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The DA notes with concern media reports that newly appointed Minister of State Security, Bongani Bongo, is being investigated by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) for his alleged involvement in fraud and corruption while he served as the head of legal services in the Department of Human Settlements of Mpumalanga in 2012.

We will be submitting parliamentary questions to ascertain if Bongo was properly vetted by the State Security Agency (SSA) prior to being appointed, and how the SSA failed to detect (or ignored) this active investigation.

Bongo’s meteoric rise from ANC backbencher to State Security minister in President Jacob Zuma’s latest cabinet reshuffle on 17 October set off alarm bells. The DA is now even more concerned knowing that our intelligence service is now headed by someone under active investigation by the Hawks.

Jacob Zuma has a history of appointing dubious characters to head the intelligence services, none more so than Bongo’s predecessor, David Mahlobo, and SSA Director-General, Arthur Fraser. The former was exposed as associating with self-confessed criminal and rhino horn smuggler, Guan Jiang Guang, by the Al Jazeera news channel in November 2016. The latter was re-appointed as spy boss despite his involvement in the ‘Principal Agent Network’, a covert project run by the NIA between 2007 and 2010 which was tainted by allegations of misspending and prompted investigations into fraud and corruption by the SSA, the then-Inspector General of Intelligence and others.

If Minister Bongo has indeed obtained this clearance despite the ongoing investigation, it would mean President Zuma has sanctioned an unlawful breach of State Security procedure for the sake of appointing his Minister.

Alternatively, if Minister Bongo has not yet obtained the requisite security clearance for his new position, it must be determined whether he has been given access to classified state information since his appointment in contravention of intelligence laws.

We can no longer allow our intelligence services to be mired in endless controversy.

Issued by DA