Thank you. I was saying that the challenge is less about whether or not we need intelligence. It is about how, in a democracy, we ensure that we have intelligence which is legitimate, honest, integrating, nonpartisan, accountable and professional, and which also respects the Constitution and human rights. To put it differently, it is about where they themselves are at the forefront of the defence of our democracy and Constitution without being a subject of suspicion in terms of what they do, but rather where safety, security and the democracy we enjoy is attributed, in part, in terms of what they do.
For us, in Cope, it is a question of how we ensure over the next five years that that really becomes the agenda of the engagement between us, the intelligence services and the rest of the parties. If we can achieve that then we will be able to ensure that anything else that we do, even in that committee, will be more about safeguarding our democracy, peace and security rather than each party worrying about whether or not state security is being used for party political purposes.
Secondly, the issue of the need for integration of work that is being done by the different intelligence services, in particular, NIA, SASS, Defence Intelligence and Crime Intelligence, becomes, very important so that we are able to ensure that each of the respective areas that they work in complement what the other is doing.
The other point to bear in mind though, is that one of the reasons why I'm raising these issues is that apartheid, over time, blurred these lines of accountability and of separation between the role of the intelligence services, using them for party political gains. How do we ensure that in a democracy those kinds of issues do not happen? How do we ensure that some of the things that may have happened in the recent past, albeit on a limited scale, become more the exception that all of us must deal with, rather than the norm, which may just grow as we go forward.
The whole issue of what role they can play in terms of vetting has already been raised, so I am rather going to deal with the whole issue of how we deal with crime syndicates. We need to be able to find means and ways in which we can say, to an extent, that we're cracking down on many crime syndicates because of what our intelligence services do. But the converse may also be true in that we may have to say that the reason we are not able to combat these syndicates must, therefore, mean a failure on the part of the intelligence services. How do we find that balance because it may be that the failure is not in the intelligence services, but may be political in such a situation?
There is also the issue of human trafficking. How do we also ensure that they are able to play a role in the prevention of human trafficking, and similarly, in terms of some of the drug syndicates or white collar crime.
We are told that some of the gangs operate from prison, where they are already in custody. How do we ensure that in terms of our own intelligence, acting in a professional manner, we are able to ensure that people don't go to jail and then continue with their criminal activities from inside? I'm saying that just as those successes can be attributed to intelligence, we need to know, if such failures happen, how we can then deal with them.
There was the unfortunate incident of xenophobia. It's a matter of public knowledge that that is a matter which they still debate - whether or not the intelligence services were caught napping, and/or whether information had been gathered and passed on, but politicians may not have acted on it.
Minister, there was also the Joe Matthews report, for lack of a better word. What is its status? When are we likely to get a sense from the Minister and the government in terms of how it seeks to approach it? Thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]