated a Mpumalanga departmental head, David Mahlobo, to take over one of the most crucial cabinet positions: that of state security minister.

Nobody outside the province had ever heard of Mahlobo, a 40-something-year-old trained biochemist with no intelligence experience. It later turned out that he loves “regime change” conspiracies and Thai pedicures.

Shortly after his appointment, IGI head Faith Radebe handed him her PAN investigation report. It inexplicably took her almost three years to produce her findings. I was told that one of the reasons why her investigation took so long was that the agency asked for more time to find the required documentation, invoices, contracts and authorisations. I have little doubt that much of it was manufactured in the Musanda war rooms.

I have never seen the report, but the SSA claimed that it exonerated Fraser and his cronies of wrongdoing. Your guess is as good as mine as to how the spy boss managed to wriggle himself out of the problem of having had a secret server in his house, explained the employment of family members as agents, and justified a host of unlawful contracts, claims, appointments and payments that carried his signature.

By the time Radebe handed her report to Mahlobo, the only other law enforcement agency that had the potential to upset the apple cart, SARS, had already been successfully dealt with.

Towards the beginning of 2012, the IGI's Jay Govender made an appointment with the head of tax and customs investigations at the revenue service, Gene Ravele. She explained to him that since the IG was conducting her own investigation, all other law enforcers should put their inquisitions on hold. Convinced that the SSA and the IGI were on top of their investigation, Ravele relented and the SARS audit was put on ice. Govender left with much of the SARS evidence under her arm.

At the end of 2014, the Sunday Times exposed the existence of a so-called rogue unit in SARS – the very unit that was targeting organised criminals and big-time tax evaders and money launderers. A few months later, many of SARS's most successful executives and managers were either suspended or resigned. Among them was Gene Ravele, who resigned in May 2015.

The campaign against the SARS “rogue unit” was driven by elements in the SSA, and you will read much more about it later in this book. Suffice it to say for now that the stories in the Sunday Times were bullshit, but they were integral to the destruction of the most effective law enforcement organisation in the country.

There was no rogue unit and the campaign was unleashed to stop SARS from investigating Jacob Zuma and his cronies, among others. I have little doubt that SARS's new rulers would have ensured that the audit profiles that Ravele's investigators had compiled against Arthur Fraser, John Galloway, Prince Makhwathana and several others were erased from the SARS mainframe.

* * *

Several PAN agents took the SSA to court for dishonouring the contracts and agreements that Fraser and his managers had entered into with them. One of them was John Galloway, the former NIA employee who formed a security company to supply equipment to PAN. According to the court papers, Galloway had to install sophisticated monitoring equipment in “25 secret bases” across the country. Galloway said in his submission that he hadn't been paid for work in Johannesburg, Polokwane, Durban and Mbombela. Fraser's brother, Barry Fraser, was a director in the Galloway company.

Although PAN had already paid Galloway R58 million for what the investigators branded “poor quality” work, he wanted another R6.7 million. He had already obtained a default judgment against the NIA front company that had entered into the agreement with him but the agency ignored his requests for payment. A court sheriff tried to seize the assets of the company but was chased away by intelligence officials.

Following the visit of the sheriff, Galloway received a threatening lawyer's letter from SSA which accused him of breaking the law and said if he pursued his claim he would be charged and his farm attached. The farm they referred to was in the Swartland in the Western Cape, which he purchased with the proceeds of PAN for R4.25 million in 2008. The SSA eventually settled with Galloway and most of the other agents and paid them out rather than risk negative publicity.

The IG did recommend disciplinary action against a handful of managers and agents and commented on various “operational shortcomings” of PAN. As far as I can gather, no disciplinary action ever took place against any agent.

The former manager of the Covert Support Unit, Prince Makhwathana, was suspended in July 2010 for misconduct but was never supplied with a charge sheet. Makhwathana, a Fraser confidant, had entered into employment contracts with the 72 PAN agents. Paul Engelke and Kobus Meiring found that he did not have the authority to sign these contracts and that he was probably also complicit in financial misconduct. When SARS investigators commenced with audits of the PAN managers, they discovered that Makhwathana and his wife owned seven properties, four of which were purchased during the PAN programme period.

While on suspension, Makhwathana sat at home receiving his full pay and full benefits. He approached the courts in September 2013 after having written to SSA director-general Sonto Kudjoe a month earlier demanding that he be allowed to return to work. The High Court ruled in his favour, but he was recharged in January 2015 with more than a hundred violations, including illegal bugging and the promotion of several agency employees to salary levels that he was not authorised to approve.

The legal services manager of the SSA advised, however, that Makhwathana had no case to answer. David Mahlobo intervened and lifted his suspension. All charges against Makhwathana were dropped, and almost six years after being suspended and at an estimated cost of R6 million to the taxpayer, he returned to “the Farm”.

The last glimmer of hope – albeit a very small one – is the parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence (JSCI). The committee is an oversight body composed of members of the largest political parties. They all undergo top-secret security clearances and intelligence “training” and are bound by an oath of secrecy. They cannot talk about anything discussed during committee meetings.

The JSCI has probably an even worse credibility record than the IGI. Laurie Nathan says the committee has to take the blame for the failure of the country's intelligence services to be held accountable. One of the reasons for the malfunctioning of the JSCI was that it was chaired by a Zuma acolyte and security hawk, Cecil Burgess. He also chaired the ad hoc committee that dealt with the so-called Secrecy Bill (the Protection of State Information Bill), of which he was a champion. In addition, Burgess was appointed to the ad hoc committee that considered the spending of taxpayers' money on upgrading Zuma's Nkandla compound. That committee saw no wrong on Zuma's part or in the way in which he benefited from the upgrades. Under Burgess's watch, the JSCI repeatedly failed to publish its annual reports by the stipulated deadline and hardly ever met.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has three members on the JSCI. They had got scent of the PAN investigation and had been asking questions ever since. The IG briefed the committee in 2015 about the results of her investigation. Committee members are not allowed to talk about the briefing but, from what I heard, it was short and to the point. The committee was informed that Arthur Fraser was not criminally liable and there would not be any prosecutions.

Since then, the DA members of the committee have insisted that they want access to the full report of Paul Engelke and Kobus Meiring. At the time of the writing of this book, David Mahlobo was considering their application. But don't hold your breath.

* * *

On Wednesday, 23 September 2015, Her Excellency Faith Doreen Radebe, draped in an exquisite red Xhosa garb, was ushered in a horse-drawn carriage to the Royal Palace in Stockholm to present her letter of credence to King Carl XVI Gustav as South Africa's new ambassador to Sweden. Radebe wasn't the only one who was looked after following the undermining of Paul Engelke's PAN investigation. Shortly after Arthur Fraser's resignation, he went into business with Manala Manzini, his director-general, who had concocted the PAN scheme with him. Manzini's contract at the NIA had expired in September 2009.

The Sunday Times reported in August 2014 that the South Africa Social Security Agency (SASSA) had blown millions in public funds on a suspect deal with Resurgent Risk Managers, a company that belonged to Fraser and Manzini. SASSA paid them R14.6 million to conduct a “threat assessment”, devise “mitigation strategies” and provide “strategic advice on security”. According to Fraser, Resurgent had followed all due processes in contracting with government.

The Post Office also made use of Fraser's intelligence expertise. Business Day reported that CEO Chris Hlekane hired Fraser to spy on senior executives who apparently posed a threat to his position.

City Press revealed in October 2016 that Resurgent Risk Managers had scored a R90 million contract from the embattled Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) to provide security and risk advisory services for a period of two years. Resurgent also had to review and analyse Prasa's security strategy and provide training for security personnel. Prasa has been mired in controversy since it was revealed in 2015 that mismanagement led to the loss of billions of rand, through the acquisition of Spanish trains which were unsuitable for South African rails. Public protector Thuli Madonsela released a report, Derailed, which found evidence of widespread maladministration and impropriety in the awarding of tenders at Prasa. A Treasury probe revealed that only 13 out of 216 contracts awarded by Prasa between 2012 and 2015, all with a value exceeding R10 million, were above board.

According to Daily Maverick, the Treasury investigation found that Resurgent might have used a false tax certificate to score the contract, although Resurgent denied the claims. The forensic company that did the investigation for Treasury recommended that Resurgent's contract should be reported to the police for contravening the country's corruption laws.

The contract with Fraser and Manzini was awarded on the basis of a “confinement”, which refers to deals that are awarded without a tender, but only if they can be justified by factors such as urgency or a lack of competitors in the market. City Press said Resurgent had apparently invoiced Prasa on a monthly basis and had received about R30 million before the contract was put on ice. Their services were halted by Prasa in the wake of the damning public protector's report.

Fraser said that he had resigned from Resurgent by September 2016. He was, however, a co-signatory to the Prasa contract and many millions flowed to him and Manzini prior to his resignation.

City Press reported that the tender awarded to Resurgent was among a host of contracts that Treasury was investigating at the request of the public protector. Treasury might at some point release a report and claim the money back.

* * *

The year 2016 hammered Jacob Zuma with remorseless savagery. It was what political commentator Max du Preez described as his annus maximus horribilis. By the middle of the year, Zuma was in a political maelstrom. The Constitutional Court ruled that he had failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution; the ANC had lost control of the country's biggest metros; and the rating agencies were yapping at his heels.

Zuma had to chortle his way through Parliament; a rebellion was brewing in his own ranks; and more evidence was emerging of his lovey-dovey relationship with his main benefactors, the Guptas. Journalist Richard Poplak remarked at the time that Zuma “looked as grey and wrinkled as an exsanguinated tortoise, and it did seem as if the end was nigh”. Even on a personal level, Zuma behaved increasingly like a Don Vito Corleone in Mario Puzo's celebrated novel The Godfather.

He was at all times surrounded by at least 22 armed bodyguards. Stern-faced with squawking earpieces, steel-rimmed sunglasses and bulging pockets, they were drawn from a team of 88 members of the presidential close-protection unit. Nobody knew if the intelligence services had detected any threat against the president, except from one of his own wives, Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, who was banished from Nkandla after she allegedly tried to kill him. The Sunday Times said that Russian intelligence agents had discovered that MaNtuli had been involved in a plot to poison Zuma. She has rejected the allegations against her and has never been charged with any wrongdoing.

It is at times like this that besieged leaders surround themselves with those they trust the most. In Zuma's case, it was his Rottweilers: his security cluster that had infiltrated almost every aspect of the state apparatus. One crucial piece on his political chessboard was still missing, however: a trusted and dependable spy boss.

That person was not the director-general of the SSA, Sonto Kudjoe. A former ambassador to Sweden and Egypt and educated in the Soviet Union, she was appointed as spy boss in 2013 but reportedly had a tense and unhappy relationship with David Mahlobo. In August 2016, the SSA declared that her contract had been terminated by “mutual agreement” and that she would pursue opportunities “elsewhere”. She was probably asked to resign and given a bag of money to keep her happy.

A month later, Mahlobo announced that Arthur Joseph Peter Fraser had been appointed the director-general of the SSA. The ministry said in a statement that Fraser had extensive experience in the intelligence community and had “astute managerial experience”. His complicity in a calamitous enterprise that had squandered hundreds of millions of rand of taxpayers' money was hardly mentioned by any newspaper, despite my story in City Press about PAN two years earlier.

When the Sunday Times asked the SSA for comment about Fraser and PAN, spokesperson Brian Dube said that Mahlobo was “concerned by the unlawful disclosure and possession of classified information that is flawed and inaccurate to unauthorized persons and or parties”. He threatened the newspaper that the possession of classified material was a “contravention of the provisions of the Intelligence Services Act and the Protection of Information Act” and that this conduct “undermines the integrity, objectivity and fairness and violates the rights of individuals”. Dube added that the IG did not make any findings against Fraser but recommended that the agency deal with his “non-compliance with some operational directives”. He said the matter was “considered closed”. The Sunday Times didn't publish the story.

It will not be the first or the last time that the SSA has abused security legislation in order to keep their dirty linen under wraps. Laurie Nathan says the intelligence services suffer from an “unreconstructed apartheid mentality” and remain “immersed in obsessive secrecy” which precludes accountability and oversight. They believe they are above the Constitution and think it is legitimate to break the rules. He says they are close to “rogue”.

I can basically go to prison or at least be prosecuted for what I have revealed to you about the PAN programme investigation. The SSA will argue that I have jeopardised national security and endangered the lives of agents. This is, of course, nonsense. I have not revealed any state secrets and have not endangered any operations that are genuinely in the interest of national security.

What I have revealed is an orgy of depravity and venality, and if there is any attempt to stop the publishing of this book, it will be because they do not want you to know about it.

* * *

One of the first things that director-general Arthur Fraser did after taking office was to embark on a “roadshow” around the country to address staff and agents. He told them that the allegations against him in the media – the story that I had written in City Press – were nonsense. He reiterated that the IGI had found no criminal evidence against him and warned employees that the gossip must stop.

At the end of February 2017, he held a telephone conference with staff during which he announced a complete overhaul and restructuring of the agency. All the departmental heads would report directly to him. Staff refer to him as the “super-DG”.

One of his first appointments was that of his right-hand man at PAN, Graham Engel, as his second in command. Engel was for three years on suspension with full pay pending the outcome of the PAN investigation. He is referred to as “CE10” – the head of all internal intelligence and operations. He is in the all-powerful position as the national coordinator of all intelligence.

Insiders said they are concerned that so many of the former PAN managers and operatives have been brought back by Fraser. This group – and it includes Fraser and Engel – commanded and directed a failed intelligence structure and therefore they elicit no confidence.

When Fraser assumed his new role, an intelligence source warned me that it would just be a matter of time before the SSA exposed a tremendous threat to our national security. New spy bosses have to put their stamp of authority on the agency, and what better way than to sniff out a menace to the country's well-being.

Indeed. At the beginning of March 2017, David Mahlobo called a press briefing and said that South Africa was not an exception when it came to being a target of terrorists. He announced: “Attempts at regime change are happening. We know who does what.” He didn't give any further detail but assured the nation that counter-intelligence was dealing with the matter. “We do that work quietly because at the end of the day South Africa should never be a failed state. Our duty is to protect its sovereignty. We are committed to ensure that our country remains relatively safe and free of any attempts to destabilise it.”

Mahlobo repeated his claims in July 2017 when he said that talk of a regime change was not a scare tactic because South Africa already displayed some of the elements of a “colour revolution” – which in common parlance refers to non-violent or civil resistance such as protests and strikes.

My sources tell me that one of the “colour revolutions” that the SSA identified as promoting “regime change” was the Fees Must Fall student protests which spread across South African universities in 2016. Fraser and his analysts have concluded that these might at some stage deteriorate into an attempted coup d'état.

The SSA has also concluded that there are “foreign forces and their agents” that are attempting to destabilise the Zuma regime. Mahlobo has said that civil society is collaborating with foreign agents to subvert and undermine government. According to him, they had funding and surveillance equipment and some even had “funny names”.

Following Mahlobo's most recent “regime change” speech, an SSA source contacted me and said: “Haven't I told you? The message they are trying to convey is that we are in safe hands and should be grateful for a man like Arthur Fraser at the helm of our intelligence services.”

There is tremendous paranoia at the top. When, for instance, Zuma arrived at the ANC policy conference at the highly secured Nasrec showgrounds in Johannesburg in July 2017, he came with a cavalcade of 11 vehicles and 18 bodyguards. The president feels threatened, and his paranoia has filtered down through the ranks. Mahlobo showed clear signs of this, and at the same time insulted the intelligence of the nation, when he announced in a statement that the SSA was investigating allegations that public protector Thuli Madonsela and Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema were CIA agents. The claims were originally made by an American blog on the lunatic fringe with less than a hundred followers. Malema retorted: “This is a joke man, who belongs in a pre-school. There is no State Security in South Africa, we've got a group of clowns that call themselves Intelligence, with an intelligence-illiterate minister leading them.”

In September 2017, City Press, Rapport and News24 reported that the SSA had allegedly spent more than a billion rand in irregular expenditure over the past five years – but refused to account for it because its operations were “classified”. The newspapers said seven sources had confirmed that between the 2012/13 and 2015/16 financial years, Treasury repeatedly asked the SSA for clarity on its expenditure. But, according to the same sources, the SSA wouldn't say how this money was spent because its activities were “secret”.

It seems that old habits die hard.

* * *

The 16th of December 2016 was my last day in Moscow. A snowstorm had been raging since early morning, and when I peered from my window on the third floor of the legendary Hotel Sovietsky, a flurry of white powder swirled around trees that balanced a mantle of snow on their elongated branches. The winter light was pale and watery; the sky ashen and pasty.

I waited for Paul Engelke in the foyer of the Sovietsky, a throwback to Politburo times. The hotel was constructed in 1952 on the personal order of Joseph Stalin to accommodate government dignitaries. It still oozes Bolshevism from every nook and cranny with its faded red carpets, a life-size portrait of the Red Tsar (Stalin's nickname) and decor that represents the height of Soviet sophistication and opulence.

We eventually landed in a dreadful ryumochnaya, a Russian basement bar that serves alcohol and food on the cheap. The decor hovered between the old, the new and the kitsch: nylon window curtains, football memorabilia and the odd Lenin banner. The waitresses were gruff and crusty with brash lipstick and powdered cheeks, who slammed shots of nameless vodka and a bowl of pickles in front of us.

I'd decided by then that I really liked Engelke. He had limitless energy and tackled life with an exuberance and vigour that I admired. His Russian adventure had netted him a gorgeous woman and we had endless discussions about how he was going to navigate the general-dad dilemma and whether he should seek a life and future in Russia.

The frozen country had set Paul Engelke free. It didn't matter how cold or inhospitable it was; he was his own man in his own skin with his own destiny. He had broken free from the mental incarceration of the SSA, where he thought he was doing the right thing by busting reprobates but was in fact setting his own demise in motion. I realised in Moscow what a great loss Paul Engelke was to our fledgling democracy and our quest to inculcate a culture of justice and accountability. If he decides to settle permanently in Russia, that loss will be forever.

He seems to have had an unfortunate departure from the SSA. In 2015, he enrolled for a master's degree in law at the University of Pretoria. He met a Russian guest lecturer and they discussed the possibility of his doing a similar stint at Moscow State University. The Russians were interested in utilising his experience in forensic law. He then quit the SSA but soon afterwards had second thoughts and withdrew his resignation. He was allegedly fetched by guards in his office, told to pack his personal belongings and escorted out of Musanda.

Throughout my stay in Russia there was one subject he refused to talk about: the SSA and his PAN project investigation. He told me from the outset that he was bound by his oath of secrecy and that he has children back home in South Africa whom he might never see again if he opened his heart to me. By then I already had studied two of his reports and reckoned that so many people knew about the PAN programme that its details would ultimately be blown open. I had gone to Russia in order to start writing this book as much as to see and talk to him.

I have stayed in contact with Engelke, and in one of his last messages, he said to me: “And how is the book going? I shudder when I think about it! In the meantime, I've asked Diana to get married and she has said yes. You are of course invited. I'm also getting along very nicely with the general. We are thinking of getting married in Cape Town. What do you think?”