National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee (Nicoc) head, Gab Msimanga has urged parliamentarians to fix gaps in the law and allow the structure to do its work without meddling from ministers.
Msimanga said former ministers of State Security had meddled in the affairs of Nicoc, and one former minister even tried to reduce Nicoc into a unit in his office.
Those days should belong in the past and not be allowed in the current framework, he said.
Msimanga, who was briefing the ad hoc committee on the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill on Tuesday, said the hands of Nicoc were also tied, as it cannot do certain things unless they were approved by the State Security Agency (SSA).
The General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill was tabled in Parliament a few months ago and it came as a result of the recommendations of the Sydney Mufamadi Report and Sandy Africa Report into the intelligence agencies.
Both reports have depicted a dysfunctional intelligence service and poor state of affairs in intelligence agencies.
The Mufamadi Report had recommended the separation of the foreign branch and the domestic branch.
In her report, Africa found that intelligence agencies failed to get on top of the situation before the July 2021 riots broke out.
Msimanga said Nicoc has been under pressure in the last few years.
“During the reign of the fourth administration, one minister of Intelligence attempted to reduce Nicoc into a new unit in his office. Of course, that is the history I am referring to. That was illegal. The same illegal way that SSA was created through a proclamation, instead of national legislation,” said Msimanga.
“If the minister concerned had powers, he would have dissolved everything because he just wanted a few people in his office and the rest must go to Musanda (SSA headquarters). We then thought that it was important that kind of history should not repeat itself because when I was appointed in 2017, when I got there, I found Nicoc in disarray.”
He said he knows the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence wants Nicoc to have more powers, particularly around intelligence agencies that fail to comply with the legislative mandate.
That was being addressed, said Msimanga, adding that some of the challenges Nicoc faced was that sometimes SSA was not giving them information.
It depended who was the director-general of SSA, he said.
He said when he came to Parliament, members of the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence were aware of the challenges faced by Nicoc.
It was important that there was stability of Nicoc.
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