On South Africa's Secret Service

Title: On South Africa's Secret Service
Subtitle: An Undercover Agent's Story
Author: Riaan Labuschagne
Publisher: Galago Publishing
Alberton, South Africa 2002
ISBN 1919854088 / ISBN 1-919854-08-8
Hardcover, dustjacket, 17 x 24 cm, 304 pages, several b/w and colour photographs

Condition:

Good. Few traces of usage.

Description:

On South Africa's Secret Service explains South Africa's secret intelligence war as conducted by the National Intelligence Service. It is told by former undercover agent Riaan Labuschagne, who was acitve from 1980 to 1994. In 1981, while still a university student, he was persuaded to take diving parties to the Seychelles during vacations to collect 'routine low grade intelligence on the islands to build up the Service's information bank. He wasn't told that the intelligence was required in connection with a pending coup attempt by mercenaries that NIS was supporting. While he was there the coup attempt exploded into action and he was fortunate to escape. Later, after the conclusion of his university studies and two year's national service as a naval officer, he was accepted into the Service's Counter-intelligence Division as an undercover field operative.

Labuschagne recruited the Soviet Military Attaché in Gaborone, Botswana, and gained valuable intelligence that allowed the SADF to pre-empt and defeat a major Soviet-supported attack on UNITA in Angola. He subverted the Libyan Military Attaché in Gaborone and recruited a top MK officer as an agent. The regular flow of information gained ensured that most MK groups who attempted to infiltrate South Africa were intercepted and shot. Information from a top agent in Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation foiled a MK plan to launch attacks against the Swartkoppies and Waterkloof Air Force bases in Pretoria and resulted in the arrest of the culprits. He explains how in the early 1990s, using the guise of an Afrikaner liberal, he infiltrated the top structures of the ANC in Durban and made friendships with men who later became cabinet ministers.