Spy agency boss Thembi Majola to quit

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Tensions between the State Security Agency’s (SSA) director general, Thembi Majola, and Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni have boiled over, with the country’s top spy reportedly in the process of quitting.

Although the presidency has denied that Majola has resigned, sources close to the ministry told the Mail & Guardian that she had decided to do so over the deterioration of their relationship.

This comes at the height of renewed attacks on trucks around the country, described by President Cyril Ramaphosa as economic sabotage, and which appear to have continued to catch South Africa’s intelligence community off guard.

Three high-profile insiders in the security cluster have told the M&G that the relationship between the two intelligence leaders has been strained for months and that Majola had been considering vacating her office for some time. 

Majola was appointed as head of the SSA in February last year. 

The SSA has widely been deemed ineffectual and beset by factionalism since the administration of former president Jacob Zuma, with allegations being made at the Zondo commission on state capture of a parallel intelligence agency being established to benefit Zuma and his political cronies.

The agency was also severely criticised in the high-level review panel report of 2018 and, most recently, in the report of the presidential panel that was established to investigate the July 2021 riots.

“The appointment of ambassador Thembi Majola to this position is an important part of our work to stabilise the country’s intelligence services. Her extensive experience in government, international relations and security makes her well placed to lead the reform and rebuilding of the State Security Agency,” Ramaphosa said at the time.

Majola’s appointment had been expected to give greater impetus to the implementation of the report of the SSA high-level review panel and the recommendations of the expert panel into the July 2021 unrest. 

But sources said Majola has found the environment unfavourable since taking the job. 

One insider said Majola was not welcomed by the spooks in her office, placing her under further strain. 

“Spooks don’t normally take too kindly to someone from the outside. That place wants someone from within, it’s a family. They respect you when you come from within, among them, then you can start weeding out,” the insider said. 

Another insider said Ntshavheni’s relationship with Majola first showed signs of cracks when Ntshavheni reinstated Robert McBride as the director of the foreign branch of the SSA. 

The security cluster personnel said Majola was firmly against McBride’s reinstatement and that she had her own candidate for the job. 

“They don’t like each other. Ntshavheni put her foot down that McBride must come back and Thembi was not happy. McBride is also a forceful person so when you don’t want him and make it known, he will make life difficult for you in return,” they said. 

Both Majola and Ntshavheni’s spokespersons referred the M&G to Police Minister Bheki Cele when asked to comment. 

McBride was suspended in July 2021, after a bungled diplomatic mission when South African spies ended up stranded during a failed operation that targeted Cabo Delgado in Mozambique, the City Press reported.

(John McCann/M&G)

The blow to the intelligence services comes as crime intelligence is scrambling to make arrests after 21 trucks were torched along the country’s economic routes. These began on the second anniversary of similar torchings in July 2021, which were followed by eight days of violence and looting, mainly in KwaZulu-Natal.

Cele said this week that they had identified 12 suspects linked to the arson. He said there was currently “no evidence before us to suggest that the recent target on trucks are in any way related or linked to the July insurrection”.

But, at the time of the 2021 unrest, a source involved in fomenting the attacks told the M&G that the plan was to switch to targeting economic interests and infrastructure in KwaZulu-Natal to destabilise the state.

This suggests it is hard to differentiate political unrest and economic sabotage, and the recent attacks have sharply highlighted the incompetence of the country’s intelligence.

Deputy President Paul Mashatile said police crime intelligence had a strategy to deal with the criminality by reverting back to its 2010 World Cup strategy.

“They are going to bring back the methods that they were using during the World Cup. Firstly its visibility, random searches throughout. You are going to see that coming back. More roadblocks on freeways, searches in hostels [and so on].” 

Mashatile admitted the recent spate of economic sabotage was a problem for the presidency, adding that restructuring in the security cluster was underway. 

“We have quite recently brought in Minister Ntshavheni to take over state security, so there is some restructuring that is taking place. The president has asked me to chair the JCPS [justice, crime prevention and security cluster], which is the security cluster so to speak. We will be looking into this matter.

“We have [had] two meetings already. In addition to that, myself and the president have met all ministers now, one on one, and in our meetings with them, [which] sometimes take three to four hours, we want to know what is the priority,” Mashatile said. 

The three insiders said that although the friction between Majola and Ntshavheni may not be a direct cause of the ineffective intelligence, “it has not helped the situation”. 

They said that little work had been done by the SSA and its political heads to address the recommendations of the high-level review panel report of 2018. 

A former intelligence operative told the M&G “nothing” was done to change the way in which they had worked over the past two years. “Nothing has changed,” they said.

The high-level review panel’s investigation into the security services, conducted over six months in 2018, found wholesale abuses, much of it stemming from executive meddling, but also noted the weakness of the work produced.

The panel was headed by Sydney Mufamadi, now Ramaphosa’s national security adviser, who noted “a number of challenges relating to research and analysis in the SSA”. 

The key finding of the Mufamadi report was that there was “a serious politicisation” of the intelligence services, linked to factionalism in the ANC, and that these had been turned into a private resource to pursue the personal ends of particular individuals.

“In addition we identified a doctrinal shift towards a narrow state security orientation in the intelligence community from 2009, in contradiction to the doctrines outlined in the Constitution,” the report stated. 

“We are concerned that the cumulative effect of the above led to the deliberate repurposing of the SSA.”

The report dwelled on the level of executive meddling in intelligence work, particularly through the Special Operations unit of the SSA, which it said had “become a law unto itself”. It had become “a parallel intelligence structure serving a faction of the ruling party, and in particular, the personal interests of the sitting president of the party and the country”.

Its findings on the Principal Agent Network were equally troubling. It was designed, the panel said, to bypass procedural requirements for the recruitment of staff, as well as the disbursement of funds and procurement processes. 

The Zondo commission delved into the state of the SSA and heard testimony about the abuses of the Special Operations unit, plus an account from a witness identified only as Ms K, as to who pulled the strings.

“At the executive level, the abuse of the SSA’s mandate occurred primarily under the political leadership of ministers Siyabonga Cwele, David Mahlobo and Bongani Bongo, and was executed or implemented primarily, although not exclusively, by Maruti [Stan] Noosi, ambassador Thulani Dlomo, ambassador Sonto Kudjoe and Arthur Fraser,” she testified.

Cwele had faced accusations of political meddling since 2013. These came from Gibson Njenje, the former director general of the SSA, who was fired two years earlier, along with then foreign intelligence boss Mo Shaik, for investigating the Gupta family and their nascent influence over the state and Zuma.

The Mufamadi report called for forensic investigations into breaches of financial and other controls to be instituted urgently and recommended that the minister’s powers be reviewed.