South African minister for intelligence Ronnie Kasrils visits Ireland

Daily Ireland, October 25, 2005

‘Policing has to be right’

Jarlath Kearney interviews South African minister for intelligence Ronnie Kasrils
during his visit to Ireland

“One’s got to create here a new state apparatus… I would say, once you can achieve that dispensation, then republicans need to go into this — eyes wide open — with courage, determination and professional ethic.” South African minister for intelligence Ronnie Kasrils on policing

The British government risks creating an Israeli-Palestinian policing scenario in the North if future control over intelligence functions is retained by Westminster, South Africa’s minister for intelligence Ronnie Kasrils declared last night.

During an in-depth interview with Daily Ireland, Mr Kasrils also said that – if political negotiations succeeded in creating an “even playing field” on policing – then republicans should enter all the institutions of the state with “courage, determination and a professional ethic”.

Mr Kasrils confirmed that he would carefully consider any evidentiary material relating to British intelligence’s importation of South African weaponary for unionist paramilitaries in the mid-1980s. However, he also cautioned that the widespread destruction of intelligence files was systematically organised by the apartheid regime in the months prior to democracy during 1994.

Mr Kasrils is currently in Ireland on a three-day visit at the invitation of Sinn Féin to celebrate the party’s Cead Bliain 100th anniversary. While he is officially representing the African National Congress (ANC), Mr Kasrils has also been the intelligence minister in the South African government since April 2004.

A former Director of Intelligence in the ANC military wing Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), Mr Kasrils was a member of the people’s army since its inception in 1961. He is a veteran member of the South African Communist Party.

Mr Kasrils proudly described how his wife of 41 years, Eleanor, has been an activist for both MK and the ANC. In 1963, Mrs Kasrils managed to escape the clutches of the security police after being arrested in Durban. According to her husband, Mrs Kasrils masterminded the “liberation” of one ton of commercial explosives from a road building company on behalf of MK in the early 1960s. Mrs Kasrils also spent a period of time on hunger-strike. “She was the brains. I was the brawn. She saved my life on more than one occasion,” Mr Kasrils remarked.

“I found it interesting that amongst Irish republicans, some of the great minds there became very involved with the Communist Party of South Africa in the 1920s and one can’t underestimate the impact of that on the African National Congress.

“The effects of class struggle, of white workers’ struggle, and communist influence in South Africa radicalised the ANC. We also went through a period of peaceful, non-violent struggle, but by 1960 and the Sharpeville massacre we went full cycle and the realisation that we couldn’t do it by peaceful means or class struggle alone,” Mr Kasrils said.

At that stage MK – instigated by the ANC – established training and educational structures throughout Africa, the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Algeria and elsewhere.

“We began to imbibe revolutionary theory and literature and we would study and workshop and debate, and the Irish experience was one very strong strand for us, along with Cuba, along with China, along with the Russian revolution, along with Malaya, and of course the struggles against British rule in Africa, such as Kenya, and so on,” Mr Kasrils said.

“We felt a strong affinity with the struggle of Irish republicans, not least because the culture of the republican movement is so powerful and so beautiful in terms of the poerty, the music and the song. This was something that really deeply affected us,” Mr Kasrils commented.

Describing himself as “very humbled and deeply privileged” to be representing the ANC in Ireland at this time, Mr Kasrils said that the Irish peace process can learn lessons from the South African experience.

“As someone who, in the late 1980s, was the chief of military intelligence for our armed wing, I must really admit that I was one of those deeply suspicious of the beginnings of negotiation.

“But of course I was wrong and I soon realised this. I suppose lower down at the level of the footsoldier, there was even greater suspicion. But we argued this through and very quickly came to realise that... the regime was actually being forced to see the writing on the wall, and of course Nelson Mandela had played a key role from his prison cell.

“We see, in Sinn Féin and the IRA’s initiatives, a most profound step foward, and Nelson Mandela, President Mbeki, the whole of South Africa, has applauded their courage,” Mr Kasrils said.

Prior to his current position as minister for intelligence, Mr Kasrils was first appointed as deputy minister for defence in 1994.

During this tenure he discovered that a vast extent of intelligence files and documents had been systematically destroyed by the old apartheid regime. “As a vice-minister of defence, the first thing I did was march into military intelligence who would have been involved in the activities here (in Ireland), and they were virtually the most aggressive arm of the securocrats in apartheid South Africa.

“I sat down at the computer banks and Joe Slovo’s was the name I first put in. It spewed out 800 pages of his speeches, but nothing else, nothing operational whatsoever, because the old security order had assidiuously spent months just incinerating documentation and wiping computers, hard drive, the lot,” Mr Kasrils explained.

In that context, Mr Kasrils cautioned that intelligence material could have been destroyed which related to British intelligence’s importation of South African weaponry for unionist paramilitaries in the North during the mid-1980s. However, he also confirmed that in the event of “any factual leads, we would be very interested in pursuing them”.

Mr Kasrils also expressed deep interest in recent revelations that former senior members of the RUC and PSNI have been removing police confidential files to prevent the Police Ombudsman accessing them.

Nevertheless, Mr Kasrils argued that – on the basis of political negotiations producing an “even playing field” in relation to policing – republicans should be confident about such developments.

“It obviously has to come about through the negotiation and the new dispensation, and its got to be an even playing field. It can’t be a domination of one over the other,” Mr Kasrils said.

“One’s got to create here a new state apparatus which, as I say, the emphasis should then be on the professionalism, and therefore the objectivity and non-partisanship. I would say, once you can achieve that dispensation, then republicans need to go into this – eyes wide open – with courage, determination and professional ethic.”

Mr Kasrils also singled out the transfer of accountability and control over intelligence functions to a local assembly as an important element of any new beginning to policing. Drawing parallels with the Middle East, Mr Kasrils said: “Otherwise you’re in a situation of the Israeli ‘Goliath’ dealing with a Palestinian ‘David’, where the control of security, of borders and of intelligence is in the hands of the ruling power, and where the status of the other party is diminished and under control.

“Now how can you develop confidence, trust in a process, unless Britain is prepared to hand over that responsibility and authority?

“Given the history of the conflict here, there must be a move in the direction of ensuring the control under the parliament of Northern Ireland. If you don’t have that control and accountability to this assembly then you have a perverted situation,” Mr Kasrils added.

The leading South African minister also criticised any policing process which restricts former combatants to “tame or sanitised directorates such as human resources and administration”.

In terms of policing, Mr Kasrils stressed that former combatants should be “involved at all levels – operational, surveillance, collecting information, analysis and so on”.

“This is something that we insist on – defence, military, policing, intelligence services – one has to, in the transformation of the state, ensure professionalism.

“Professionalism, standards, efficiency, non-partisanship, the objectivity aspect, these must be developed and insisted upon. It doesn’t come overnight but one has to have a total strategy and education policy to create a new ethos which fits the character of the new dispensation.”