Chairperson, I assure you, I will not use all of it as it's quite late in the day.
Let me firstly congratulate those members who have been deployed by their parties to this important statutory committee, the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence. As some of the members say, there is no glamour there, but a great responsibility is put on these members to ensure that our services remain accountable and that we do the right thing in securing our nation and democracy.
Let me also move on to say that, on the issues raised about the delays of the report of the JSCI, we will work with the JSCI to assist in improving the system because we may find that these delays are sometimes in the Presidency, our services or committees and at times in the Parliamentary system.
We have to find a comprehensive way of dealing with it because it is a very critical report for the public and other Members of Parliament, which will show what these members are doing behind these closed doors. We really support that the issue be submitted within the stipulated period of two months after the end of the financial year.
I would also like to thank members for the valuable input made by all members who have spoken today. These valuable inputs have been noted, and we will act on some of the recommendations that have been made. They have shown that they have really hit the ground running and I'm not going to comment on the threats made by the chairperson about the speed at which they will be moving! Let me say that our intelligence services and the whole intelligence community, both civilian and from the armed forces, welcome oversight. They are not scared of oversight because they value constructive criticism, as that can only bolster the professionalism with which they do their work. It will also ensure that they stick to the law and advance and achieve the goals that were set in the legislative framework.
I will say without any fear of contradiction that I think all the services which were here, the members and senior management, take these inputs in a positive way.
Let me also say that because we have a lot of veterans of intelligence here, we must also remember that these intelligence officers from both the statutory and nonstatutory forces played a very critical role in ushering in our democracy. Without them it is doubtful that we could have achieved that transition which we had in 1994. So we do value the work that they have contributed to ensuring that we maintain this democratic order of our young democracy.
In this regard, we intend to have our veterans play a bigger role and not have to go into full retirement, both in teaching our new recruits and in advising in some of the aspects of our work.
The chairperson has raised the challenge of piracy in Somalia. Our intelligence services are working hard on this. They have instructions and they do produce reports regularly for the government, and we will be able to brief the JSCI. But the problem of Somalia is primarily an issue of a failed state, a failed democracy where you let armed and trained people roam the streets. That is what we see as a result of that failed state. But we will continue to monitor other aspects of that piracy, which may have an impact on our regional and continental security because this is of concern to us as government.
Hon Coetzee has raised the challenge of what we do about these global threats and more powers being given to our intelligence services to deal with them. The only advice with regard to more power being given to intelligence is that there must be even more oversight by the committee, the Inspector-General, the Auditor-General and all those who are entrusted with the task, because if they don't do that, then we run the risk where our services can run loose and start doing things that are untoward in terms of our Constitution.
In terms of expediting the vetting - hon Member Shilowa was speaking about the problems of delays in vetting - the new vetting strategy on which we will also brief the members in the near future is intended precisely to deal with this. The key component of that vetting strategy is to deploy trained people in each of the key state departments or state institutions who will do preliminary work in the vetting process and the agency will do more advanced work which necessitates more skills in vetting. We hope in that respect that we will be able to expedite the process. Also, the deployment of what is called "security managers" in each state institution and department is intended to raise the awareness about security in terms of handling our documents and information.
We, the JSCI, will play a very critical role in visiting some of these state institutions because NIA does these assessments, sometimes unannounced, in all the state institutions to check the state of the protection of that information. So we really hope that working together with the JSCI, they can play a more leading role in this type of oversight so that we can instil this culture in all our state institutions and departments.
Hon Mr Shilowa also raised the challenge of the unfortunate occurrence of xenophobia which we had over a year ago. It remains a concern on our radar screen as an intelligence community, because we wouldn't like that to happen. But in the main, it was caused by people, and particularly those who live in conditions of poverty in informal settlements, scrambling for these scarce resources. That is the basic root cause of it. So we have to continue to monitor the migration of our people.
This is why in this government we emphasise, for example, planning and rural development so that we can deal with this challenge of migration because migration is not only about foreign nationals, but people are migrating from rural areas to urban areas, from conflict areas to more secure areas and from poor countries to where they can at least have an opportunity to find jobs.
Earlier this year in February, under the SA Secret Services and the rest of our intelligence community, we held a conference to which we invited South Africans, departments and people from SADC, particularly the intelligence community, to deal with this challenge of human migration and the threat to our national security and how we can ensure that we manage migration properly - because we can't stop it - in ways that will allow us to benefit from it, because there are several benefits we can get in terms of skills that we are lacking at the moment.
Hon Mr Shilowa, the report of the commission which was set to look at the adequacy of the regulation of our intelligence community is called the "Joe Matthews Report". We are just finalising the processing of that report and soon we will be tabling that report before Cabinet, and we hope that soon we will be able to brief the committee on this report. The premature release of this report is unfortunate because as we stand, that report has no status in government, but we will be able to brief the community in full once we have finalised the processes in government.
The adequacy of the budget remains a challenge. We do understand, Mr Coetzee, that the economic downturn does have an impact on what we can spend. And checking the current economic situation, we have to spend prudently. But we are also worried about cutting the budget in critical areas. For instance, we have to invest in training our people in specialised skills. In intelligence we require mathematicians, engineers, economists, etc. We do need these skills; so we have to first invest in our people adequately so that we can deal with these critical challenges we are facing.
In addition, we have to invest in technology, because if our technology is outdated we will soon not be able to listen to those whom we must listen to. So we have to invest in those critical areas, particularly technology and specialised skills. We will continue to mobilise resources within the limited resources we have in our kitty.
With regard to the comprehensive briefing of our members, I would like to assure the members who are being appointed in the committee now that in the near future our department intends to assist members to get these comprehensive briefings once the process of appointment is finalised. That will require time because it is important that you understand what they are supposed to do in order to be able to oversee them properly. So we will facilitate that process and we would appreciate it if members could meet and give us dates, preferably three to five days, so that we can adequately ensure that these members can effectively carry out their mandate of ensuring the oversight of our services. With those few words, I would like to thank all the members and I commend the debate. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.