Crime Time : National security at heart of SSA trial

So what are the first major issues? We call it the farm.

It's outside Irene.

It's the head office of our national intelligence, which is now known as the SSA office.

was the theft of tens of millions of rands in forex.

So there was forex that was stored at the farm, and that money was used, obviously, for foreign operations.

And I think this is something the public needs to understand, is we don't have... two separate agencies for foreign and domestic like we used to.

We used to have domestic, which was the National Intelligence Agency.

We used to have foreign, which was the South African Secret Service.

And then they consolidated the two into one super intelligence agency with a super DG, and that became known as the State Security Agency.

And now, of course, after this high-level panel review happened, we're going to once again see the restructuring of the SSA and there's going to be two separate independent foreign and domestic intelligence agents.

So we're going to go back to

what was.

We're going to

go back to what they're going to call it.

I don't know whether it's going to revert back to NIA and SASS.

We don't know.

But it's going to go back to two separate agencies, much the same as we see in America.

In America, internally, from a county intelligence perspective, the FBI plays a very important role.

Externally, the CIA plays an important role.

And then they've got other agencies such as the NSA and others.

In South Africa, the SSA has overall control of domestic intelligence and foreign intelligence.

And of course, there's a massive difference in the two.

In the UK, you've got MI5, you've got MI6.

Again, one is domestic, one is foreign.

And it just makes sense from a South African perspective that these agencies once again be split rather than this super agency with all the power that it's had.