The State Security Council – A Foreign Affairs Perspective

P W Botha

By Eric Broekhuysen

When P W Botha came to power in 1978, he identified the need for a system to ensure that the resources of government were deployed in a co-ordinated fashion so as to maximise benefits on the ground.  The original intention was to ensure that government departments were drawn into a countrywide co-ordinated system of administration, which had not happened before.  As a result of this decision, a number of Joint Management Committees (JMCs) were set up nationwide.  In order to manage this system of JMCs, a special Cabinet Committee was established in which those Ministers responsible for the activities carried out by the JMCs were represented.

One of the JMCs in which the Department played a leading role was the Interdepartmental Psychological Action Committee, colloquially known as ISAK.  The purpose of this committee was to ensure that the country was properly informed about government actions countrywide so as to maximise the perceived benefit of government from these activities.  Since the Department of Information had been absorbed into the Department of Foreign Affairs as a result of the Information Scandal, we were the Chair of ISAK.

Since the security situation in the country was of paramount importance, many of these joint committees were tasked with counter-revolutionary activities in which the security forces played a major role and over time the nature of some of these committees changed from the original concept of socio-economic drivers to one of para-military preparedness.  Furthermore, JMCs established in areas adjacent to our neighbouring countries from which the terrorist threat was the greatest, such as Mocambique, Angola, Lesotho and Swaziland, became more and more important.  Since activities emanating from these particular JMCs could impact negatively on our diplomatic relations with these countries, the Department of Foreign Affairs was drawn increasingly into the discussions and strategic planning taking place within these committees.  Representatives of the Department played an important role in the activities of the Mocambique, Angola, Zimbabwe and BLS Joint Management Committees which later became known as Joint Management Centres.

As the security situation came to dominate discussions of the Cabinet Committee, it became known as the State Security Council, and a Secretariat was established to administer the system.  It consisted of three Branches initially, namely the Branch: Strategic Planning, the Branch: Strategic Communication and the Branch: Administration and was manned by officials seconded from numerous government departments.  Subsequently a fourth Branch: National Intelligence Interpretation was added in order to ensure that all intelligence reports read by Government had been vetted and approved by the four intelligence departments, namely National Intelligence, Military Intelligence, Security Police and Foreign Affairs.

The Branch: National Intelligence Interpretation consisted of a Chairman, a Vice-Chairman and two representatives from each of the four intelligence departments.  They would meet daily to table reports from their departments meant for government.  These reports were then referred to each of the departments whose representatives would confer with the relevant desks regarding the content of each document.  The committee would then meet to hammer out a consensus document for transmission to government.  Since the securocrats were in the ascendancy, it proved to be quite difficult to ensure that the viewpoint of the Department of Foreign Affairs was reflected and it required good negotiating skills, perseverance and naturally expert knowledge to ensure that one’s point of view was recorded in the final document.  Frequently there were deadlocks which had to be referred back to the departments for further discussion but it was a measure of the professionalism of each of the representatives that such discussions could be conducted in such a manner that a minimum of antipathy was experienced.

Another positive outcome of the Department’s involvement in the State Security Council system was that we adopted a system of daily morning meetings where all these aspects including feedback from the departmental representatives on the JMCs were discussed.  As a result, in spite of the often tedious nature of such meetings, there was a much greater appreciation of what was being done by all the sections of the Department and an increased co-ordination of departmental activities which countered to a great extent the increasing decentralisation of the Department into four or five different buildings across Pretoria as it increased in size and numbers.