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The Right2Know Campaign condemns in the strongest possible terms the xenophobic attacks in the past week, triggered by an alleged shooting of a youth by a Somali shop owner. R2K is particularly disappointed by the response of the government in denying that the attacks on foreign nationals constitute xenophobia, when it is as clear as day that they do.

R2K calls for the government to state whether the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee (Nicoc) has developed a national intelligence estimate in relation to the threat of xenophobia in the country. If it hasn’t, then government needs to account to those living in South Africa for why it hasn’t done so, as this will amount to gross dereliction of duty.

R2K believes that these attacks points to a systemic and sustained failure of South Africa’s intelligence service, the State Security Agency (SSA), and its previous incarnation, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) over a long period now. These attacks have been plaguing South Africa since 2008, with signs of xenophobia emerging even before that. Yet the government continues to claim to be caught unawares by these attacks.

Furthermore, R2K calls on cabinet, as the seat of government, to release its annual National Intelligence Priorities, based on Nicoc’s estimates. The country’s priorities should be debated in public, as they allow the country to assess what government considers threats to national security, and whether these are, in fact, actually-existing threats.

Why there must be transparency in the state security structures
South African intelligence work is far too secretive, and many have meekly accepted that this is simply the way that things ought to be. But excessive secrecy about policy and strategic issues can lead to the intelligence community becoming its own echo chamber, leading to warped intelligence priorities, as its assessments are never subjected to public debate. Far from strengthening intelligence work, such secrecy can, in fact, cripple it.

R2K accepts that there is a need for keeping operational secrets secret, unless there is an overriding public interest in them being released, but the government has taken secrecy on intelligence matters to ridiculous and entirely unjustifiable extremes.

The latest xenophobic attacks are only the most recent example of serious intelligence failures. Patterns of political assassinations and killings of whistleblowers in various parts of the country, notably in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, point to an intelligence failure of massive proportions.

The damage such secrecy does is clear: the failure to anticipate and thus possibly prevent these xenophobic attacks carry the highest possible cost, especially for the most vulnerable. Cabinet and South Africa’s intelligence structures must release this information now.

Issued by the Right2Know Campaign