Durban - Questions are being raised about how Thabo Bester, convicted of murder and two counts of rape after luring women using Facebook, managed to escape from the Mangaung maximum-security prison last year by setting fire to his prison cell, leaving behind a body that has yet to be identified.

While police search for Bester, the credibility of the country’s intelligence service is again being questioned.

Two recent reports have highlighted the ineffectiveness of the country’s intelligence apparatus.

The first was a 2018 report by a ten-person review panel, headed by Sydney Mufamadi that found widespread abuse of the intelligence services and that it was being used to fight internal ANC factional battles.

The other was a report on the findings of the Zondo Commission, which found the State Security Agency (SSA) was integral to the capture of the state by corrupt elements.

Jane Duncan, Professor of Digital Society at the University of Glasgow, who sat on the Mufamadi review panel, recently wrote that government’s underestimation of the time needed to restructure the SSA could have potentially serious, even dangerous, consequences.

One of the key recommendations of the 2018 High-Level Review Panel on the SSA’s report was the unbundling of the agency into foreign and domestic branches.

“Powerful individuals aligned to former president Jacob Zuma, presumably at his behest, re-purposed the institution to help him maintain his grip on power. It was one of many institutions that were re-purposed for improper personal or political gain during his tenure (May 2009 to February 2018): a process that has become known as state capture.

“His successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, promised in 2022 to reform the agency so it would serve its original mission. He committed to returning it to the pre-2009 era of having separate domestic and foreign branches, each led by its own director-general.

“Dismantling this architecture of abuse is happening too slowly, however, with no transitional plan having been announced publicly. Such a plan should include appointing interim heads for the domestic and foreign branches, rather than relying on people in acting positions. The government’s underestimation of the time needed to restructure the intelligence agency could have potentially serious, even dangerous, consequences,” Duncan wrote.

She argues that the unbundling of the SSA can be achieved through an intelligence laws amendment bill that the intelligence agency intends to introduce to parliament by the end of the current financial year.

“A new bill should ensure that the new heads of domestic and foreign intelligence have more discretionary power, reducing the power of the director-general. Doing so should make it more likely that this person will confine themselves to an oversight role, rather than becoming involved in operational matters,” she wrote.

Duncan said going back to separate foreign and domestic services is the last chance civilian intelligence has to re-establish its credibility.

“The current round of restructuring the State Security Agency cannot fail. If it does, it will have to be shut down and restarted from scratch,” Duncan wrote.

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