Parliament - Former senior ANC MP Cecil Burgess, the front-runner for the post of inspector-general of intelligence, warned in his interview for the post on Wednesday that South Africa would in coming years face ever greater security threats.
He told the joint standing committee on intelligence that the inspector-general and the intelligence community as a whole would forever face conflicting demands of transparency and secrecy, but added that the intelligence services had to contend with bigger threats than ever before as “the world is not the safe place it was 20 years ago.
“As we go forward over the next few years security is going to become such a major issue … I can only say that one needs to find that balance. We can’t ignore those claims from people who say we want to see more because some of the things that are restricted, it could have been much easier if it had just been made available.”
He cited information technology and cyberspace breaches as particular areas of concerns.
Burgess, who headed the committee that steered the contentious Protection of Information Bill through Parliament, said the time may be ripe for a review of the country’s post-apartheid security legislation as a whole given changed circumstance and concerns raised.
“I think the legislation is outdated and the whole issue needs to be reviewed so that one can address these problems. It might well be some of these behaviour patterns are unconstitutional, but until such time that the legislation is challenged in court, one obliged as the office of the inspector-general to find in terms of the legislation.”
He described the tension between the need for secrecy and calls for disclosure as healthy, adding: “It is up to the South African community, it is up to the legislature to determine just how much should be made available. I don’t think it can ever be the case that all information that is sensitive should be made available. If you work in this community you will see that some of the information is so sensitive that if it is disclosed it will just cause so much harm.”
Responding to a question on political interference in the work of the watchdog body, Burgess said he had behaved impartially in his previous role as head of the joint standing committee on intelligence, and would continue to do so if he were appointed to succeed outgoing inspector-general Faith Radebe.
“I can tell you, as the chairman of the joint standing committee of intelligence, I have never had a political instruction to behave in a certain way. In fact, when I became chair, I was told that under no circumstances should I ever brief one political party or person on the work that we do, and I have always obliged by that. I have never ever gone to say to a politician, to anybody, that this is the things we do.
“It is quite clear from the constitution, that the office of the inspector-general needs to be an independent institution to oversee the functions and the activities of the intelligence community.
In terms of being an inspector-general, there is a constitutional obligation on you and your office to behave in a certain manner… This is a different job to being a politician.”
Burgess was one of 11 candidates interviewed for the post, eight of them for a second time, after the committee last week decided to hold the interviews for the position in open session.
It had since March been under pressure from the Democratic Alliance, the Institute for Security Studies and the Right to Know Campaign to make the process open to the public.
Others candidates include Jayashree Govender. who has worked as a legal advisor in the office of the inspector-general for a decade, Imtiaz Fazel, a former operations officer in the office of the inspector-general, and Clinton Davids, a consultant and former member of the intelligence community.
ANA