Democratic Alliance (DA) Federal Chair Helen Zille “has a plan with the GNU and the GNU clearly has no counter plan for Helen Zille”, says Neil De Beer, the President of the United Independent Movement (UIM). In this interview with BizNews, he states that it is “plain and simple” that Zille is calling the shots in the Government of National Unity (GNU).” Describing her as “tactically brilliant”, De Beer says she will “wag this dog’s tail” – and is going to “wreckball them every opportunity she has”. As for the future of the GNU, he says: “Either the DA is going to dominate this and continually outwork, outshine, outmove, or the ANC is going to continually outmanoeuvre, outplan, outbreak, out demonize the continual efforts to bring this GNU to what we, the citizens of this country, are praying and hoping for, and that is a better life for all”. De Beer gives an update on the secret military training camp found in Mpumalanga recently, and dissects the reasons why the country’s intelligence services are “napping”. He also hails the formidable fightback against crime in KZN where people are now “thinking twice” before picking up a gun and shooting at the police.
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.
Join us for BizNews’ first investment-focused conference on Thursday, 12 September, in Hermanus, featuring top experts like Frans Cronje, Piet Viljoen, and more. Get insights on electricity and exploiting SA’s gas bounty from new and familiar faces. Register here.
Watch here
Listen here
Highlights from the interview
In a recent BizNews interview, Chris Steyn hosted Neil De Beer, President of the United Independent Movement, to discuss political dynamics and crime in South Africa. De Beer attributes significant influence in the Government of National Unity (GNU) to Helen Zille, a prominent figure in the Democratic Alliance (DA). He describes Zille as a strategic and formidable politician, asserting that she effectively dominates the GNU, often overshadowing the ANC. De Beer lauds Zille’s tactical brilliance and unwavering commitment to the DA, viewing her as a pivotal force in the coalition with the ANC.
On crime, De Beer highlights a suspected secret military training camp in Mpumalanga, where Libyans were allegedly trained in guerrilla and conventional warfare. He criticizes South African intelligence services for their ineffectiveness and lack of coordination, pointing to a “deep sleep” state in crime and national intelligence.
Regarding KwaZulu-Natal, De Beer calls for a review of the Criminal Procedure Act of 1977, advocating for stronger measures against armed criminals. He supports the use of force by police under Section 49 of the Act, emphasising the need to protect law enforcement and civilians from heavily armed criminals. De Beer underscores the necessity of decisive action to combat crime, advocating for a robust and proactive approach to ensure public safety.
Extended transcript of the interview ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Chris Steyn (00:02.832)
Who is really calling the shots in the Government of National Unity? Let’s ask Neil De Beer, the President of the United Independent Movement. Welcome Neil to your usual Sunday slot with BizNews.
Neil De Beer (00:16.138)
Very good day Chris and to our lovely BizNews family. What a day. It’s Helen Zille. I mean plain and simple.
Chris Steyn (00:24.45)
Well, she says it’s not a Government of National Unity. She says it’s a coalition between the Democratic Alliance and the ANC. What do you say, Neil?
Neil De Beer (00:38.012)
Helen Zille says what she wants to. I think let’s start off with the following.
It’s not the fact that we are taking on the character of Helen Zille. Helen Zille, aka in certain people’s view, Godzille, is a person I would like to quickly tell you about and my interface with her. So it’s not the fact that she is there. That’s the problem. It’s not the fact that she is whom she is that’s the problem.
Helen Zille has a plan with the GNU and the GNU clearly has no counter plan for Helen Zille. So I’m going to say the following. I know her. I have sat in meetings where she has been. I have seen Helen Zille operate. I have sat back and been present when Helen Zille goes into a meeting and then says what Helen Zille needs to say.
Now, Chris, let’s not be in any way dodging the elephant in the room. So here it comes. There are so many people that speak about Helen Zille that have never met her, that do not know where she comes from, does not know how she delays, portrays, invokes, and puts to the bed, puts to the path her tactic and do not understand, and I’ll say it, the actual tactical brilliance of this individual.
So we’ve got to now open that scenario for once and for all. I’ve met her and I will tell you to me it was a privilege to meet her because you can unpack Helen Zille in so many ways. But there’s a couple of things you cannot, and in my presence, I will not fall for it.
Neil De Beer (02:40.39)
Number one, she has not an iota of racism in her because in actual fact, I’ve been present when the discussion of racism, the accusation of racism to her brought a tear. In other words, the inner humanity of Helen, I saw it when it was in such a way, she was enraged, but she has her opinion.
We all know that Twitter to the tweets for the twats about Colonialism not being that bad. I unpacked that with her because I come from the Struggle and it was clear that that was not what was meant but was framed that way.
Clearly when you talk about the Multi-Party Charter, when you talk about the GNU, when you talk about the DA involvement, when you talk about that in current history, Helen Zille is present. Helen Zille will go in there and she will leave, Chris, with what she wanted to achieve, no matter the tactic. Now you can call it a bully tactic, you can call it a Stalin tactic, she has that.
So when you look at Helen, and Helen goes into a meeting, because I sat in a meeting where she was invited by a group to actually promote a group, and when she left that group was annihilated. And she didn’t do it in the fashion of being facetious or rude or boasting. No, she came in there with a very specific intellectual prowess having had done her job, had done her research, having had done what she wants to achieve and she annihilated them.
Now, it is my humble opinion, once and for all, that she will wag this dog’s tail. This is it. She and Fikile, wat alles absoluut opdonner,. Fikile I’m telling you, is not on her level. This is clear.
Neil De Beer (04:52.968)
So she’s going to irritate the ANC. She’s going to wreckball them every opportunity she has. Because she does not just look at a document. She does not just interpret a document. She becomes the document. So when the first fight started about what did we sign? Make no mistake, she knew what she signed and I’m telling you they had a hand in it. She can say that the ANC wrote the GNU, no. The DA does not sign anything, anything, if it doesn’t assert their input, their guideline and their agenda.
And this is not a right or wrong question, it is just, you asked me, who’s ruling the roost in the GNU? Well, it’s Helen Zille. And why? She gets under their skin. She’s been an astute politician. She’s in your face, and I’m telling you Chris, this is never going to be an algorithm of this. Helen’s algorithm isn’t this. Helen’s algorithm is this. So, you know, is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Doesn’t matter. But one thing I’ll tell you, you will be very clear on the fact that you must wake up very early in the morning when you are going to have a meeting with Helen Godzilla.
Chris Steyn (06:16.782)
Well, Neil, you said she has a plan for the GNU. What is her long-term strategy?
Neil De Beer (06:22.93)
Well, I don’t have to think about it. I think I’m very clear. One, Helen Zille is committed to the Democratic Alliance until death. So that tells you something. She is the DA. She is DA. And she has a absolute, maybe sometimes fanatical ideology that the DA is the next government. This is clear. Number two, that the ANC cannot govern, that they are currently in government with the ANC and she’s now saying in a very clear video clip and obviously having to now explain that that was not what she meant, but she meant it. They are in a coalition, they bail the ANC out for power and they don’t see it as a Government of National Unity. She said that if it was a GNU then everybody including MK, including EFF would have been there. They’re not. So it’s not a GNU.
She said, this is a coalition. Well, Chris, can we stop the utter rubbish, the continual labeling and call it so? It is a coalition between the ANC and the DA. And thirdly, she believes to keep them in check, to keep them in balance and to assert the policies of the DA. And that will bring her continually in conflict in this GNU.
Chris Steyn (07:49.284)
So how do you see the future of the GNU because of that, Neil?
Neil De Beer (07:54.526)
Something’s going to have to give. Because what you can clearly see is that the GNU is currently going ahead. There’s now accusations that the poor ANC is now being outshined by the new ministers, the Gaytons, the Leon Schreibers, the John Steenhuisens, the MacPhersons. Listen, listen, hey, you don’t sit back and say you are being outshined. Outshine yourself. Work to that effort. What we can clearly see is that new brooms are sweeping cleaner under Pieter Groenewald and the rest. And here’s the fact, either the DA is going to dominate this and continually outwork, outshine, outmove, or the ANC is going to continually to outmaneuver, outplan, outbreak, outdemonize the continual efforts to bring this GNU to what we, the citizens of this country, are praying and hoping for, and that is a better life for all.
But can see this is not just settling cracks. They’ve settled now. We know who they are. They are there, all 75 of them. And now it’s going to be about not can they settle, but can they continually get back to the table and readdress.
And then, Chris, the last thing, this National Dialogue thing, which Helen has now brought up, saying it seems that this National Dialogue is being done without them.
Chris Steyn (00:02.34)
From politics to crime. Neil, can you please give us an update on that suspected secret military training camp?
Neil De Beer (09:38.962)
Yeah, Chris, I think crazy how the worms have come out to the top ground after feeding downstairs. So, may I make a submission here? Chris, people write to us on the show, they continually tell us that we seem to have to be prophecies in the future. We have to be prophets. That they are saying, but you said that and you didn’t get that wrong and you said that but you did get that wrong and you know what kind of intel you get. I want to quickly tell you how it works here. We are not the Lotto number. If it was, I would tell you 1466535, the Bonus Ball is 2. What a lot of rubbish. We are not prophets here. What we do here and what I do to prepare for this show is quite a lot. I tap into every form of call and intelligence that I can. I read, I monitor, I observe and I make contact with people past and present that know. We then come here on a Sunday and I, in my way, my manner, put on the table what I’ve heard. We only have a couple of minutes. So, I want to tell the people here that what we say is not always predicting what’s coming. Intelligence doesn’t work that way. Intelligence, true intelligence people like myself, we have a lot of things that we need to put onto one table to make things complex, simple.
It is now very clear that Mpumalanga, White River, Militaire de Securité were training Libyans of a certain faction, not in security, but in guerrilla and conventional warfare. That’s it. We know that they were here under the auspices of a false visa. We know who these people are. We know who are training them. We know what they paid and we know exactly what was the objective. This is now very clear.
It is just the that the government went out and said that intelligence services were found napping. Now Chris, while they’re napping, people are bloody dying. And this needs to be corrected. My problem is not the 95 they found, not the camp that they clearly now observe, but the big question, are there more than 95 people of different countries in this country? And are there more of these camps?
Neil De Beer (12:04.956)
My submission to you: Yes they are. They very much are. And the question is what are going to do about it.
Chris Steyn (12:11.066)
Well, Neil, talking about intelligence napping, how would you describe the current state of Crime I
Intelligence?
Neil De Beer (12:17.926)
It’s in a deep sleep. It doesn’t exist. So plain and simply, my submission is clear.
Crime intelligence, National Intelligence, State Security and Military Intelligence are four of the conclaves that are the cornerstones of different scenarios, different spectrums, but must work in unison. I’ll say that again. You must connect Military Intelligence, Crime Intelligence, National Intelligence and State Security. You must have a unifying factor. What is very interesting is that now for a couple of years, we do not anymore have an independent Minister of either Intelligence or State Security. This is worrying.
I have an opinion on that and I’ll gladly give it to you. You cannot be happy, confident when the Ministry of Intelligence is moved into the Presidency. I just don’t like that. I don’t know why. I can just tell you I just get these things on my neck when we don’t have an independent judiciary, independent intelligence service, or police. So currently we have a State Security structure that is under the auspices of the Presidency served by a Deputy Minister. I can, in the next programme, give you the possible scenarios why, but right now it is only obvious to me that the collective guideline, the gyro that is supposed to bring those services of Military Intelligence, Crime Intelligence, National Intelligence and State Security together, that pivot, I don’t think it’s there. I think they’re clustered. I think they are speaking only to themselves.
Neil De Beer (14:21.734)
And I could be wrong, but if I was right, Chris, then obviously there wouldn’t be terror cells in this country. There wouldn’t be a free roaming currently or so-called cartels. There wouldn’t be Libyans in this country running around, donning uniform to train to go and do what in other countries. We wouldn’t be on the Gray listing. We wouldn’t be on TV programmes like Gold Mafia. We wouldn’t be in the position, I’m sorry, that we are.
So the only equals I’ve got is failure, failure. And then when a MEC of Safety of Security in Mpumalanga acknowledges that intelligence services were found napping, a person, a civilian person, but even more a guy like me that comes from there and still does speeches about intelligence, about counterintelligence to companies, there’s red flags everywhere.
So I’m sorry, I will use that minister’s word. They are napping. And they better bloody wake up.
Chris Steyn (15:24.753)
But are they napping because of incompetence or are they napping because of interference?
Neil De Beer (15:31.398)
I fear all three. I fear that there’s a massive incompetence due to the fact of the massive exit of the old guard that was Intelligence. You would remember that when we had integration, when the liberation forces had to be integrated into the statutory Apartheid intelligence services. You will remember Dr. Neil Barnard was one of the people that was the gyro at that time, pardon me, that was driving intelligence. Then we had to be integrated. You now have two divisions. You have what they call NI and SSA, the old SASS. If you look at National Intelligence as it is today, it should be the FBI in our country and the Secret Service SASS should be the CIA. One should be external and the other one internal. The question is, are we really internal and external? Your external intelligence service finds out what are the threats that are going to be implemented in our country from foreign to domestic. And your domestic intelligence service is there to gather the intelligence in this country for the same reason except domestic to domestic.
Question is, do we still have the track record of informants? Do we still have the track record of people outside that give us the insight, then I’ll tell you no. And I’ll tell you why: more and more international intelligence services are pulling out. And one of them is America. The United States CIA, NSA, they are saying, but hello, we’re sending you the documents. We are telling you where they are, we are warning you where they are coming from. In actual fact, we are telling you where they are coming from and where they’re going.
Chris, it is clear, we’ve had that. And what we are doing is we are either ignoring it, we cannot read it, we cannot understand it, or we are told to block it. So there you are. It’s incompetence. It is a fact that there’s a brain drain, and thirdly, here we go again. I think it’s leadership. And that rots from the head.
Chris Steyn (17:49.924)
Neil, lastly, let’s take a turn in KwaZulu-Natal where the fight against crime has the bodies piling up.
Neil De Beer (17:57.982)
Yeah, I’m very clear. So I’m going to give you a synopsis, if I can just quickly, you know, my brain’s going a little bit booboo because I’m old and I want to read you something if I may. So that I don’t get it wrong and I’ve got three thousand four hundred fifty two million nine hundred sixty three ringing saying Jy het dit verkeerd. So I’m going to read it. May I?
Chris Steyn (18:17.732)
Yes, please.
Neil De Beer (18:18.622)
Section 49 of the South African Criminal Procedure Act 51, and here’s the important thing, 1977, provides police officers with legal justification to use force in carrying out arrests and includes the rules governing the degree of force to be used, and here’s the caveat, as well as the circumstances in which such force may be employed. Chris, it is very clear that in 1977, I don’t think the fathers that wrote Section 49 ever thought that thugs, domestic terror groups and evil would actually be fighting our police with AK-47s, would be fighting them with stolen R4 and R4 carbines, would be shooting at our police with AR-15s, rocket launchers and the doubling of one or two hand grenades.
Surely in 1977 when they spoke about the guideline of police and their force implementation, never knew this. So number one, I think that this act must be reviewed ASAP because what we see today is specifically in KZN, people being shot to death, now they’re going why? Well, I’ll tell you why. You pick up a carbine, you pick up a weapon that is used in war, either an AK or an automatic, and you pull that trigger on a policeman. The only thing that I can warrant on you is death. Now, we don’t want to shoot you. We really want to let you have your day in court. But the question is, you firing on the authority that is supposed to protect our people, you are not giving us our day in court.
Neil De Beer (20:29.598)
So I’ll make it very clear. The escalation of force, the usage of force is guaranteed in the Section 49. And now people are saying, well, let’s get to the do it. They’re killing so many. Yes. And from a Neil de Beer perspective, we are not killing enough. Now we’re going to lose people. We are not defending ourselves enough. So there’s a possible leadership here. We can see it in KZN where the Provincial Commissioner has got up and said, no, no, we will use the full extent of Section 49, where you have to make the choice of shoot, don’t shoot. And I wish that every other province and no, Chris, no, I’m not being inhuman. I’m not being nasty. I’m just saying if a decision is made by a criminal element in this country, by picking up a gun and pointing it either at police or the citizenry of this country, you must blow them away. Because then we will find that there might be a course where people will understand you have the right to life, you have the right to live, and you have the right to protect yourself and your family. So I’m not condoning it. I’m not saying it’s fine. But I’m telling you now, in KZN that in people are thinking twice, picking up a gun now and shooting at the police.
Chris Steyn (21:56.908)
Indeed, thank you. That was Neil de Beer, the President of United Independent Movement, taking BizNews viewers through another eventful week of politics and the fight against crime. Thank you, Neil, and I am Chris Steyn.
Read also:
