Swift State Security intelligence intervention spared the Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces from further destruction of businesses and public infrastructure.
This was on Tuesday revealed by State Security Minister Ayanda Dlodlo during a briefing by the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security (JCPS) Cluster amid violent flare ups in the two provinces.
She said even before the violence flared up, information was shared between the State Security Agency (SSA) and the South African Police Service (SAPS).
“We do this all the time, not only in this period that we are facing. From day one, when everything started, we did share information with the police,” she said.
Dlodlo said South Africans needed to understand that “only so much” can be done with the information that is at hand.
“Some of the information tends to be false, some of the information is accurate and true. We use various sources of collecting information and we’ll also use our own systems for analysing the information to package it for our client, which in this regard would have been the police.”
The police, she said, would have done their best to follow up on the information given to them.
Police also have their own crime intelligence capability, all agencies work together under the auspices of the JCPS Counter Intelligence Coordinating Forum, including the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee.
The task of the latter was only to put a strategic product on the table, emanating from information that would have been collected from the intelligence services of the defence force crime intelligence and SSA.
“That information that we received, the information that we analysed and packaged was handed over to the police.”
However, the target was very fast moving, the Minister said.
“We tried our best wherever we could and we affected a lot more than what you see on national television,” she said.
Proactive stances taken by both intelligence services of the three ministries and the police averted greater crime. “We want South Africans to rest assured that we avert a lot. What you see is only a part of what could have happened.”
She reiterated that the SSA and the police were not missing in action in the violence.
“We tried our level best in a very difficult situation,” she said, commending staff from the departments for putting their shoulders to the wheel to ensure that information is available.