President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed into law the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill which is the basis for significant reforms of South Africa’s intelligence services that will be accompanied by improved oversight and accountability.
The amendment Act amends the National Strategic Intelligence Act of 1994, the Intelligence Services Act of 2002, and the Intelligence Services Oversight Act of 1994.
Among other reforms, the amendment Act disestablishes the current State Security Agency as a national government department and replaces it with two separate departments.
The new departments are the Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS) which shall be responsible for foreign intelligence gathering so as to identify opportunities and threats to National Security, and the Domestic Intelligence Agency (DIA) which shall be responsible for counter-intelligence as well as the gathering of domestic intelligence in order to identify threats to National Security.
The amendment Act also re-establishes the South African National Academy of Intelligence (SANAI) and Intelligence Training Institute for both Domestic and Foreign Intelligence capacities.
The wide-ranging amendments constitute implementation of the recommendations of the 2018 Presidential High-Level Review Panel on the State Security Agency (SSA) and of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture, Corruption and Fraud in the Public Sector (the Zondo Commission).
The law also addresses concerns about bulk interception by intelligence services of internet traffic entering or leaving South Africa, by introducing new measures including authorisation within the intelligence services as well as court reviews of such interception.
The law provides for the administration, financial management and expenditure of the intelligence service entities to be within the ambit of the oversight of the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence – a multiparty committee of Parliament that processes public complaints about the intelligence services and monitors the finances and operations of these services.
The newly enacted amendments also provide for greater autonomy for the Inspector-General of Intelligence and the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee (NICOC) in making administrative and functional decisions.
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