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ABSTRACT
This article traces the policy evolution of the South African state's civilian intelligence services from 1994 to 2009, and some of the influences the evolution has had in the post-2009 era. Three significant policy waves, coinciding with major measures to restructure the services, are identified and assessed. Each period has seen the widened definition of security, popular after the end of the Cold War, being used as the basis for policies adopted and implemented. The analysis demonstrates that there has been ostensible policy continuity from one phase to the next. However, political and security realities have given each phase its particular character. Moreover, inadequate regulation of critical policy dimensions and a failure to subject intelligence policy to ongoing review have resulted in tensions over the scope of the intelligence services' powers and the role they should play in a democratic South Africa.
1. INTRODUCTION
In 2009, following the country's fourth national general elections, the South African government embarked on a further restructuring of the civilian intelligence agencies. The creation of the State Security Agency (SSA) in 2009 represented the third major wave of restructuring since 1994. The first wave, one of the earliest outcomes of the political transition in the 1990s, came about in 1995, following the adoption of new legislation in 1994. The legislation paved the way for the creation of the post-apartheid civilian intelligence agencies, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), responsible for domestic intelligence collection and the South African Secret Service (SASS) responsible for foreign intelligence gathering, through an amalgamation of six former statutory and non-statutory intelligence structures.1) A further significant development was the creation of a multi-party parliamentary oversight committee, the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence (JSCI), and provision in law for an Inspector-General for Intelligence.2)
The second wave of restructuring, which took place around 2002, followed an assessment that the intelligence challenges at the time had increased in variety and complexity. This restructuring initiative saw the creation of the South African National Academy of Intelligence (SANAI), an Intelligence Services Council on Conditions of Service (ISC), the Communications Security (Pty) Ltd (COMSEC) and an Office for Interception Centres (OIC).3) At the time, the minister responsible for the intelligence services argued that these developments would allow for a greater degree of...