Somehow, despite the best intentions, it’s hard to work up a really indignant froth about reports that the UK has been spying on South African diplomats and other government officials.
Is this difficulty in getting indignant a sign of treasonous tendencies or of healthy scepticism about the way all governments operate?
The Guardian reported that US whistle-blower Edward Snowden – who is on the run for revealing extensive wiretapping of US citizens – had leaked documents which showed the British government had been tapping government communications.
The UK allegedly hacked into the computer network of the Department of International Relations and Co-operation through the London High Commission as early as 2006.
It tapped phone calls, e-mails and SMSes of South African and other selected officials attending the 2009 G20 summit and finance ministers’ meeting in London.
Department spokesman Clayson Monyela condemned “the abuse of privacy and basic human rights,” especially from an ally, and called on London “to investigate this matter fully with a view to take strong and visible action against any perpetrators.”
The British government, however, reacted with a stonewall template comment (at least in public) that, “as is long-standing practice, we don’t comment on security issues.”(far be it from us to disturb long-standing practices) .
Asked if Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane would summon High Commissioner Nicola Brewer to demand an explanation – perhaps via a demarche, to express its displeasure, local officials retreated into the shadows, as it were.
They said the government (or was it both governments?) had decided not to issue “blow-by-blow”accounts of their exchanges.
Ah, so officialdom was preventing us, the public, from abusing its privacy and basic human rights by prying into its dealings with Britain.
The DA’s David Maynier had a different take, calling for Parliament to investigate, not the UK, but our intelligence agencies for allowing such an apparent breach of security.
This provoked Monyela to approvingly retweet remarks such as “David Maynier stop short of justifying the British Govt’s interception of Dirco comm network” and “At some point DA must develop patriotism. SA is under attack, not the ANC. UK spy saga is a national issue.”
Compare such calls to patriotism with a South African intelligence expert’s blase response to the news, “Welcome to the real world!”
This is what all intelligence agencies do, to friends and foes alike, he said, with some amusement, and for the same reason: to gain advantage in negotiations at meetings such as the G20 summit in London in 2009.
The real trick is not to get caught, he suggested, as Britain had been.
According to The Guardian’s report, the UK started wiretapping South African communication in 2006 because it had grown concerned that the government of then president Thabo Mbeki was following an “independent” foreign policy and therefore had become a rather unpredictable “swing vote” in gatherings such as the G20.
But as the intelligence expert said, Mbeki’s views were already familiar and it’s hard to imagine what the British spooks could have gleaned about Pretoria’s position at the 2009 G20 summit that they had not already read in public government statements. Or maybe Snowden could tell us more?
Perhaps one’s difficulty in working up the appropriate indignation stems from a sense that this is all just a skirmish among bureaucrats which doesn’t affect you and me. We take Pretoria’s official indignation with a pinch of salt because we know, for example, that President Jacob Zuma got himself off charges of corruption via wiretap which allegedly showed that National Prosecuting Authority officials pursuing him had a political agenda.
Conversely we know that the Protection of State Information Bill will make it even more difficult for us to pry into what they are doing.
Pretoria News