SA’s eplazini spies know too little about Mugabe

The article below was originally published in The Business Day dated 31 March 2011.
SHONA is one of the most difficult languages in southern Africa. It is also the lingua franca of the circles in which SA's principal adversaries reign: Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe's political elite. Yet Shona is one of the languages in which SA's foreign affairs establishment and intelligence agencies are least fluent in. We simply do not have the researchers, analysts and intelligence agents with the linguistic ability needed to help the government make sense of the constant political migraine that is Mugabe and his apparatchiks.
Forget all that nonsense about SA mollycoddling Mugabe and his comrades; ignore all that business about a shared struggle DNA between the African National Congress (ANC) and Zimbabwe's Zanu (PF). The truth is that Mugabe and Zimbabwe constitute SA's biggest international relations challenge. The government knows this. President Jacob Zuma (as did his predecessor Thabo Mbeki ) may act in public as if it's all hunky-dory between SA and Zimbabwe. Behind the scenes, however, it is a different matter.
The government considers Mugabe and Zimbabwe a serious problem but, with little or no insight into how Mugabe and his comrades operate, there is little it can do. SA does not particularly care for Mugabe but there is not much the country can do when it does not even have the basic communication skills needed to penetrate Mugabe's inner circle.
The South Africans simply do not know enough about the Zimbabwean elite to develop a coherent strategy for dealing with Zimbabwe. You would think it would help the South Africans that, in relative terms, Zimbabwe's political elite is small and therefore easy to identify. It has not helped any.
SA has tried all the usual tricks in the espionage manual, including buying off members of the Zimbabwean elite. These members of the elite have simply taken our money and split.
International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane was embarrassed in November by WikiLeaks with its exposure of her uncut comments about Mugabe ' she called him a "crazy old man". She was expressing both the government's uncensored view of Mugabe as well as general frustration with SA's inability to get the better of this crazy old man. They would not admit this in public but the truth is that there are many in the government and the ANC who would heave a huge sigh of relief if Mugabe's heart were suddenly to give in tomorrow. The man is a nightmare that SA, with all its money and might, cannot escape.
But we cannot escape the nightmare that is Mugabe and Zanu (PF) unless we know what it is exactly we are trying to run away from. We cannot develop a sound plan for dealing with Mugabe unless we know exactly what we are confronted with. And we cannot do that without the appropriate foreign affairs and intelligence skills. The problem is that our intelligence agencies are nothing more than political playgrounds and dumping sites for arrogant mediocrities who could not write decent intelligence reports even if their lives depended on them.
Intelligence might be overrated at the best of times but it needs people who can think on their feet. It needs people prepared to blend into the background, people who are always respectful of their adversaries.
What it does not need are people who can't walk into a party without letting it be known that they work for eplazini ' meaning the "plaas" that houses Musanda, the South African intelligence community's headquarters outside Pretoria.
Unfortunately, that is what passes for SA's intelligence community. None of this would matter but for the fact that SA spends a fortune every year on these clowns.
This leads me to the recent government announcement that Vusi Mavimbela, former head of the National Intelligence Agency, has been appointed SA's next High Commissioner to Zimbabwe. Mavimbela does not, as far as I know, speak Shona but he has a long history in ANC intelligence. It is possible, of course, that his appointment is yet another boeti-boeti story after he was dropped as Zuma's director-general. It is far more likely, however, that Mavimbela has been appointed to help plug the gaping intelligence hole in our knowledge of Mugabe and Zimbabwe.
High commissioners are expected to do no more than baby-sit visiting dignitaries, officiate at inane ceremonies and such like. But Mavimbela is unlikely to have that luxury. Zimbabwe is gearing up for its next general elections this year and Mugabe and company have already started a systematic campaign of terror against the Movement for Democratic Change and anyone considered a threat.
SA is aware of this and bothered by it. But the South Africans do not want to be embarrassed by their own ignorance. They are anxious to know as much as they can about what the crazy old man and his comrades are planning. Mavimbela, I suspect, has been appointed to help Pretoria know everything it needs to know.
Meanwhile, it would help if foreign affairs and the National Academy of Intelligence took seriously their job of finding and educating officials who take their job seriously enough to learn the languages of countries such as Zimbabwe. SA spends way too much money on these officials to continue putting up with their incompetence.
- Dlamini is a freelance writer