Frustrated spooks ombud wants same powers as public protector

The spooks watchdog needs the same powers of remedial action as those enjoyed by the public protector.

So says inspector-general of intelligence Dr Sethlomamaru Dintwe, whose five-year term of office ends next month.

Dintwe, one of 10 candidates interviewed by parliament's joint standing committee on intelligence for the soon-to-be-vacant position, complained about how often his office's recommendations were simply ignored.

“We need to maximise our impact; the impact of our recommendations,” he said. “It is an established fact that most of the institutions in this country, especially those that deal with accountability or enforcement of laws, have been pillaged and hollowed out over a particular period of time,” said Dintwe.

A number of candidates interviewed over the past two days have suggested the laws needed to be reviewed to give the office the same teeth as the public protector and, of late, the auditor-general.

Unlike the public protector, the IGI doesn't have powers of remedial action. It can only make recommendations. These are generally ignored, heard MPs.

IGI legal adviser Jayashree Govender hinted on Tuesday that the IGI's office was sometimes used as a shield to prevent matters from being investigated by the public protector.

“We can look at ways in which we can strengthen those investigations and the most effective way is that the IG has powers to disclose information subject to conditions in section 78 of the Intelligence Services Oversight Act.

“If those powers are able to be exercised proactively when it comes to the public protector's office, I think we can ensure that certain matters go there instead of being diverted to the IGI office for the reason that people know, we just have powers of recommendation,” said Govender.

Dintwe also spoke about his rocky first term and a series of attempts to remove and suspend him.

“I have examples of where I felt I was being bulldozed, almost being told not to do my work. It's unfortunate,” he said, responding to ANC MP Doris Dlakude, who asked how he was managing relationships after complaints from ministers who objected to how he does things.

“Our advice was [to] please try to build that relationship with the ministers, not necessarily that will prevent you from doing your job but to manage the relationship,” said Dlakude.

Dintwe said his office had offered itself continuously to ministers as a tool that could be used to help them in assisting the department.

“The relationship is not that really bad. It's incidents, it's episodes,” he said. “I will be honest with you, I cannot afford to be bullied. We can disagree, you can exercise your authority over me duly given to yourself, but I will not accept any person who tends to bully me.”

The office's financial independence on the intelligence services it oversees is another matter that bugs the IGI, alongside fightback and resistance from the agencies it oversees and difficulties to access information it needs to conduct investigations.

Dintwe said the problems of independence are occasioned if not worsened by the fact that the constitution and the law do not specifically provide for his office to be “a spending centre” of any of the agencies that it is overseeing.

The budget of the office of the IGI is appropriated through the vote of the civilian intelligence service.

It's the same model used for the office of the public protector, which gets its budget through the department of justice, the IEC from home affairs and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate through the police.

When the police budget vote is tabled in parliament, the Ipid budget is already determined but with the IGI, it has to wait for an amount to be appropriated to the SSA and then “we have to go there with a begging bowl” and the determinations are made at that point.

“We need to know the amount we are getting from the Treasury, even if it is not sufficient we need to know how much we are getting.

“When I say budget, I do not want a rand more, I am just saying return us to the original baseline at least and start adding increments to it,” he said.

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