The State Security Agency (SSA) is to vet the top brass of the SAPS management, including police intelligence officers, as massive backlogs continue to affect the issuing of security clearance certificates.
This comes as internal battles are fought within the country’s crime intelligence service, amid investigations into the issuing of fraudulent clearance certificates to some senior officers.
This emerged when the top brass of the SAPS appeared before the police portfolio committee yesterday to explain reports of vetting, including for the acting head of intelligence, Patrick Mokushane, and others.
The situation was des- cribed as “alarming”, as not all divisional heads of crime intelligence have security clearances.
This has been blamed on the massive backlogs that have seen applicants having to wait several years to get these certificates, while technically in temporary employment by the state.
Briefing the committee, acting national commissioner Lesetja Mothiba said he had already met with the SSA director-general and State Security Minister David Mahlobo, who wanted to help with the matter.
“The entire top management of crime intelligence will be vetted by SSA because there are some problems where vetting processes were not done correctly,” Mothiba said.
He said some members had been waiting between three and five years for security clearances because the vetting environment did not have the necessary capacity.
“This is an organisational challenge that we are going to rectify,” Mothiba said.
Mokushane told the committee that he would submit a report of all the senior crime intelligence officers who did not have security clearances.
“The situation is alarming. I’m talking about more than 50 people at senior level,” he said.
“Some of them are provincial heads, and some of them have been there before I arrived.
“I’m talking about the person in charge of the secret service account for the past 10 years not having any security clearance. We are sitting with a crisis,” Mokushane said.
The acting boss of crime intelligence said he had been waiting for his security clearance for six years.
Mokushane blamed the vetting backlog partly on the juniorisation of the vetting division.
“Unfortunately, some of the vetting personnel are very junior people.
“If you assign a file to a constable to go and interview a general, that general will never comply,” he said.