DIS menace: why Minister Morwaeng is right

 In this post I use the following abbreviations:

ISS Act– Intelligence and Security Service Act.

DIS – Directorate of Intelligence and Security.

BDP – Botswana Democratic Party.

Whenever Minister in the State Presidency, Kabo Morwaeng is quizzed by the press concerning alleged cruelty and other transgressions of the DIS, a spy agency in his ministry, he always defends the spy agency by claiming that it (the DIS) always acts according to the law. I have not heard him say what law, let alone whether such law is permissible under a democratic dispensation such as ours. I therefore can only assume that the law he is referring to is the Intelligence and Security Service (ISS) Act, Chapter 23:02, which Act established the DIS together with all its associated committees, council, community etc. 

Given that Minister Morwaeng is a lawyer by training, I have had to look at the ISS Act to gauge the truth or otherwise of his claims. What I found is profoundly shocking. The minister is right! The DIS is effectively a political policing force in a supposedly democratic nation/country. Below, I quote extracts from PART II, Section 5, subsections (1) and (3) of the ISS Act to aid understanding of my analysis:

5. (1) Subject to subsection (3), the functions of the Directorate are to – 

(a) Investigate, gather, coordinate, evaluate, correlate, interpret, disseminate and store information, whether inside or outside Botswana, for the purposes of –

(i) ...

(ii) …

(iii) taking steps to protect the security interests of Botswana whether political [my emphasis], military or economic; 

Subsection (3) reads as follows:

(3) Subsection (1) shall not be construed as – 

(a) derogating from any power, duty or function conferred upon or entrusted to any person or authority other than the Directorate by or under any other written law.

(b) limiting the continuation, establishment or functions of an intelligence capability connected to any other Government ministry, department or agency in respect of any function relating to ministerial intelligence; or

(c) derogating from any duty or function of any body or committee instituted by the President. 

[End quotation of ISS Act.]

As you may have guessed from my bold font emphasis in the quotation above, my dislike of the ISS Act arises from the DIS spy agency protecting political security interests of Botswana. DIS agents are civil servants. Civil servants are expressly forbidden to engage in politics. How then does the DIS “protect political security of Botswana”? Granted, every country has a right, indeed a responsibility, to protect its security interests whether military or economic, but its POLITICAL interests can only be secured by the extent to which democracy is not only hyped up but actually PRACTICED in the country’s governance system. POLITICAL INSECURITY is what drives political leaders to always seek support of the people, thus making it A PREREQUISITE FOR THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY OVER AUTHORITARIANISM. In contrast, political security that is administratively assured through establishment of an organ such as our DIS, and not through open contestation of political ideas, is political repression. The repressive organ so established, if “successful”, takes away the conditions that make democracy a necessity. Therefore the perception that such an agency as DIS is successful, is only a temporary illusion, because democracy cannot be permanently mothballed. 

It does not matter whether the country considers itself socialist, communist, capitalist, monarchy etc.; its political stability depends upon the acceptance of its political course and direction by the majority of its citizens. That majority can only be determined through some form of genuinely free, fair and credible elections. Failure to conduct such elections means that whoever is governing the country loses touch with the people (demos) and becomes a candidate for political overthrow. In that way the demos re-establishes itself as the undisputed rulers of the country. No constitution, however craftily written, can stand in the way of the demos. Democracy is never a gift from one part of the society to another, it is a self-sustaining consensus written into the social DNA or fabric of any people. The moment a group within society decides to establish a force, or agency such as DIS to police democracy, that same moment ushers in political fissures and upheavals. Because such a force or agency is established with political motives, its ranks have to be kept clear of political opponents of the rulers, yet its agents are paid from the taxes of all the citizens, including those political opponents. Furthermore, such a political policing agency’s line of reporting has to be direct to the president of the ruling party, and not through the normal police hierarchy. Effectively, the DIS are not a national intelligence organization but a Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) intelligence agency masquerading as a national intelligence organization. As such they should either be disbanded or be paid by the ruling BDP.

The reason why most countries forbid their external intelligence agencies to operate WITHIN the countries themselves, is because internal intelligence is, by its nature a mere facet of police intelligence. It has to rely on the feed supplied by the people (demos) to do its work. In other words the people, irrespective of their political affiliations, act as the enablers of internal security intelligence. In contrast, external intelligence acts in an environment where it is essentially a law-breaking entity; a criminal organization of sorts. There is no room, or rather there should be no room for criminality in internal intelligence operations. The two intelligence organizations have to co-operate and share intelligence. Sometimes they are brought under one umbrella national intelligence command, reporting to the same boss, as in situations where drugs, international money laundering cartels, international terrorism etc. have taken root within the country. But even under these conditions, while the line of reporting may be unified, the theatres of operations remain separate – internal intelligence WITHIN the country as an extension of police intelligence, and external intelligence strictly OUTSIDE the country. In our country the ISS Act speaks of an internal and an external wing of the DIS but nowhere does it restrict either wing from operating internally or externally. This renders the DIS an organization that views citizens in the same light as non-citizens/foreigners; an organization whose external “criminal” activities are willy-nilly unleashed on the hapless, constitutionally sanctioned political opponents. 

But what is the genesis of this DIS? The DIS is a logical consequence of the first president Seretse Khama’s hijacking of the Special Branch, an intelligence arm of the police force into a political police force.  While Seretse Khama did not codify the said hijacking into law, former president Festus Mogae, having had running political battles with the likes of Duke Lefhoko, and probably underestimating then incoming President Ian Khama’s political prowess, decided to codify the democracy-sapping monstrosity into the ISS Act and its associated organs. The ISS Act cannot be corrected by merely editing to remove the phrase “security interests of Botswana whether POLITICAL…” The whole Act needs to be repealed to better define national security; to disband the partisan, criminal-prone DIS; to establish a non-political intelligence arm of the police force within the country; and to bar our external intelligence agency, if any, from operating within the country.