Spy boss Fraser brings out his wrecking ball - As J Edgar Hoover did during his long tenure as FBI boss, South Africa’s former spy chief has seemingly amassed potentially damaging information on leading figures in the ANC
Fraser has struck again. This time, he does so from outside the state’s payroll, using his archive of murky intelligence cultivated over years at the head of the country’s secret agencies, the National Intelligence Agency, and as the head of prisons. I began my basic online research on Fraser with some trepidation.
To say that the ANC is divided is not an original claim. Perhaps Ramaphosa is politically the weakest party man to head the organisation in a long time. Its members are obsessed with the access to wealth that leadership and political patronage can buy them. They have hollowed out the party and it is now a rudderless husk, devoid of vision and decisive leadership.
When the ANC and his financial backers got him onto the ballot, we knew his role in Marikana. We consoled ourselves that a billionaire president would not need to rob the state coffers. The problem with billionaires is that they operate on their own plane, which is sometimes outside of the rules of the rest of us.
Although we should welcome Fraser’s revelations as promoting transparency, we all know that he only sings when his fortunes are threatened. He hoards secrets and uses them when they can cause most harm. For him, intelligence is a tool that is not for the prevention of misfortune but for its creation. He tosses it like a Molotov cocktail. Maybe he is driven by his Cape Flats student activist days of causing instability.
Political life in the United States was determined by the shadowy hand of J Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI. The wealth of intelligence that he amassed over a period of nearly four decades allowed him to intimidate several sitting presidents.
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