The DA has launched a bid to force the release of a secret intelligence report about how the so-called “spy tapes” ended up in the hands of President Jacob Zuma’s private legal team, which led to criminal charges against him being dropped just days before the 2009 general election.
This follows an exclusive report by Independent Newspapers yesterday which revealed that both the Office of the Inspector General for Intelligence (IGI), which investigated the issue, and the joint standing committee for intelligence (JSCI), which dealt with the matter on Parliament’s behalf, have refused to make the findings of the report public.
Yesterday DA chief whip Ian Davidson announced that his party would launch an application in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act for a copy of the IGI’s report.
“The fact that the IGI and the JSCI have chosen not to make this report public is a sad reflection that, in our democracy, information that is in the public interest has an unfortunate tendency to be suppressed - more in the interests of protecting powerful individuals ahead of legitimate threats to our national security,” he said.
The Cope faction led by Mbhazima Shilowa yesterday also called for the IGI’s findings to be made public “to dispel any notion that the president may have relied on illegal and unconstitutional means to ascend to office”.
“Phone conversations between former National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) chief Bulelani Ngcuka, former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy - and possibly even former president Thabo Mbeki - were secretly recorded by the police’s crime intelligence division. It later transpired that many of the same conversations were also intercepted by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) as part of an unrelated investigation.
A source who has seen the IGI’s report confirmed at the weekend that it identified the police as the origin of the leak, but stops short of holding any individuals responsible for what appears to have been a serious breach of state security.
The report is believed to conclude that a judge gave the necessary permission for the phone taps, as required by law. But it is not known who the judge was and on what basis this authority was given.
It is also not clear whether the IGI investigated the possibility that Zuma’s lawyer, Michael Hulley - and possibly Zuma himself - may have committed a criminal offence by accepting information gathered as part of an intelligence operation. A ministerial directive issued by former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils - that all applications for phone taps should be approved by the minister - also appears to have been flouted by both the police and the NIA.
Kasrils said in 2009 that, despite a ministerial directive to this effect, neither the NIA nor the police had approached him for permission to intercept these phone conversations.
“We’re dealing with something here which led to a government change and a president being removed. And the public doesn’t clamour for the release of this report? The country is asleep,” he was quoted as saying when the report was completed by former IGI Zolile Ngcakani in 2009.
Neither the IGI nor the JSCI was willing to answer questions in this regard, and both institutions have said there will be no further action on the matter.
Former NPA chief Mokotedi Mpshe stunned the nation in 2009 when, just before the general election, he announced that all charges against Zuma would be dropped. He argued that the recorded conversations pointed to an “intolerable abuse of the legal process” by members of the NPA and the Scorpions.
Davidson yesterday noted that the decision to end criminal proceedings against Zuma was made “on the basis of supposed evidence of a political plot gleaned from (the tapes)”.
“The public has never been privy to precisely why the corruption charges against President Zuma were dropped.
“There has been nothing like the full disclosure required to prove that in our democracy, no one - not even a future president - is above the law,” he said. - Cape Times