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Republican Intelligence (RI) is a defunct South African intelligence organisation that was established in the early 1960s after South Africa became a republic, albeit, outside the Commonwealth of Nations (from 1961 to 1994) and ties with British intelligence had become weaker due to the system of Apartheid. Republican Intelligence was later replaced by the South African Bureau for State Security (BOSS) in 1969.
Prior to South Africa's departure from the Commonwealth and the creation of the Republic of South Africa on 31 May 1961, there was no effective intelligence service in the country. [1] : Chp1 Prior to 1961, intelligence, if and when required, had been provided by British intelligence, after 1961 any remaining links between them ended. [1] : Chp2
The British authorities squashed any chance of an early national intelligence service, based on MI5, being created in 1938 as they feared that it would be infiltrated by nationalist Afrikaners, the Ossewabrandwag and Nazi sympathisers. [1] : Chp2 Colonel Pierre de Villiers, Chief of South African Police and the countries liaison with MI5, approached MI5 in 1938 in an attempt to set up a security organisation based on the latter. [2] : 218 They refused believing they were solely responsible for monitoring security in the Union and when intelligence gathering was reorganised in 1940, with internal security remaining the prerogative of the SAP now under Colonel Baston and not military intelligence, MI5 input with the SAP declined regarding the SAP as being corrupt and inefficient and some in elements, anti-British. [2] : 218–9 Basic intelligence was provided by the Detective Branch of police and a fledgling intelligence unit in the Union Defence Force (UDF). [1] : Chp2
During the Second World War, the UDF formed the Department of Military Intelligence whose focus was on the white nationalists and Nazi sympathizers while an Intelligence Records Bureau was formed to collect, record and disseminate information fed to it by South African government organisations and British and colonial intelligence services. [1] : Chp2 In September 1940, the Defence Advisory Committee, under the chairmanship of Denys Reitz, reported their concerns about the confusion, overlapping of information and delays when it came to the collection and distribution of intelligence. [2] : 215 He suggested the creation of an organisation to centralise the collection, analysis and distribution of intelligence. [2] : 215 Headed by Colonel Lenton weekly meeting were held and attended by representatives for censorship, intelligence, SAP, railway police, treasury, immigration and customs. [2] : 215
By 1948, the National Party of nationalist Afrikaners had won the election and by the early 1950s, the first apartheid laws were introduced in South Africa. [1] : Chp2 MI5, seeing the new governments anti-communist credentials, initially thought of establishing a new intelligence service in South Africa styled on its own structure as it had done with ASIO in Australia, but had second thoughts fearing it would be used to suppress and oppress opposition in the country. [1] : Chp2
What was recommended instead was the formation of a Special Branch within the South African Police later to be called the Security Branch. This branch would be responsible for internal security and the gathering of intelligence freed from criminal investigation. [1] : Chp2
The beginning of the sixties in South Africa was a turbulent time beginning with the Sharpeville Massacre which led to the anti-apartheid organisations of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) being banned and with that their departure from passive resistance and declaring the beginnings of the 'armed struggle'. A year later in 1961, the ANC formed their armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), and begun their sabotage campaign in December the same year while left-wing white radicals such as the African Resistance Movement begun bombing. [1] : Chp1 These events saw the need for a more effective intelligence service than could be provided by the Security Branch of the South African Police. [1] : Chp1
In 1960, Hendrik van den Bergh was appointed as the Head of the Security Branch. [1] : Chp1 By 1963, he would form the Republican Intelligence a secretive offshoot of the Security Branch. [1] : Chp2 It would become bogged down in internal security matters and could not become an effective external intelligence gathering and analysis organisation. [1] : Chp2 RI was initially based in Johannesburg before eventually moving to the Wachthuis, police headquarters in Pretoria. [3] : 42 Reporting to Van den Bergh, overall command of RI lay with Brigadier P.J "Tiny" Venter while the day-to-day running of RI was conducted by Mike Geldenhuys. [3] : 68–9 Most recruits for the new organisation had their origins in South African Police's Security Branch, with the recruits resigning from their previous positions and re-employed in front-organsisations in the main South African cities. [3] : 27 Apart from offices based in South Africa, RI had stations based in overseas South African embassies such as Washington, London, Paris and Vienna. [3] : 42
During the middle of 1968, the South African cabinet approved the implementation of a centralised security service and on 28 August of the same year, General Hendrik van den Bergh was instructed to start planning the new organisation. [1] : Chp2 It aimed at gathering intelligence on internal and external threats and provide national security intelligence. [1] : Chp2 On the 1 October 1968, Lieutenant-General Hendrik van den Bergh, Deputy Police Commissioner and Head of the Security Branch, was promoted to General and then appointed as Security Advisor to Prime Minister John Vorster. [4] : 436 Attached to the Prime Minister office, he would be in command all security and intelligence chiefs in the country including the military, and reported only to Vorster. [4] : 436 He would set about forming the Bureau for State Security and merging some of RI's personnel into the new organisation drawing others from military intelligence and the security branch of the police.
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and intelligence in British, Commonwealth, Irish, and other police forces. A Special Branch unit acquires and develops intelligence, usually of a political or sensitive nature, and conducts investigations to protect the State from perceived threats of subversion, particularly terrorism and other extremist political activity.
The National Party, also known as the Nationalist Party, was a political party in South Africa from 1914 to 1997, which was responsible for the implementation of apartheid rule. The party was an Afrikaner ethnic nationalist party, which initially promoted the interests of Afrikaners but later became a stalwart promoter and enactor of white supremacy, for which it is best known. It first became the governing party of the country in 1924. It merged with its rival, the SAP, during the Great Depression, and a splinter faction became the official opposition during World War II and returned to power. With the National Party governing South Africa from 4 June 1948 until 9 May 1994, the country for the bulk of this time was only a de jure or partial democracy, as from 1958 onwards non-white people were barred from voting. In 1990, it began to style itself as simply a South African civic nationalist party, and after the fall of apartheid in 1994, attempted to become a moderate conservative one. The party's reputation was damaged irreparably by perpetrating apartheid, and it rebranded itself as the New National Party in 1997 before eventually dissolving in 2005.
Balthazar Johannes "B. J." Vorster was a South African apartheid politician who served as the prime minister of South Africa from 1966 to 1978 and the fourth state president of South Africa from 1978 to 1979. Known as B. J. Vorster during much of his career, he came to prefer the anglicized name John in the 1970s.
The Afrikaner Broederbond (AB) or simply the Broederbond was an exclusively Afrikaner Calvinist and male secret society in South Africa dedicated to the advancement of the Afrikaner people. It was founded by H. J. Klopper, H. W. van der Merwe, D. H. C. du Plessis and the Rev. Jozua Naudé in 1918 as Jong Zuid Afrika until 1920, when it was renamed the Broederbond. Its influence within South African political and social life came to a climax with the 1948-1994 rule of the white supremacist National Party and its policy of apartheid, which was largely developed and implemented by Broederbond members. Between 1948 and 1994, many prominent figures of Afrikaner political, cultural, and religious life, including every leader of the South African government, were members of the Afrikaner Broederbond.
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The State Security Council (SSC) was formed in South Africa in 1972 to advise the government on the country's national policy and strategy concerning security, its implementation and determining security priorities. Its role changed through the prime ministerships of John Vorster and PW Botha, being little used during the former's and during the latter's, controlling all aspects of South African public's lives by becoming the Cabinet. During those years he would implement a Total National Strategy, Total Counter-revolutionary Strategy and finally in the mid-eighties, established the National Security Management System (NSMS). After FW de Klerk's rise to the role of State President, the Cabinet would eventually regain control of the management of the country. After the 1994 elections a committee called National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee was formed to advise the South African president on security and intelligence as well as its implementation.
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General Hendrik Johan van den Bergh, SSA was a South African police official most famous for founding the Bureau of State Security (B.O.S.S.), an intelligence agency created on 16 May 1969 to coordinate military and domestic intelligence for the government as well as to suppress political dissidents. He was known as "Tall Hendrik" on account of his height.
Foreign relations of South Africa during apartheid refers to the foreign relations of South Africa between 1948 and the early 1990s. South Africa introduced apartheid in 1948, as a systematic extension of pre-existing racial discrimination laws. Initially the regime implemented an offensive foreign policy trying to consolidate South African hegemony over Southern Africa. These attempts had clearly failed by the late 1970s. As a result of its racism, occupation of Namibia and foreign interventionism in Angola, the country became increasingly isolated internationally.
The State Security Agency (SSA) is the department of the South African government with overall responsibility for civilian intelligence operations. It was created in October 2009 to incorporate the formerly separate National Intelligence Agency, South African Secret Service, South African National Academy of Intelligence, National Communications Centre, and COMSEC.
The Government of the United Kingdom maintains several intelligence agencies that deal with secret intelligence. These agencies are responsible for collecting, analysing and exploiting foreign and domestic intelligence, providing military intelligence, and performing espionage and counter-espionage. Their intelligence assessments contribute to the conduct of the foreign relations of the United Kingdom, maintaining the national security of the United Kingdom, military planning, public safety, and law enforcement in the United Kingdom. The four main agencies are the Secret Intelligence Service, the Security Service (MI5), the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and Defence Intelligence (DI). The agencies are organised under three government departments, the Foreign Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence.
Department of National Intelligence and Security (NAT) is a defunct security service of the African National Congress (ANC) in exile. At the ANC's Morogoro Conference in Tanzania during 1969, in one of the many decisions made to the organisations structure, it was decided to form a department that would protect the organisations human and material resources. This department was then formed in April 1969.
Pieter van der Westhuizen, was a South African Army officer who served as the Chief of Staff Intelligence from 1978–1985 and later Secretary of the State Security Council.
The Security Branch of the South African Police, established in 1947 as the Special Branch, was the security police apparatus of the apartheid state in South Africa. From the 1960s to the 1980s, it was one of the three main state entities responsible for intelligence gathering, the others being the Bureau for State Security and the Military Intelligence division of the South African Defence Force. In 1987, at its peak, the Security Branch accounted for only thirteen percent of police personnel, but it wielded great influence as the "elite" service of the police.
Operation Vula was a secret domestic programme of the African National Congress (ANC) during the final years of apartheid in South Africa. Initiated in 1986 at the ANC headquarters in Lusaka and launched in South Africa in 1988, its operatives infiltrated weapons and banned ANC leaders into the country, in order to establish an underground network linking domestic activist structures with the ANC in exile. It was responsible for facilitating the only direct line of communication between ANC headquarters and Nelson Mandela, who at the time was imprisoned and was discussing a negotiated settlement with the government on the ANC's behalf. The operation was disbanded in 1990, after its existence had been publicly revealed and eight of its leaders charged under the Internal Security Act with terrorism and plotting an armed insurrection.
RI.
