Minister in The Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, briefs media. Picture: GCIS
Minister in the Presidency responsible for state security, Mondli Gungubele, on Monday reiterated the State Security Agency’s (SSA) commitment to fighting corruption within its ranks.
This after a series of recent media reports about alleged incidents of fraud, corruption and malfeasance at the agency.
Gungubele said the agency was mindful of the seriousness of the issues raised in both reports of the High Level Review Panel and the July unrest, which pointed to some weaknesses and gaps in the manner in which the SSA conducted its business.
President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2019 released the damning report of the High Level Review Panel on the SSA’s challenges during former president Jacob Zuma’s tenure.
The report found that there had been “political malpurposing and factionalisation” of the country’s intelligence community over the past decade that had resulted in an almost complete disregard for the Constitution, policy, legislation and other prescripts.
The report of the expert panel into the deadly July unrest, released last month, found that the masterminds behind the violence outwitted the country’s intelligence services, which could not cope and deal with the violent protests in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.
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Gungubele said incidents of wrongdoing at the SSA in the main were a result of weaknesses identified in the two reports.
The minister vowed that the agency was steadfast in the implementation of recommendations contained in both reports, to ensure that such misconduct did not recur.
“We have noted with some deep concern, the number of media reports about the alleged corruption in the agency and we want to assure the South African citizens that we share their disdain against such conduct,” Gungubele said in a statement.
“We are spending sleepless nights in our attempts to uncover these malpractices and we are confident that we will win this war and return the agency to its former glory.”
Gungubele said the work of the forensic investigation team, in partnership with the NPA’s Investigative Directorate (ID), was underway and gaining momentum by the day.
He said four SSA officials had been fired for corruption as a result of the investigations.
“We are encouraged by the progress we are making through the work of this firm and the NPA – in fact just recently, we have dismissed no less than four officials on account of fraud, corruption and misconduct and we expect to do more,” he said.
Gungubele reassured South Africans that such efforts by the agency were all meant to restore the image of the SSA, which had been compromised by acts of corruption and misconduct.
“We are determined to restore our image and to turn this place around to serve the needs and interests of our citizens – we have a constitutional mandate to safeguard the territorial integrity of this country and to protect its citizens, we cannot do that if we continue with the kind of misconduct that has been described in the media and elsewhere,” he said.
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