On South Africa's Secret Service - An Undercover Agent's Story
Riaan Labuschagne
Publisher: Galago Books (SA) 2002
Hardback: 304 pages; colour & b/w pics
Our Price: £19.95 + p&p ( £3.99 first class)
This is the story of the ruthless intelligence war conducted by South Africa’s National Intelligence Service during the 1980s and 1990s. The author, Riaan Labuschagne, was a senior intelligence officer who
operated widely as an undercover field officer. He tells a story of lies and half truths, secrecy and stealth,evasion and denials, deceits and manipulations.
In 1981, while still a university student, he was persuaded to take diving parties to the Seychelles during vacations to collect ‘‘routine low grade intelligence on the islands to build up the Service’s information bank’’. He wasn’t told that the intelligence was required in connection with a pending coup attempt by mercenaries that NIS was supporting. While he was there the coup attempt exploded into action and he was fortunate to escape.
After the co He explains how in the early 1990s, in the guise of an Afrikaner liberal, he infiltrated the top structures of the ANC in Durban and made friendships with men who later became cabinet ministers. The ANC’s offices were not safe either, and his NIS teams equipped with portable copiers covertly broke into them almost weekly and duplicated every document they could lay their hands on.
He reveals, also for the first time, the existence of the sinister and deep cover Directorate K (for covert), formed by the NIS in much the same way as the SADF formed the notorious CCB. While the NIS did not possess ‘executive powers’ (a euphemism for a license to kill) Directorate K probably did.
He tells how Directorate K, acting as an agent provocateur, supplied explosives to AZAPO’s military wing, AZANLA, to blow up civilian targets in Port Elizabeth. The reason was to arouse the ire of white Afrikaner right wingers to provoke them into attacking black civilians. It would have provided an excuse to crush them and prevent a much feared attempt by the Afrikaner right wing to seize control of South Africa to stop a ANC takeover in the April 1994 elections.
