INTEL READS | Intelligence and Democracy in Africa: Systemic Challenges and Reform Imperatives (via Democracy in Africa)
INTEL READS | Ujasusi Blog Originals
The Democratic Paradox in African Intelligence
African intelligence services operate within a fundamental paradox: they are simultaneously essential for addressing multidimensional security threats—terrorism, unconstitutional power grabs, climate insecurity—while themselves constituting primary threats to democratic governance and human security.
This short essay examines how intelligence personalisation and politicisation across diverse regimes, from Africa’s longest-standing democracy to its most entrenched autocracies, reveals structural pathologies that render services instruments of elite power rather than national security. Drawing on case studies from Botswana, South Africa, Uganda, and Algeria, the analysis demonstrates that meaningful reform requires confronting constitutional loopholes, ugly colonial legacies, and the prioritisation of regime survival over democratic accountability.
Conceptual Foundations and Historical Legacies
Defining Pathologies: Politicisation, Personalisation, and Abuse
Politicisation occurs when intelligence collection and analysis are skewed to deliver predetermined policy outcomes, transforming objective assessment into political ammunition. Personalisation represents a more acute form of this pathology, where intelligence services become extensions of a leader’s will, operating through “buddy systems” built on personal loyalty rather than institutional mandate.
These phenomena manifest across a spectrum:
(a) Arbitrary securitisation: Moving ordinary policy issues into the national security domain to delegitimise opposition.
(b) Immunity and impunity: Legal provisions shielding officers from prosecution for actions performed “in duties.”
(c) Resource capture: Intelligence services controlling economic assets and facilitating elite corruption.
Historical Roots: From Colonial Surveillance to Liberation Politics
Most anglophone African intelligence services evolved from colonial Special Branches designed for political surveillance and counterinsurgency. This legacy implanted a culture prioritising covert action—assassinations, sabotage, propaganda—over strategic analysis.
Post-independence, liberation movements grafted political ideology onto these structures, creating services loyal to party rather than state. Democracies are no better. As Botswana’s trajectory shows, the “automatic succession” system allowed leaders like Ian Khama—trained in military intelligence and inheriting presidential power—to design intelligence architectures during his vice presidency (1998–2008), effectively pre-personalising the institution before it became operational.
In South Africa, Jacob Zuma—a former head of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) counterintelligence—managed to manipulate, tribalize, and politicise intelligence within a system that formally possessed democratic safeguards.
Comparative Case Studies—When Regime Type Fails to Explain Outcomes
Democratic Facades, Autocratic Practices: Botswana and South Africa
Botswana (2008–2024)
Despite Africa’s longest democratic record, the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) became an instrument of “state terrorism” under President Ian Khama and a key facilitator of corruption under President Mokgweetsi Masisi.
Khama appointed his former aide-de-camp Isaac Kgosi as Director General, creating a militarised buddy system. The 2008 Intelligence and Security Services Act granted unprecedented powers: unilateral expenditure control by the director general, warrantless operations under “special exigencies,” and complete immunity for officers.
Under Khama, the DIS targeted journalists with self-destructing messages, tortured opposition activists (including electrocuting detainees’ genitals), conducted Watergate-style burglaries to sabotage corruption trials, and executed extrajudicial killings—including the public shooting of John Kalafatis using armour-piercing bullets. Khama subsequently pardoned the perpetrators.
According to court records, under President Mokgweetsi Masisi—and with Peter Fana Magosi as Director General—the DIS facilitated corruption through parastatal projects, enabled some political elites to siphon public funds, and waged intelligence wars against anti-corruption bodies.
Under both administrations, parliamentary oversight was neutered. The oversight committee reported to the president, not parliament, and required presidential consultation for appointments. When Kgosi declared himself “not accountable to anyone, including the president,” he exposed the governance vacuum. Ironically, the incumbent president, Duma Boko, has retained Magosi as head of the DIS.
South Africa (1994–2022)
Post-apartheid reforms attempted to amalgamate liberation movement intelligence (ANC’s DIS) with apartheid-era services into professional structures. However, the negotiated settlement retained former apartheid personnel whose loyalty to democracy remained doubtful.
Under Thabo Mbeki, Project Avani revealed systemic surveillance of ruling party factions. Jacob Zuma—himself a former intelligence operative—accelerated personalisation by creating a so-called “Principal Agent Network,” bypassing accountability mechanisms and establishing a tribalized Special Operations Unit that recruited approximately 200 personnel from his home province to serve his personal interests.
The 2018 High-Level Review Panel found the unit became “a law unto itself” engaging in unconstitutional operations. Unlike Botswana’s single-institution capture, South Africa’s personalisation infected the entire State Security Agency through factional battles.
Authoritarian Exemplars: Uganda and Algeria
Uganda
Uganda’s intelligence services—the Internal Security Organisation (ISO), External Security Organisation (ESO), Defence Intelligence and Security (DIS, formerly CMI)—are explicitly instruments of Yoweri Museveni’s personality cult.
National security is subordinate to regime security. “Regime security” means Museveni’s security, and dissent equals treason. Intelligence services monitor diaspora communities globally, with ESO operating in the US, UK, and Australia to track political exiles.
The Security Organisations Act mandates military training for all intelligence officers, ensuring militarised loyalty. The Joint Anti-Terrorist Task Force—funded through the war on terror—provides a veneer of legitimacy for torture and political repression. Intelligence is manufactured to fit Museveni’s declarations rather than empirical reality.
Algeria
For decades, Algeria was unique globally: the state was effectively run by two intelligence services—the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS) and the Sureté Militaire (SM).
Evolving from FLN’s KGB-trained structures under Colonel Boussouf, the DRS under General Mohamed “Toufik” Mediene selected and deposed presidents between 1990 and 2016. Unlike typical authoritarian systems where intelligence serves the regime, Algerian intelligence was the regime—controlling foreign policy, economic planning, and leadership succession.
Since partial reforms in 2016, the intelligence community consists of the DGSI (domestic intelligence), DGDSE (foreign intelligence), and DGRT (signals intelligence), overseen by the Coordination des services de sécurité (CSS). These reforms, however, have not dismantled the deep state.
Structural Enablers of Intelligence Abuse in Africa
Constitutional Loopholes and Quasi-Royal Presidencies
Botswana’s Section 46 institutionalises presidential supremacy, allowing leaders to bypass parliamentary approval for intelligence appointments. South Africa’s power-sharing settlement preserved apartheid-era command structures. Uganda’s rubber-stamp legislature never challenges security legislation.
These frameworks enable:
(a) Buddy-system appointments
(b) Expenditure immunity
(c) Warrantless operations under “special exigencies”
Oversight Mechanisms: The Illusion of Accountability
Legislative oversight in Botswana is ceremonial. The Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security is appointed by the president, reports to him, and requires his approval to publish findings. South Africa’s committees face similar executive dominance.
Judicial oversight has fared little better. Botswana’s courts were inundated with warrant requests while the DIS conducted parallel unauthorised operations. Algeria’s judiciary never challenged the DRS. South Africa’s courts proved more resilient but insufficient. Judicial oversight in Uganda might as well be seawater.
Media and civil society face repression across most cases. Only South Africa’s civil society, leveraging freedom-of-information mechanisms, achieved partial accountability—demonstrating that democratic space matters.
Continental Architecture and Its Dysfunctions
The African Union’s Committee of Intelligence and Security Services for Africa (CISSA), established in 2004, remains hampered by mutual suspicion and power maximisation. Nigeria and South Africa claim leadership but lack or have limited technical capabilities, while Algeria, Rwanda, and Angola possess superior systems but resist subordination.
CISSA and the AU Counter Terrorism Centre lack collection mandates, relying on voluntarily shared intelligence. This creates strategic gaps but also opportunities. These bodies specialise in analysis and dissemination—functions often neglected nationally. With careful design, a burden-sharing model could emerge.
Reform Imperatives—Beyond “Reform” Facades
I propose five transformational steps, emphasising that technical reforms fail without political transformation.
Political will for genuine cooperation
States must move beyond regime-centric intelligence sharing toward institutionalised burden-sharing.Hegemonic reconciliation
Technological hegemons and political-military hegemons must align, with expertise applied beyond defence into civilian intelligence.Pragmatic burden-sharing
Clear division of labour across HUMINT, SIGINT, GEOINT, and CYBINT, feeding CISSA and regional early-warning centres.Indigenous capacity building
Africa must invest in technical intelligence rather than presidential patronage systems.Counterintelligence and economic espionage
Capabilities should protect against foreign destabilisation and acquire industrial technology to reverse extractive relationships—directed outward, not inward.
Conclusion: Democracy as Prerequisite
The evidence converges on a single conclusion: intelligence reform is impossible without prior constitutional and political reform.
Democratic oversight requires dismantling presidential supremacy, enforcing judicial independence, and empowering civil society and media. Intelligence services cannot be democratised while serving elite extraction and regime survival.
Prospects remain dim. Cosmetic leadership changes and expanded presidential powers signal continuity, not transformation. Lasting reform requires constitutional amendments that enable political reform, which in turn creates conditions for genuine security-sector transformation.
Until then, African intelligence services will remain instruments of personalisation that threaten the very democratic institutions and societies they nominally protect.
Tshepo Gwatiwa is a researcher and consultant who currently lectures in intelligence studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He is a non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC), at the University of Johannesburg. He is the editor of Contemporary Intelligence in Africa (Routledge, 2025). His research interests extend to African agency in international politics and diplomacy.
