Mon séjour en Afrique du Sud (Cape Town)

INSTITUTE for Security Studies (ISS) analyst Johan Burger yesterday said a proposed purge of top apartheid-era security officials would leave a bitter taste in the mouths of those dedicated to serving the country with distinction.

Burger urged president-elect Jacob Zuma to repudiate comments from ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe. Burger said Mantashe’s comments were “irresponsible” and “ridiculous”, and said people should be removed only where legal grounds existed for doing so.

Earlier this month Mantashe said the ANC planned to purge the security agencies of top apartheid-era civil servants, including former Bantustan officials.

A review of the security sector is among the priorities expected to be tackled by the next government under Zuma.

Mantashe said key people in security institutions were from the old order, with only a few from the military wings of the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC).

Blaming the negotiated settlement for slowing radical change, Mantashe said transformation would be expensive but necessary.

Even within the ANC, not all security officials agreed with Mantashe’s assessment.

“What about our own people who are useless? It’s about capacity and skills development,” said a party official involved in the security sector.

Other insiders felt the military was already overstretched, under-resourced and in need of new direction. “Whether we have excessively deployed is a debatable question,” said one official.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is involved in continental peacekeeping operations in Burundi, Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Some insiders said there was also a feeling among some in the party that the intelligence services needed to revert to the old structure in which the head was a

co-ordinator of intelligence and not the minister of intelligence. A change in the structure had killed the concept of co-ordination, encouraging each security head to take intelligence directly to the president, said one official.