The Bureau of State Security (BOSS) vs. the Anti-Apartheid Struggle

The Bureau of State Security (BOSS) vs. the Anti-Apartheid Struggle

On 19 November 1970, the head of the apartheid Bureau of State Security (BOSS), General Hendrik Van Den Bergh, briefly appeared on Rhodesian Television (now known as Zimbabwe Television) telling viewers that anti-apartheid protests overseas were cautiously planned by communists linked to the South African Communist Party (SACP) and leftists in exile.

He was interviewed in a weekly slot called “The South African Scene”, which was produced by the apartheid South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). Van Den Bergh claimed that anti-apartheid protests were all part of the Cold War and had been carefully planned, including the demonstrations against the whites-only rugby team, “The Springboks”. This claim was made on the basis of the SACP’s relationship with the Soviet Union, suggesting that it was being used by Moscow to pursue its Cold War agenda.

The apartheid regime, through BOSS, propagated the conjecture that the capacity of the African National Congress (ANC) to embark upon and sustain the armed struggle depended on its alliance with the SACP, which in turn counted on the moral, military and material support from Moscow. By extension therefore, viewers were expected to infer that the ANC was also a tool of the Soviet Union in its aspirations to spread its influence and gain a strategic advantage during the Cold War.

BOSS was at the cutting edge of apartheid South Africa’s fight against what it considered a threat on the state mounted by exiled liberation movements, notably the ANC and its ally, the SACP, and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). BOSS was established in 1968 but was only legally institutionalised on 16 May 1969 by Prime Minister John Vorster under the leadership of General van den Bergh though the Public Service Amendment Act (1969).

The main aim of BOSS was to monitor “national security”, as well as to recognise any potential threats to the apartheid South African state. Van Den Bergh and John Vorster used security legislation, in particular the General Law Amendment Act of 1963, as part of the Apartheid State’s security measures aimed at stifling resistance in South Africa after the ANC, as well as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), adopted armed struggle as the only option left to sustain resistance to apartheid.

Reacting to the establishment of the Bureau, the ANC asserted that “The warped ugliness of the South African despotism has created yet another monster. Born in great haste, with no concessions to democratic pretence, the Bureau of State Security (BOSS) is grandiose in conception calculated to satisfy that insatiable lust for power that is the mark of fascist dictatorships”. The ANC further issued out a warning that “the existence of BOSS is a danger not only to South Africans. It is one more of those sinister subterranean intelligence organs that are eating into liberation movements, democratic organisations and protest groups throughout the world. In this respect it impinges on the freedom of numerous other organisations a long way from Mr. Vorster’s immediate power.” (Sechaba, October 1969).

Before the establishment of BOSS, the apartheid government looked at British Intelligence agencies (MI5 and MI6) for guidance in how to establish its own security and intelligence agencies. Though BOSS was not formally established and legislated until May 1969, it began operating late 1968. It replaced the Republican Intelligence (RI) unit of the Security Branch apartheid. Under Minister of Justice John Vorster, RI and the police generally benefitted from an expansion of their powers, through legislation such as the Sabotage Act of 1962 and the General Law Amendment Act of 1963, which allowed arbitrary arrest and detention.

Seeing that the RI lacked external capacity, in the middle of 1968, the Cabinet approved the creation of a centralised security service, and Van den Bergh, who was then the head of the Security Branch and Deputy Police Commissioner, was instructed to start planning for the establishment of the new organisation. On 28 August 1968, Van den Bergh then transformed RI into an intelligence agency with the capability of operating externally, thus the Bureau of State Security, which became colloquially known as BOSS (as an acronym), was created.

On 1 October 1968, he was promoted to the rank of General and appointed special Security Adviser to Vorster, who had become Prime Minister in 1966, after the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd. BOSS could then be described as a secret organisation that was attached to the Prime Minister’s office and responsible for coordinating internal and external security, to coordinate intelligence work, as well as to create a foreign espionage capacity. Moreover, among its main functions was to investigate all matters affecting the security of the apartheid state, but no framework was established along with the organisation.

With the creation of BOSS, the intention was to coordinate the efforts of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the security activities of the Security Branch of the Police and of the Military Intelligence Directorate of the South African Defence Force (SADF). At that time this was regarded as a move to end competition between the three branches of the intelligence community.These intelligence divisions, particularly the Directorate Military Intelligence (MI) and the Security Branch, were required to submit intelligence reports and to depend on the Bureau for their collection efforts. As a result, relations between these services and BOSS became acrimonious, especially with MI, as senior military officers were not in favour of the defence force relying on a civilian service for its information requirements.

Resentment from the Security Branch arose because of intrusion into the Police’s function and areas of operation and over BOSS recruitment of Security Police personnel. In order to alleviate these contradictions, the Prime Minister appointed his acquiescent appeal judge, Justice HJJ Potgieter, to head a Commission to advise whether the existing security arrangements were functioning effectively and to make recommendations on aspects that needed to be improved. In his report, Justice Potgieter recommended the establishment of a State Security Council, which was to determine the intelligence collection and processing mandates of the various agencies. It was only in 1972 that the purpose of BOSS was laid out by the State Security Council Act no. 64 (1972).

In terms of the State Security Council Act, BOSS consisted of two mandates. Firstly, it was aimed to advise the formulation of national security policy and strategy, and the manner in which same shall be implemented; and to provide policy to combat any particular threat to the security of the republic. Secondly, BOSS was supposed to determine intelligence priorities. Under this law, it was also expected to submit National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), as well as proposing policies relating to national security intelligence. By the late 1970s, it was thought to employ more than 1 000 agents, many of whom worked undercover.

The one-man Justice Potgieter Commission recommended that Section 29 of the General Law Amendment Act 101 of 1969 be amended for the Prime Minister to be the sole arbiter of what constituted national security, with the proviso that the courts would be allowed to determine what was in the interests of the State. This amendment also affected Section 10 of the Official Secrets Act 65 of 1956, which imposed penalties of up to 7 years imprisonment and a fine of R1,500 for breaches relating to official secrets. According to the Commission’s recommendation, the courts were given powers to determine what was considered to be official secrets in the interests of the State.

With regard to internal surveillance, BOSS was involved in gathering and assessing intelligence about anti-apartheid activists and liberation movements, including identifying targets for raids, both in South Africa and in neighbouring countries. Charles Sebe, for example, was a BOSS agent in King Williams Town, where BOSS was investigating local chapters of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) before he became security chief in the Ciskei Bantustan. Documents leaked by a former BOSS agent in the late 1970s and early 1980s, made substantiated allegations that BOSS, then known as the Department of National Security (DONS), was intercepting mail and private telephone calls of prominent political leaders and civil society activists.

Without a specific legal mandate, since it had no executive powers of arrest or detention, BOSS was also involved in extra-judicial killings through a covert operational unit formed in the early 1970s, known as the “Z-Squad”. The formation of a Z-Squad was an idea devised by Hendrik van den Bergh in which apartheid security police began to eliminate ANC sympathisers inside townships rather than taking part in the lengthy process of going through legal processes.The Z-Squad was also linked to the February 1974 cross-border assassinations by letter bombs of anti-Apartheid activists and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Commander Boy Mvemve (aka “John Dube”) and Onkgopotse Tiro, former leader of the South African Students Organisation (SASO), in February 1974.

It was also alleged that the Z-Squad specialised in interrogating South Africans who had been captured fighting for nationalist movements in Rhodesia and Mozambique, some of whom were killed after interrogation. In the Information Scandal of 1978, BOSS acted as banker for the Department of Information in respect of a secret slush fund, which was channeled from the Department of Defence and used to fund a series of propaganda projects, including the establishment of a pro-government “Citizen” newspaper.

In July 1969, BOSS and the Portuguese International Police for the Defence of the State (PIDE), as well as the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), met in Lisbon in an attempt to bring about closer collaboration in their counterinsurgency efforts. The agencies were geared to coordinate their efforts in southern Africa and discussed cooperating on covert operations against Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda’s government.

Furthermore, BOSS channeled “material support” directly from the apartheid government to Portuguese colonial intelligence services in Angola and Mozambique. It also participated vigorously in the Angolan Civil War after Angola’s independence in 1975, as South Africa got involved at the behest of the United States, based on Cold War considerations. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and BOSS had been collaborating since the 1960s. They were discussing and planning how to destabilise the new Angolan government, to undermine its relations with the Soviet Union as well as Cuba, and how to apply pressure to curb the flow of foreign investment to Angola.

Following the Information Scandal, which implicated both BOSS and Prime Minister Vorster, Van den Bergh resigned in June 1978, and on 1 September 1978, BOSS was renamed the Department of National Security (DONS). When Vorster resigned as Prime Minister on 20 September 1978, he was replaced by his Defence Minister, P.W. Botha, whose ascension increased the influence of the apartheid SADF and especially the impact of Military Intelligence.

Botha’s appointment fell concurrently with newly perceived threats in the Southern African region, following the independence of Mozambique and Angola; guerrilla infiltrations into South West Africa (now Namibia); and the disintegration of Rhodesia. Botha brought BOSS under tighter executive control and appointed Kobie Coetsee as Deputy Defence and Intelligence Minister. In November 1979, Botha appointed Niël Barnard to BOSS/DONS to lead its transformation as Director-General. Subsequently, in February 1980, Botha announced that BOSS/DONS would become the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

In 1972, following the presentation of the Potgieter Commission report, the ANC maintained that “No opponent of apartheid and racism in South Africa should allow himself to be unduly impressed by the tremendous resources and far-reaching activities of the BOSS machine. (Conversely, no serious revolutionary should under-estimate the power of the enemy – such mistakes are costly). The experience of other revolutions show that it is not superior ‘intelligence’ (in the sense of information), nor even superior arms technology, material resources or means of communication and transport which determine the outcome of history-making struggles.”

“Ultimately, and decisively,” the ANC averred, “it is the masses of the people who make history, and there is no force on earth which can defeat a people united in a just cause and determined to achieve their freedom. This simple but profound truth guarantees the futility of BOSS and ensures the defeat and destruction of all it stands for” (Sechaba, May 1972).

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Fighting Talk, “International Murder Squad”, Sechaba, Vol. 3, No. 10, October 1969.
Fighting Talk, “Vorster’s Terror Machine: New Powers for Boss”, Sechaba, Vol. 6, No. 5, May 1972.
Kenneth W. Grundy, “The Rise of the South African Security Establishment: An Essay on the Changing Locus of State Power”, Bradlow Paper No. 1, The South African Institute of International Affairs, August 1983.
The Library of Congress Country Studies, “South Africa Military Intelligence and Intelligence Coordination”, The Library of Congress Country Studies: CIA World Factbook, May 1996.
TRC, “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, Vol. 2”, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 29 October 1998.
Niël Barnard, “Secret Revolution: Memoirs of a Spy Boss”, Tafelberg, 2015.
Hennie Heymans, “The Rise of the Bureau of State Security BOSS”, Nongqai, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2021.

Castro Khwela
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