Today we tabled our first Budget Vote Policy Statement as the 5th administration to a committee of parliament.
We noted the significant strides made in the twenty years of our long and arduous but fulfilling journey to eradicate the legacy of apartheid and colonialism in pursuit of a truly united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society.
As a department have come a long way in stabilising the domestic security situation and in creating the conditions for democracy to flourish, as well as creating space for citizens to exercise their constitutional rights. At the same time we have also contributed significantly to the security of the Southern African region and the African continent.
In order to continue on this trajectory and working towards the two main outcomes of government in our clusters namely: Outcome 3 - all people in South Africa are and feel safe; and Outcome 11 - create a better South Africa, contribute to a better and safer Africa in a better world.
We identified the following priorities for this financial year and the medium term:
- Improve the Intelligence community through better coordination of operations, exchange of information and innovation in conducting our work.
- Introduce and review regulations under the three intelligence pieces of legislation that were amended by Parliament in 2013 through the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Act.
- Strategically prioritise the attraction of new skills in the threat areas that would enable us to deliver on our priorities for the next five years while paying serious attention to the re-skilling of existing personnel to be better equipped in the emerging trends of our tradecraft.
- Pay a great deal of attention to the causes of instability through focusing on the development of a qualitative understanding of the factors, processes and role-players that give rise to social and economic instability.
- Focus on the combatting of corruption, organised crime, illegal migration, and illicit economic activity, whilst fostering conditions conducive to the advancement of energy, food, water and environmental security, as articulated in government’s programme of action.
- Strengthen our early warning systems to respond adequately to the ever changing domestic and global security issues such as international and domestic forms of terrorism and extremism, addressing cyber-attacks and securing our cyberspace and managing our national borders more effectively.
- Ensuring effective control and management of South Africa’s borders by strengthening our interventions and coordination efforts with stakeholders in the aviation, maritime and land border environments.
- Deal decisively with organised crime such as drug trafficking, human smuggling, poaching and gangsterism that continue to display increasing sophistication and diversification through operations.
- Develop a National Strategy on the illicit economy and improve our capacity on economic intelligence.
- Continue to play our role of providing dynamic, reliable and timeous intelligence to advance our national security and interests.
- Support and execute the decisions of the African Union (AU) and promote the work of its structures.
- Support to multilateral initiatives to stabilise conflict areas through the AU and the United Nations (UN).
- Consult the public as we finalise work on cyber-security and classification of information.
- Make intelligence a career of choice for many young South Africans and enhance the output of the academy and link up with other institutions with common interests.
We invite all South Africans to be part of our national effort to ensure the security of our country, her integrity, her people, infrastructure and resources.
