‘Not wired that way’: Ramaphosa says he won’t use SSA against his enemies

President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday slammed claims that placing the State Security Agency (SSA) in the Presidency would result in the abuse of the country’s intelligence service.

Appearing for his second day at the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Ramaphosa said he was simply seeking to realign and professionalise the SSA.

“Many people have misunderstood it, they’ve even gone to the extent of saying the president is now creating a super presidency. And others have gone on to say this is now the emergence of a dictatorship. Others are saying we are becoming a totalitarian state. It’s far from it,” the president said.

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Following the deadly civil unrest that engulfed parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July, questions were raised about the failure of the intelligence community to prevent or pre-empt the violence.

In response to this, Ramaphosa last week announced sweeping changes to his Cabinet and placed the the SSA in the Presidency.

He explained to the commission the reasons behind his decision-making.

“I took the decision to place the SSA into the Presidency precisely because it is an asset of our nation, it should be seen to be so and there should be confidence in this important asset to serve the nation and never to be seen to be serving certain sections of our nation,” Ramaphosa said.

The president said some critics had even suggested that placing the SSA in the Presidency would result in him using state security against his enemies.

Ramaphosa said he was “not wired that way”.

“Through doing this, we want to not only inject the confidence of our nation into its work so that it can help to protect, but also that we professionalise it and it’s completely disinfested on any partisanship, particularly party political partisanship. That is what we are seeking to do.”

The president did not rule out the possibility of the SSA being removed from the Presidency in the near future.

“We may once again delineate a person, as said in our Constitution, who can be in charge. But for now, I’ve deemed it proper to realign it and have it in the Presidency. This happens in many countries around the world,” he said.

High-Level Review Panel report

Earlier, Ramaphosa admitted government’s implementation of the report by the High-Level Review Panel into the SSA had been poor.

He said state capture and corruption under his predecessor, Jacob Zuma, had debilitated the SSA and his administration was working to change this, despite the slow pace in implementing the review panel’s recommendations.

“When it comes to the High-Level Review Panel’s report, its implementation has been rather poor and it is now going to gain momentum with the SSA having been brought into the Presidency because, if you like, the president is the first client of that agency,” Ramaphosa said.

Report recommendations

The report of the High-Level Review Panel on the SSA was appointed in June 2018 and assessed the mandate, capacity and organisational integrity of the agency.

The panel was headed by Ramaphosa’s current national security advisor, Sydney Mufamadi. The panel found that there was “political malpurposing and factionalisation of the intelligence service”.

Among its recommendations on cleaning up the SSA included separating the agency into two services – a domestic and a foreign service.

Ramaphosa said he believed that Mufamadi’s appointment as national security advisor would assist to turn around the agency.

“And I think many people who are in the agency welcome this move because we are going to align what we seek to do in the state with the work that they have to do. So, it’s going to be on a much more positive level,” he said.

“[As] much as we have gone through a horrible past, I think the future that beckons is a future that will be a lot more different from what we have been through.”

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