The revelations, limited though they are at this point, by former spy chief Arthur Fraser of a cash heist at the home of President Cyril Ramaphosa provide seminal lessons on how not to fire an intelligence chief.
It reveals how presidents around the world are seized with the mammoth headache of getting rid of spy chiefs they don’t trust but who know enough to plunge governments into crises. In the US, Donald Trump survived by the skin of his teeth after laudable attempts by the country’s spies to topple him through impeachment for attempting to “solicit interference from a foreign country” by asking Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 to investigate Joe Biden (and his son Hunter), who at the time was a front-runner against Trump. It soon became messy, all thanks to spies.
In Rwanda, the souring of relations between President Paul Kagame and his intelligence chief Patrick Karegeya ended with the latter strangled to death in a Sandton hotel on New Year’s Day in 2014. Three Rwandan diplomats were then expelled.
Firing intelligence chiefs, of course, ought to be one of the hardest things for politicians to do, particularly because there appear to be none without deep dark secrets to be exploited. It is, I imagine, hard because the spy chiefs will know before being fired that their president plans to fire them. They will also know why and possibly when. Whatever a president might have learnt from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War doesn’t apply. With people trading in secrets, including the secrets of the ones doing the firing, the stage is set for a possibly messy post-employment period if not managed well.
This is why many of them never get fired, regardless of how rogue they are. This applies to intelligence ministers too, especially ministers who were allowed to dabble in spy operations.
But for us mere mortals it sometimes is beneficial for presidents to fail to manage their spy chiefs. It reveals a world we never knew was possible. If a script writer told us a group of petty thieves working with a domestic worker could rob our president, we’d dismiss them as naive. Yet, we now know ours was robbed and decided to keep quiet for reasons that don’t make sense. We’re left with more questions than answers after the president released a statement. If you don’t handle your spies with care, which is different to being beholden to them, you end up fighting battles you could have avoided — or even face a potential premature end to your term in office. I am certain Ramaphosa more than understands this now.
Initially, though, it appeared that Ramaphosa was in on the programme, changing the spy environment without being radical. Consider how he moved Fraser to correctional services as head of department, how he failed to say anything meaningful as Fraser released former president Jacob Zuma from prison. You’d swear the president and his former spy chief were on the same page.
Consider too how Ramaphosa diplomatically moved former intelligence minister Ayanda Dlodlo to the World Bank, how he kept former intelligence minister David Mahlobo on as a deputy minister, even though outside the security cluster, with all the shenanigans around Mahlobo being public knowledge. Think about how State Security Agency external boss Robert McBride, despite messing up in Mozambique and embarrassing Ramaphosa, is simply being allowed to stay at home on full pay without any disciplinary hearing. You’d believe Ramaphosa is getting help ensuring the spooks stay in line. He kept it together — until Fraser happened this week.
The point is that presidents around the world are forced to come up with strategies to manage their intelligence chiefs, especially where they must be shunted aside prematurely. This is because of the age-old appreciation of the fact that information is power and spy chiefs trade with information. Today, Ramaphosa must answer important questions because Fraser decided to take the “unprecedented step,” to quote his media statement, to open a case.
Ramaphosa has responded twice — but his responses have left the nation paralysed with shock.
Ramaphosa has responded twice — but his responses have left the nation paralysed with shock. Did Ramaphosa, by confirming a robbery, also confirm that he kept $4m (about R62m) in his house? Why? For how long? And then he gets robbed with the wall of protection around him? Where was the army of guards called the Presidential Protection Unit? If a domestic worker can rob a president, who can’t be robbed in SA? Next time we will be told Ramaphosa was hijacked despite the bodyguards? It is a sad joke!
The point though is that Ramaphosa is in the soup because he did not have the nous to manage the spy chief whose loyalties he knew were with Zuma. Fraser has decided to take this “unprecedented step” of opening a case because Loyiso Jafta too took the unprecedented step of going to a public commission of inquiry to air the country’s dirty spy laundry, precipitating an investigation into Fraser and others.
What Fraser would have required is a loyal president who would shield him from such investigations. When that president is hands off, as Ramaphosa arguably appeared to be, why would Fraser not set in motion a process that might lead to a change of guard at Luthuli House and, by extension, the Union Buildings?
Jafta too became a whistle-blower spy DG because, it later became clearer, his contract of employment was over and Ramaphosa was not extending it. He threw his toys out of the cot.
The point again is that when intelligence officers don’t get their way, they become unplayable because of the secrets in their possession. Sometimes, as is the case now, kicking open that lid and revealing dark secrets is beneficial to democracy, even if done for the wrong reasons. Thanks to Ramaphosa mismanaging his relations with Fraser, the president is being called to account.
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