Ronnie Kasrils: "The country is asleep"

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Zuma spy-tape report mystery
9 November 2009, 07:16

The investigation into how the National Intelligence Agency's secret "spy tapes" got into the hands of President Jacob Zuma's lawyers - which led to the scrapping of criminal charges against Zuma and ultimately to a change in government - has been completed, but the report is under wraps.

The Inspector-General of Intelligence, Zolile Ngcakani, who has an ombud role and oversees all intelligence services in the country, confirmed that his office had finished its investigation, but said its findings could not be made public because "the report has not yet been released to the appropriate authorities".

The investigation deals with the taped recordings of intercepted conversations between former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy and former National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Bulelani Ngcuka, made towards the end of 2007.

The conversation suggested that McCarthy was taking political instructions as to the best timing to bring fraud and corruption charges against Zuma. These recordings led to all criminal charges against Zuma being dropped.

Although the inspector-general's report on the spy tapes is under wraps, the inspector-general did reveal to the Pretoria News that his investigation had found that the intercepting of phone conversations involving McCarthy had been conducted by the NIA "lawfully in terms of a judicial direction".

The investigation also established that the police were spying on McCarthy at the same time. "We have found that the crime intelligence division of the police intercepted the phone conversations of McCarthy as part of an unrelated investigation, and such interceptions were conducted lawfully in terms of a judicial direction," Ngcakani said.

He said his office had extended its spy-tape investigation to include the police crime intelligence division after it had emerged in the court case of former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi that tapes had been released to him.

"Subsequent to the issue of the release of tapes to Mr Selebi emerging in the South Gauteng High Court in May 2009, we included the activities of the crime intelligence division of the police during the period in question."

The inspector-general's office would not say who the "appropriate authorities" were to whom the report would be given.

Legislation requires that it should go to the joint standing committee on intelligence (JSCI).

Ronnie Kasrils, who was the minister of intelligence at the time of the spy tapes saga, said he had no knowledge at the time that the NIA was tapping McCarthy and Ngcuka's phones.

Kasrils said that after the intelligence crisis of 2005/06, when former NIA head Billy Masetlha was found to have abused the intelligence powers by instigating unlawful surveillance and eavesdropping on politicians - and creating hoax e-mails - he had issued a directive to the NIA and to the minister of police that "any interception using the National Communications Centre facilities needs to be passed by me".

But the NIA and police apparently defied this ministerial directive.

"The NIA were obliged to report this to me as minister. They never did. I knew nothing about it," Kasrils said.

"Intelligence agencies intercepted conversations of a state official (McCarthy), whose calls to his own minister and to the president were being intercepted. In other democratic countries this would be regarded as an incredible scandal," Kasrils said.

"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 added.

The JSCI is a parliamentary committee tasked with overseeing the intelligence services as one of the governments checks and balances against abuse by the intelligence services. It meets in secret.

However, JSCI chairman Cecil Burgess was not aware that the inspector-general had completed the spy tape investigation.

Asked yesterday if he would call for the report, Burgess replied: "It depends on what the report contains. There are certain things we may not be entitled to see."

It is a criminal offence for the intelligence agencies to release intercepted information to the public, and for the public to be in possession of classified information without permission.

The legislation spells out when classified information may be released by intelligence agencies, and it is clear that it must be for the purposes of law enforcement.

Zuma's lawyer, Michael Hulley, has repeatedly refused to say who he got the tapes from, but has repeatedly denied reports that they were given to him by NIA deputy director Arthur Fraser. Hulley has been reported as saying the tapes were given to him by "at least two different sources".

Although Ngcakani's investigation revealed that the phone tapping was lawful, the inspector-general would not be drawn to say on what grounds a judge had given both intelligence agencies authorisation to tap the phone conversations of the former Scorpions boss, saying this information was classified.

The Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act, known as Rica, is specific about the grounds for intercepting communications, and an application to do so has to be made to a designated judge, appointed by the minister of state security.

The applicant has to state the nature of the "serious offence" that the agency has reason to believe is being, or will be, committed. This can include treason, terrorism, sabotage, sedition, arms smuggling and drug trafficking.

If the grounds remain classified, the public will never know why the intelligence agencies spied on McCarthy and Ngcuka. To date, neither has been charged with any crime

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The lessons of history have escaped Cosatu whose "Long Term Revolutionary Demands" include:

Abolish bourgeois private property.

Nationalise, socialise and democratise all key strategic means of production in South Africa such as land, water, minerals, mines, banks, oil companies, shipyards, telecommunications, transport, food, housing, etc, etc, etc

Abolish the bourgeoisie executive, parliamentary and justice system, and replace them with working class state structures. http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=3321712&postcount=19

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Sunday, October 18, 2009
Churchill Was Right (Anti-Socialist Speech from 1945)

I recently watched a movie called “Into the Storm” which followed Sir Winston through the years before the war through the end of the war. Towards the end of the movie, Churchill gave a speech on the radio about the perils of Socialism that I found very interesting. Here is the text of the actual speech:

My friends, I must tell you that a Socialist policy is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. Although it is now put forward in the main by people who have a good grounding in the Liberalism and Radicalism of the early part of this century, there can be no doubt that Socialism is inseparably interwoven with Totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State. It is not alone that property, in all its forms, is struck at, but that liberty, in all its forms, is challenged by the fundamental conceptions of Socialism.

Look how even to-day they hunger for controls of every kind, as if these were delectable foods instead of war-time inflictions and monstrosities. There is to be one State to which all are to be obedient in every act of their lives. This State is to be the arch-employer, the arch-planner, the arch-administrator and ruler, and the archcaucus boss.

How is an ordinary citizen or subject of the King to stand up against this formidable machine, which, once it is in power, will prescribe for every one of them where they are to work; what they are to work at; where they may go and what they may say; what views they are to hold and within what limits they may express them; where their wives are to go to queue-up for the State ration; and what education their children are to receive to mould their views of human liberty and conduct in the future?

A Socialist State once thoroughly completed in all its details and its aspects – and that is what I am speaking of – could not afford to suffer opposition. Here in old England, in Great Britain, of which old England forms no inconspicuous part, in this glorious Island, the cradle and citadel of free democracy throughout the world, we do not like to be regimented and ordered about and have every action of our lives prescribed for us. In fact we punish criminals by sending them to Wormwood Scrubs and Dartmoor, where they get full employment, and whatever board and lodging is appointed by the Home Secretary.

Socialism is, in its essence, an attack not only upon British enterprise, but upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils. A Free Parliament – look at that – a Free Parliament is odious to the Socialist doctrinaire.

Have we not heard Mr. Herbert Morrison descant upon his plans to curtail Parliamentary procedure and pass laws simply by resolutions of broad principle in the House of Commons, afterwards to be left by Parliament to the executive and to the bureaucrats to elaborate and enforce by departmental regulations? As for Sir Stafford Cripps on “Parliament in the Socialist State,” I have not time to read you what he said, but perhaps it will meet the public eye during the election campaign.

But I will go farther. I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police. Many of those who are advocating Socialism or voting Socialist to-day will be horrified at this idea. That is because they are short-sighted, that is because they do not see where their theories are leading them.

No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil. And where would the ordinary simple folk – the common people, as they like to call them in America – where would they be, once this mighty organism had got them in its grip?

I stand for the sovereign freedom of the individual within the laws which freely elected Parliaments have freely passed. I stand for the rights of the ordinary man to say what he thinks of the Government of the day, however powerful, and to turn them out, neck and crop, if he thinks he can better his temper or his home thereby, and if he can persuade enough others to vote with him.

But, you will say, look at what has been done in the war. Have not many of those evils which you have depicted been the constant companions of our daily life? It is quite true that the horrors of war do not end with the fighting-line. They spread far away to the base and the homeland, and everywhere people give up their rights and liberties for the common cause. But this is because the life of their country is in mortal peril, or for the sake of the cause of freedom in some other land. They give them freely as a sacrifice.

It is quite true that the conditions of Socialism play a great part in war-time. We all submit to being ordered about to save our country. But when the war is over and the imminent danger to our existence is removed, we cast off these shackles and burdens which we imposed upon ourselves in times of dire and mortal peril, and quit the gloomy caverns of war and march out into the breezy fields, where the sun is shining and where all may walk joyfully in its warm and golden rays.

http://themunz.blogspot.com/2009/10/churchill-was-right-anti-socialist.html

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marine1 said:

Shame poor little Kasrils, he is just sore he is no longer part of the in crowd.

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The Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act, known as Rica,
is specific about the grounds for intercepting communications,
and an application to do so has to be made to a designated judge, appointed by the minister of state security.

The applicant has to state the nature of the "serious offence" that the agency has reason to believe is being, or will be, committed.
This can include treason, terrorism, sabotage, sedition, arms smuggling and drug trafficking.

Click to expand...

The JSCI is a parliamentary committee tasked with overseeing the intelligence services as one of the governments checks and balances against abuse by the intelligence services. It meets in secret.

Click to expand...

It is a criminal offence for the intelligence agencies to release intercepted information to the public, and for the public to be in possession of classified information without permission.

Click to expand...