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CHAPTER

3

The context of surveillance and social control in South Africa

Since the Marikana massacre in 2012 – when scores of mine workers were shot by the police after a protracted strike – several journalists, academics and media commentators have argued that South Africa is reverting to a repressive state. They have interpreted violence at the hands of the police generally, and Marikana specifically, as signs that the post-apartheid social order can no longer be held in check through consent alone. They argue that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and other powerful actors have concluded that naked violence is now needed to stabilise increasingly fractious social relations.¹ Some have even used the term ‘police state’ to describe post-Marikana South Africa.²

As a police state is one in which the police act as a political force to contain social dissent using arbitrary force, it is an important manifestation of a more repressive state; another is a society ruled by its military. In the past, the apartheid state used its intelligence services – especially those in the police and military – to identify and target political activists, and this chapter sketches some of this history. How likely is South Africa to descend into a state of full-blown repression, in which intelligence is misused once again to repress dissent violently? How likely is it that there will be more Marikanas? This chapter engages with these broader questions.

THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES IN APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA

South Africa’s intelligence services date back to its establishment as a Republic in 1961, although the South African police had developed intelligence capabilities before then, under the watchful eye of the UK. The declaration of the armed struggle by the major liberation movements in the wake of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre also added impetus to the apartheid government’s decision, as it felt that this new threat could only be countered effectively through intelligence. The South African Defence Force (SADF) established its own intelligence arm, in the form of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), the year after the declaration of the Republic, but infighting between the police and military agencies led the government to form an entirely separate civilian intelligence agency devoted to national intelligence, Republican Intelligence (RI). This agency was expanded and transformed into the Bureau of State Security (BOSS) in 1969, and its mandate included the collection and analysis of intelligence, although it developed operational elements, too.³

The growth of BOSS fuelled resentment in the police and the military, and increased inter-agency competition, to the point where the agencies started to spy on one another. As a result, in the 1970s the government clarified that BOSS was the prime intelligence agency in South Africa, responsible for strategic intelligence, and it also established the State Security Council (SSC) to co-ordinate the work of the feuding intelligence agencies. The SSC was meant to be subordinate to cabinet and advise it on intelligence matters. Strategic intelligence is distinct from tactical and operational intelligence, in that governments can use it to formulate high-level policy and strategy, while the agencies generally use tactical intelligence to formulate plans to implement strategy. Strategic intelligence is the visionary component of the intelligence cycle. Consequently, it should be developed by civilian agencies that are not operational, as agencies that both develop and act on intelligence experience intolerable conflicts of interest. Yet the various intelligence agencies in South Africa were all highly operational, engaging in counter-insurgency attacks against the liberation movements and their supporters in the regional states.

When P.W. Botha became President of South Africa, he elevated the SSC above cabinet as the strategic decision-maker on policy. He also promoted the DMI to the level of lead intelligence agency, responsible for the strategic intelligence function, in spite of the fact that he had restructured the civilian intelligence function by replacing BOSS with the National Intelligence Service (NIS) – based on academic principles of passive intelligence-gathering – in the wake of a politically damaging scandal involving BOSS. This pro-military restructuring led to the widespread militarisation of society from the late 1970s onwards, and prevented the emergence of political (as opposed to military) solutions to South Africa’s crisis, at least until the late 1980s. This was because the military ‘securocrats’ – or senior officials in the security establishment (especially in the military), who exercised undue influence over national policy – saw the struggle against apartheid and capitalism in South Africa through a counter-revolutionary lens requiring overwhelmingly military responses, with some concessions being granted to ensure limited incorporation of what were considered to be moderate black figures into the political system. The P.W. Botha regime also promoted the development of special operations units in the various intelligence agencies, to deal with the perceived revolutionary threat. These units conducted many covert operations against the liberation movements both inside and outside the country. They engaged in the full repertoire of dirty tricks against their enemies, including spreading disinformation about them, and engaging in kidnapping, arrest, torture, poisoning and assassination. As these units were meant to operate ‘off the books’, in that their operations were not meant to be traced back to the government, the most violent units were expected to raise their own funds as well. As a result, a unit like the notorious Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) morphed into a criminal outfit involved in trafficking drugs, diamonds and weapons, prostitution and extortion, in addition to engaging in extra-legal assassination of political activists.

As in many other countries, South Africa’s signals intelligence capabilities were located in the military, as government considered cryptography to be a military function primarily. The SADF established a Signals Intelligence Unit as part of its tactical intelligence function.⁴ Until 1975, GCHQ had a direct presence in South Africa, through the naval base in Simonstown, but it abrogated this role after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) imposed an arms boycott on the country. Reportedly, at the time both GCHQ and the NSA were accommodated at the South African Navy’s listening post in Silvermine, Cape Town, which was located strategically between the Indian and Atlantic Ocean trade routes, and which monitored the movements of Russian and Chinese shipping around the Cape. This signals intelligence facility was built and paid for by NATO countries in 1973 in spite of mounting international pressure on them to cut ties with South Africa.⁵ However, in terms of the UK–US agreement (the forerunner of the Five Eyes agreement), GCHQ retained responsibility for monitoring sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, it resorted to using its listening posts in British High Commissions in front-line states such as Swaziland, Zambia and Malawi, intercepting intelligence on South Africa after the Simonstown Agreements and collecting intelligence on the activities of the various liberation movements in the region, including the ANC, as well as South Africa’s counter-insurgency activities in the front-line states. On balance, GCHQ’s interventions supported apartheid and disadvantaged the front-line states, as the British feared that the Soviet and Cuban presence in the region might increase if South Africa’s liberation movements became stronger. The UK and Germany also provided communications surveillance equipment to apartheid South Africa, in spite of a 1977 UN arms embargo on the country, with Germany supplying most of the equipment. GCHQ and the apartheid government resumed a more explicit partnership in the 1980s, sharing intelligence about the activities of the ANC, including intelligence gathered from GCHQ’s listening post in Zambia, where the ANC was headquartered for much of the time it was in exile. GCHQ had superior signals intelligence-gathering capabilities, and thus shared its intelligence on the ANC with South Africa, in return for information on Cuban and Soviet activities in the region.⁶

ANC INTELLIGENCE IN EXILE

The ANC also established its own intelligence capabilities in exile. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), there was no evidence presented to it that the ANC’s main rival in exile, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), had a security division responsible for dealing with suspected dissidents or infiltrators.⁷ The ANC established defensive intelligence capabilities in 1969, called the Department of National Intelligence and Security, or ‘NAT’ (apparently shorthand for National Security), under the leadership of Moses Mabhida, after the organisation had suffered significant military losses.⁸ At the time of its establishment and into the 1970s, NAT was small, with no formal structures, and focused mainly on providing security services to the office of the ANC president. But as the apartheid offensive intensified and new recruits flocked to join the ANC in wake of the Soweto uprisings and subsequent crackdowns, the ANC began to recognise that it needed more intelligence capacity. As a result, it established collaborative relationships with Soviet bloc countries – largely the USSR and East Germany – for military and intelligence training. These countries had a vested interest in seeing the collapse of apartheid and colonial domination around the world, given their commitment to proletarian internationalism. The liberation movements, in turn, were extremely grateful for these displays of solidarity, and forged close ties with countries in the Soviet bloc and with the non-aligned movement, which opposed the apartheid regime.