Cape Town - DA MP David Maynier wants a multiparty parliamentary committee to investigate the role of the State Security Agency (SSA) in the cellphone signal disruption during last week’s State of the Nation Address.
This came after President Jacob Zuma on Thursday said: “It is an unfortunate incident and should never happen again,” hours after State Security Minister David Mahlobo said the incident was “regretted”.
However, Maynier said the SSA should have played no role at the State of the Nation address, describing claims of human error by an SSA member on duty as damage control and shifting blame to a “rogue official”.
The SSA’s counter-intelligence by-law excluded lawful political activity, advocacy, protest and dissent, said Maynier, adding the agency could only have become involved on threat of a hostile foreign intervention, terrorism, espionage, sabotage, exposure of economic, scientific, technological secrets vital to South Africa or serious violence aimed at overthrowing constitutional order.
Earlier on Thursday Mahlobo described helmets as “dangerous weapons” in a clear reference to the hard hats the EFF carry into the National Assembly, and said the heavy security presence was in keeping with threat assessments for the state event.
The signal disruptions were “glitches” with “counter-surveillance tactical measures” which remained switched on past the planned time. “When we did the implementation of our own operational plan… at that particular point we started having glitches. Those particular glitches… were happening at various points, depending on where our equipment was,” Mahlobo sid.
SSA has said a departmental investigation was currently under way with a view to instituting possible disciplinary action.
To date there has been no official comment on the security operatives, dressed in white shirts, who evicted EFF parliamentarians amid chaos which left six EFF members injured. The security operatives had trained after hours and were drawn together from the public order police, SAPS members and the parliamentary protection services.
Political Bureau