Activist
David Webster stopped to chat while I was sitting on the pavement with a
journalist colleague Jo-anne Collinge. We had been hanging around after a tea
party arranged for families of detainees had been rudely interrupted in
Braamfontein. Armed security police, in heavy gear, had stormed the hall soon
after proceedings had begun. The low-key tea party had been declared an illegal
gathering under State of Emergency regulations. The hall was cleared out, rows
of teacups and saucers left untouched, neatly lined up on the table.
A
rookie reporter, this was the first time I had met Webster. He was annoyed,
agitated and showing strain. He complained about the irritation of yet another
heavy-handed disruption of a tea party that he had helped organise with the
Detainees’ Parents Support Committee. On a personal level, he was also fed up
with being harassed by security operatives who were monitoring his every move
(details which were later partially documented in the Hiemstra Commission that
investigated apartheid-era spy rings).
Now,
26 years on, I have been reminded of our conversation while reading the
activist handbook, Big Brother Exposed, by the Right2Know Campaign http://bigbrother.r2k.org.za/. Scandals
involving surveillance of high-ranking politicians and even some journalists
have been uncovered in recent years. But the handbook reveals anecdotal
evidence that, 21 years into the new SA, state security agents are increasingly
monitoring grassroots activists and organisations, including R2K, National
Union of Metalworkers of SA, United Front and Abahlali baseMjondolo. Suspicious
phone calls, attempts to recruit informers, phones being bugged and cars with
no number plates parked outside activists’ homes are recorded. In one case, a
State Security Agency (SSA) official tried to recruit a local government
employee to spy on United Front activist Brian Ashley who they said “wants
regime change”. Attempts were also made to recruit Bhayisa Miya, a leader of
the Thembelihle Crisis Committee, under the pretext of looking for criminals
and in the interests of “national security”. Miya was offered R40 000 for
information on community leaders “that are causing problems”.
R2K
also raises a red flag about Crime Intelligence’s increasing involvement in the
policing of protest actions in the form of information-gathering which have no
clear limits or guidelines. Extra funds have been spent on surveillance
equipment such as long-range “listening devices” without public debate or
buy-in.
Surveillance
is necessary for the genuine interests of national security – ie to fight
crime, clamp down on xenophobia and as pointed out by R2K, to tackle the
worrying trend of political assassinations. But when sinister
intelligence-gathering activities are used to serve an ulterior political
agenda, it is unconstitutional and a misallocation of much-needed
crime-fighting resources. It sows distrust and paranoia and impinges on the
freedom to campaign.
We
are a very long way off from the dirty tricks unleashed on activists by shady
security operatives who killed and maimed in the name apartheid. The SSA has
also been quick to respond to the R2K handbook by requesting complainants to
come forward so claims can be investigated.
But
the rise of the securocrats is cause for concern, brought into sharp focus with
the notorious “accidental” signal jamming incident at parliament in February.
So R2K should be commended for interrogating the intent and tactics employed to
monitor activists. The country is on a dangerous trajectory – with dire
consequences - if abuses and manipulation are overlooked and constitutional
rights trampled on.
I
never got the privilege of meeting Webster again after our first interaction.
Shortly afterwards, on Workers Day in May 1989, the 44-year old university
lecturer was gunned down outside his Troyeville home, a few hundred metres from
where I lived.David Webster remembered
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