Bungling spies alerted Zille to phone tap
2011-03-09 22:34
Johannesburg - Western Cape Premier Helen Zille insisted on Wednesday that her telephone calls were once being monitored by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).
Zille said that she and her husband had spoken to then intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils about the bugging of her phones at a meeting on 14 February 14 2008.
"On January 8 2008 at 06:20, my husband Johann answered the phone on the desk in my study," Zille said in a statement.
"He heard the sound of tapes re-winding and clicking. He then heard a tape recording of conversations that I had had in the room. He made notes of the conversation that was played back on this recording.
"My husband and I made an appointment to see the then minister of national intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils on February 14 2008."
Rogue elements
Zille said Kasrils undertook to establish whether there had been any official directive to intercept her telephone conversations.
"He reverted to us. He said there had been no official directive but he 'could not guarantee' that 'rogue elements' had not done so unilaterally and this would be almost impossible to establish."
Zille said at roughly the same time, news had emerged and was emerging about the abuse of state institutions in the political battle between former president Thabo Mbeki and his political rival, Jacob Zuma.
"Then Premier (Ebrahim) Rasool established a commission of inquiry to investigate certain alleged unlawful activities in the City of Cape Town.
"These allegations were primarily directed towards discrediting me and the Democratic Alliance," Zille said.
Unlawful
"During the course of this investigation, it emerged that the police had obtained a full record of every phone call I had made or received during the preceding months.
"I contacted my service provider and asked how it was possible that the police had this information. My service provider informed me that they had received an 'order' to release the information.
"I could not establish whether that order had emanated from the commission of inquiry, or from a judge, but I made it absolutely clear to my service provider that they had acted unconstitutionally.
The commission of inquiry was declared 'unlawful' by the High Court as it was "politically motivated".
"I believed that the monitoring of my calls, both on cell and landline, was part of a politically motivated strategy against me," Zille said.
Nothing on paper
Zille said her cabinet had a meeting with representatives of the State Security Agency in the Western Cape after she became premier in 2009.
"I asked the State Security Agency representatives for an assurance that neither myself nor other members of the cabinet 'were or are' under any form of surveillance."
The director general of the province then wrote a letter to the director general of the national State Security Agency, asking whether any person in the "Western Cape Provincial Cabinet is under surveillance" by the NIA.
The DG, said Zille, received no reply to this letter.
"I have on several occasions followed up with the Western Cape representatives of the SSA. They have verbally assured me that they have not issued instructions for any such surveillance but they have declined to give us this assurance in writing. "
Saddened
Earlier on Wednesday the NIA denied that it was monitoring Zille's telephone calls.
"Western Cape Premier Helen Zille's claims that the NIA was monitoring her calls are not true," state security ministry spokesperson Brian Dube said in a statement.
"We are very saddened by such claims coming from her given that our Western Cape office works very closely with her office, providing intelligence products to support the work of government," Dube said.
Zille first made the claim during a debate in the provincial legislature on Tuesday.
- SAPA