Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils has paid tribute to late defence analyst Rocky Williams, who died in Johannesburg on Saturday.

Williams, 44, died in his sleep of natural causes on Saturday night.

Kasrils said on Monday Williams had a close working relationship with the security community for many years, "starting out during the dark days of apartheid when he joined the liberation struggle".

"We, the intelligence community will miss Rocky," Kasrils said. "His warmth and generosity will continue to inspire us.

"He made an extremely valuable contribution... On behalf of the intelligence service, I offer our condolences to Rocky's partner, children, family and friends."

The Institute of Security Studies (ISS), where Williams worked for a time, said the former Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) operative was highly regarded for the work he did in defence and transforming the security sector in South Africa and elsewhere.

"Rocky was a very important player during the SA defence transformation process and was instrumental in the development of the 1998 Defence Review," the institute's head of defence research, Len le Roux, said.

"He managed that process very professionally and went out of his way to ensure the process was truly collaborative and transparent."

Williams was born in Johannesburg in March 1960. Between 1978 and 1980 he was a mole for MK within the former SA defence force -- where he reportedly reached the rank of sergeant.

Afterwards, until 1986, he was a commander in MK's reconnaissance and intelligence structures.

In 1988 he was appointed a strategic intelligence officer at MK's Lusaka, Zambia, headquarters, a post he held until 1990 when he returned from exile.

From 1990 to 1994 he was director of the Military Research Group, an ANC-aligned defence policy NGO.

During this time, in 1992, he obtained a PhD in civil-military relations from the University of Sussex in Britain.

In 1994 Williams was integrated into the new SA National Defence Force as a colonel and appointed senior staff officer for strategy.

The next year he left the SANDF for the Ministry of Defence, where he was director of defence policy. He left the ministry in 1999.

During this time he was co-ordinator of the Defence Review that informed the later acquisitions under the much-criticised strategic defence package.

He also co-wrote the White Paper on Safety, Security and Policing -- focusing on restructuring the police's head office and was the principal author of the White Paper on Participation in International Peace Missions.

Williams later served on the presidential commission into the restructuring of defence intelligence and drafted its reports from 1997 to 2000.

After he left the government he served for a while with the ISS before moving to SaferAfrica, another security sector NGO.

He, however, remained active in the SANDF's reserves.

At the time of his death he was an advisor to the parliamentary defence portfolio committee, a director at another defence NGO, the African Civil-Military Relations Institute in Johannesburg, and a member of an intelligence ministry committee on training.

He was also a member of the faculty of management at the University of the Witwatersrand where he had been a founder-member of its post graduate defence management programme.