The rot in SA’s law enforcement agencies runs so deep that SA can forget about large-scale prosecutions, improved revenue collection or making inroads into organised crime unless President Cyril Ramaphosa moves speedily to clean house.
In fact, his administration is likely to be undermined and his reform initiatives frustrated as long as those appointed as part of the state capture project are allowed to keep operating.
Jacques Pauw, author of the blockbuster The President’s Keepers, urges Ramaphosa to move quickly to replace the top structure of SA’s law enforcement agencies.
His book catalogues how key state institutions, including the SA Revenue Service (Sars), National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and State Security Agency (SSA), have been hollowed out and repurposed over the past decade to shield former president Jacob Zuma and his cronies from prosecution.
The first three people Ramaphosa should sack, he argues, are Sars commissioner Tom Moyane, NPA head Shaun Abrahams and Arthur Fraser, the head of the SSA.
"It’s absolutely critical in the case of Sars because of the impact it’s having on revenue collection; in the case of the Hawks because it influences their ability to investigate organised crime; and in the case of Abrahams because he affects the NPA’s ability to charge the state capturers," argues Pauw.
"I think SA can forget about large-scale prosecutions unless Ramaphosa can get the old guard back — people like [former Sars deputy commissioner] Ivan Pillay, [former Sars investigator] Johann van Loggerenberg, [former Hawks head] Anwa Dramat and [former NPA prosecutor] Glynnis Breytenbach."
Last week, Pillay, Van Loggerenberg and his predecessor, Andries Janse van Rensburg, were served with summonses in connection with the so-called Sars rogue unit.
This intelligence unit investigated high-profile tax offenders, including prominent politicians and their friends. Allegations that it had "gone rogue", based on a subsequently discredited report by KPMG, were used by Moyane to purge Sars of some of its best investigators.
On February 28, Pauw’s home in the Western Cape town of Riebeek Kasteel was raided by members of the Hawks armed with a warrant to seize any documents pertaining or belonging to the SSA.
The raid was a flop — nothing of importance was found — but more interesting is why Pauw’s legal problems and those of the three former Sars officials are resurfacing, despite Zuma having been replaced as SA’s president.
"I think mainly it’s because, despite there having been political changes, no changes have been made to the law enforcement agencies," says Pauw in an interview with the Financial Mail.
For instance, the Hawks in Gauteng are still headed by Prince Mokotedi, who is fingered in Pauw’s book for alleged corruption. The instruction to raid Pauw’s premises may well, the author suspects, have come from someone like Mokotedi.
Not that Pauw is feeling besieged. Judging from the pathetic letter written to The President’s Keepers publisher NB Publishers by the investigating officer, he is dealing with a bunch of amateurs.
In the letter, Lt Col Johannes Makua, from the Serious Organised Crimes Unit’s crimes against the state division, asks NB Publishers to confirm in writing that, among other things, Pauw is the publisher of The President’s Keepers and that NB Publishers had permission to publish it.
Pauw, of course, is the author, not the publisher and, also, one does not need permission from a state agency to publish a book.
"I mean, where do these people come from?" asks Pauw.
But while it’s easy to dismiss the raid as a laughable attempt at intimidation — the book has been on the shelves for almost six months and has sold about 130,000 copies — Pauw finds it "alarming" that SA is relying on people of this calibre to bring real criminals to justice.
Sars is still intent on seeking a court order declaring the publication of Pauw’s book unlawful for breaking the secrecy parts of the Tax Administration Act, ostensibly for exposing the confidential taxpayer information of Zuma and others.
"There have been several legal manoeuvres and threatened manoeuvres since November last year, and so far none has resulted in anything concrete, excluding the Sars matter, but even that is in technical limbo at the moment," says Pauw’s lawyer, Willem de Klerk.
Nothing less than a "complete overhaul" of SA’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies is needed, according to Gareth Newham, head of the justice & violence prevention programme at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).
Writing in ISS Today, the NGO’s online journal, Newham says a pattern of dubious appointments to SA’s law enforcement agencies started two months after Zuma became president in April 2009.
The first was the appointment of Richard Mdluli to head crime intelligence within the SA Police Service.
Before the start of his six-year suspension on full pay — while facing charges ranging from kidnapping to corruption — Mdluli reportedly made about 250 questionable appointments in crime intelligence, including of 23 friends and family members with no policing experience and at least 15 people with criminal records.
Some of the six national police commissioners and nine provincial Hawks commissioners appointed during Zuma’s presidency also placed people they favoured in top-level posts without subjecting them to the required assessments or vetting processes.
In each case the top posts in the law enforcement agencies were filled not by people with skills but by those who would protect Zuma, his cronies and family members, claims Pauw.
Newham urges the new administration to undertake an independent audit of all 35 lieutenant generals, 216 major generals and 664 brigadiers to uncover whether they have the skills and expertise for their posts.
"The integrity of each of these officers must be assessed through lifestyle audits and forensic investigations," he says. "If evidence of misconduct or criminality emerges, appropriate procedures for their suspension, prosecution and dismissal should follow."
Newham notes that since 2012, the Hawks’ arrest and conviction rates have plummeted and various police performance indicators have deteriorated, while murder, armed robbery, organised crime and corruption have increased substantially.
"Unless there is a complete overhaul of the [police] and Hawks leadership, the performance of both organisations is unlikely to improve," he says. "Moreover, those appointed as part of the state capture project under Zuma will continue to frustrate reform initiatives and undermine the current administration."
Jakkie Cilliers, who heads the ISS’s African futures & innovation programme, agrees that a proper clean-up is required.
"I don’t think there is one person in the intelligence community that Ramaphosa can trust," he says. "Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I would be hesitant to engage with an intelligence community that is so partisan."
He suggests that Ramaphosa do what former president PW Botha did in the late 1970s when he appointed Niël Barnard, a professor of political studies at the then University of the Orange Free State and a complete outsider, to reform the Bureau of State Security. The bureau had been discredited by the role it had played in Infogate.
"Ramaphosa needs to do the same thing — bring in someone with integrity and independence, with the intellectual and ethical courage to transform the organisation, not some former uMkhonto weSizwe [MK] hack," says Cilliers.
"SA needs new blood. Ramaphosa represents lots of that, but we really need to get away from the shadows of the past. If you look at the world view of [many] former MK people, they’re stuck in the 1960s or 1970s. It will take technical expertise, knowledge and insight to bring the intelligence community into the 21st century."
New state security minister Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, a former MK operative who obtained a diploma in political science in Cuba in the 1980s, appears to be starting off on the right foot.
The former deputy public service minister and former Limpopo health and agriculture MEC is such a little-known entity that even Pauw hasn’t been able to find out anything of substance about her.
Since her appointment she has talked of the need for "a new broom" to "clean up" state security. Among her priorities, she says, will be to probe financial mismanagement and conduct a skills audit to remove inept, corrupt officials from the organisation.
Letsatsi-Duba faces a mammoth task. If the raid on Pauw’s home and the summonses served on former Sars officials are anything to go by, the cabal manipulating these institutions is not going to go without a fight.
Ramaphosa’s gloves need to come off swiftly.
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