Intelligence chief Imtiaz Fazel’s sudden suspension — between the brown stuff and the fan

Inspector General of Intelligence Imtiaz Fazel – suddenly suspended last week by President Cyril Ramaphosa – joins Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu on the sidelines of Parliament's police ad-hoc committee probe into SAPS graft.

While some have read the icing of both Fazel and Mchunu as an admission of wrongdoing, the move points more to a quarantining of the two men.

Both are being investigated and are, at present, in suspended animation, unable to perform their duties. 

City Press has since discovered that Fazel’s security clearance had been revoked by the State Security Agency (SSA) three weeks before he was placed on fully-paid garden leave. He is accused of leaking a “bombshell” investigation to the committee and the media. 

This removes him from overseeing the intelligence cluster. The Office of the Inspector General for Intelligence (OIGI) is funded by the SSA although “managed” by the Inspector General. It will now, once again, like in the Zuma years, sit in darkness.

Mchunu admitted earlier to the committee that he had requested Fazel to investigate whistle-blower and former SAPS clerk Patricia Mashale, who deployed social media to make claims of corruption against the SAPS.

Now only the Investigating Directorate Against Corruption remains standing as the last Praetorian guard capable of moving through the quagmire of police criminality and corruption and taking action.

Slush fund properties

Previously, the ad hoc committee heard that Fazel had recommended the disciplining and criminal charging of National Commissioner Fannie Masemola and Crime Intelligence head, Lieutenant General Dumisani Khumalo, over the use of R120-million from the Crime Intelligence slush fund to buy property.

Khumalo testified earlier at the Madlanga Commission before taking ill.

Read more: Madlanga Commission | Khumalo alleges ‘special relationship’ between Matlala and top cop colleague

In the meantime, it has come to light that the current police minister, Firoz Cachalia, had shared Fazel’s classified report with the committee shortly before his suspension.

It contained “serious findings and recommendations against senior managers in the SAPS”, according to Cachalia’s spokesperson, Kamogelo Mogotsi.

Revelations last week prompted the committee to draw up a list of potential witnesses during a marathon session, which at present includes former presidents Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, former police minister Fikile Mbalula, National Director of Public Prosecutions Shamila Batohi, DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard as well as advocates Glynnis Breytenbach and Vusi Pikoli.

On Wednesday, Kohler Barnard noted with regard to the suspension of the Inspector General of Intelligence, that “when those who are meant to root out corruption become the targets of complaints and suspensions, it is clear there is far more to this situation than meets the eye”.

Among the civilian witnesses to be called will be activist and violence monitor Mary de Haas.

Patricia Mashale

The ad hoc police committee heard from Mchunu that he had indeed requested Fazel, a veteran intelligence official, to investigate whistle-blower Mashale.

Mashale, a former senior administrative clerk for the SAPS in the Free State, has used social media as a platform for dumping leaked crime intelligence documents. Some of these have been in the public realm for some time but others appear to be emanating from her current Crime Intelligence sources.

Mashale took up a position at the SAPS in 2007 and was dismissed in February 2022 after she highlighted alleged corruption by senior police officials, particularly in the Free State.

After she left the service Mashale began shifting her focus beyond the Free State to national. 

In February 2021, the South African Human Rights Commission found that Mashale’s disclosures were protected under the whistle-blower’s new armour, the Protected Disclosures Act. 

However Mashale’s deluge has also caused and added to the muddying of the lake.

In August, suspended deputy national commissioner of crime detection, Lieutenant General Shadrack Sibiya, who faced hours of grilling before Mchunu took over the hot seat, launched a civil matter against Mashale for publishing defamatory statements about him on Facebook.

Read  more: Court affirms whistleblower’s right to expose corruption amid SAPS controversy

In that instance, while Mashale claimed to have won the case, in his ruling Judge Johannes Daffue noted that the disclosures did not qualify as “protected” as defined in the Act.

Mashale had only made the matters public after she had left the SAPS, he noted. He said that he was in agreement with the findings of Manuel v Economic Freedom Fighters and Others where the high court considered the defence of “reasonable publication” by a whistle-blower, but rejected this in the defamation context in express terms. 

“Whistle-blowers should not be allowed to publish their unsubstantiated defamatory disclosures worldwide,” he said.

Mashale will also give evidence to the ad hoc committee.

OIGI the hottest seat

Fazel was part of setting up the Office of the Inspector General for Intelligence and was one of its first employees. He has consistently pointed out that the office needs more independence to use its considerable legal teeth.

Its budget is overseen by the office which reports to Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni.

From 1997 to 2002 Fazel worked as an intelligence ministerial adviser before moving to the OIGI, where he was chief operating officer from 2004 to 2012.

In 2013 he worked in the Office of the Director-General for the SSA under Dennis Dlomo and later Sonto Kudjoe. In 2014 he was sent “on secondment” from SSA as Deputy Director-General of the Department of Public Works. 

He was appointed to the OIGI, a crucial oversight body, in 2022 in a unanimous vote of 334 for and no abstentions.

Read more:  New intelligence oversight inspector under pressure to probe Ramaphosa Phala Phala saga

Fazel, in other words, has been down the rabbit hole of the country’s intelligence structures and perhaps has deep institutional memory. 

Throughout his tenure this has been his only real known output – rot deeper than deep in the SAPS and the Crime Intelligence division. DM