South Africa

Lets put this issue in perspective. You run a large organisation which has been criticised for a lack of delivery and poor service. One area of particular concern is security, in fact the problem is so severe that many customers of your organisation live in a perpetual state of fear. However, there is hope and it has come in the form of a highly trained sub-section in the security department, the men and women who make up this unit have had an admirable success in bringing down the crime rates with their superb 94% conviction rate of perpetrators. Your next action as Chairmen should be :

a) to reward these heroes for their excellent work ethic and success rate;

b) try and get other security departments to follow their lead;

c) loudly applaud the actions of this sub-sections supervisor and recommend he be given greater responsibility;

d) appoint a Commission of Enquiry to see whether the organisation is competently doing its job and if it should be merged with another lesser successful security section.

Well I think you can guess what Thabo did!

This Commission of Enquiry is unnecessary and a waste of time and tax-payers money. For sure certain goals of the Commission are relevent (eg. duplication of resources, effective communication between the different security agencies) but these are not matters that require a formal Commission of Enquiry and fall more into the Legislative sphere of government than that of the Executive. But don't let that stop our Prez.

What the Commission does reek of is a slap in the face of the DSO (Scorpions) and an order to heel and toe the Party government line. I think there is also a bit of placating going on here as a lot of people (the Police, NIA, Travelgate MP's, Zuma Camp, various corrupt officials etc. etc.) have had their noses put out of joint by the DSO's success.

I had a good laugh today when I read about the NIA blustering about :

• the Scorpions being “a law unto themselves”.
• a "threat to national security";
• most of the senior managerial and professional positions in the unit were occupied by whites, while blacks occupied junior positions.
• controlled by former apartheid prosecutors.

Ah its fisking time. For the NIA to throw around those allegations they must be pretty hot-stuff themselves right? Right? Well, I'll let you decide.

You can start making up you mind by looking at this article in the M&G entitled "NIA Security Bungle", which I think speaks for itself. As a follow up I suggest you read all about the "NIA man nabbed for alleged armed robbery", excellent vetting system they must have in place at the NIA. But hey, come on, all organisations have their problems at least the NIA is not "a law unto themselves". Well if you think playing loose with the Promotion of Access to Information Act and investigating private citizens who are just protesting against pathetic service delivery is a problem you might be found wanting. Let he who has not sinned....

The smear that "whites hold the senior positions of the unit" is real low blow when you consider the main man in the unit is black. This statement is also irrelevent in the context of the Enquiry and was obviously included to motivate those who like to look at ALL questions of change in government terms of quantity rather than quality. Populist trash. Another NIA gem was the statement that the Scorpions were "controlled by former aparthed prosecutors". The fact that these so called "apartheid prosecutors" (another underhanded slur) work under Director Pikoli and are subject to the decisions he makes is conveniently ignored by the NIA. This excellent logic by the NIA must come in handy when it is sythesising information and protecting our national security. I mean you don't see people running around smearing the NIA by saying it is controlled by ex-KGB agents just because the Director and Deputy Director of the NIA received intelligence training in Eastern Europe and Moscow. Again, populist trash.

Next time the NIA wants to throw around allegations about why another unit should be reorganised and cut down to size they better make sure they've got their own house in order and their facts straight. Or maybe they should just fall under the authority of the Scorpions...

PS - what ever happened to the "Uranium from Congo and Stingers in Angola", Billy?