Listen here.On the latest NdB Sunday Show, Chris Steyn asks veteran intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman why South Africa’s intelligence agencies do not seem to intervene when they become aware of corruption and other criminal activity in official ranks. She says “the whole national analysis capacity has been diluted to the extent that it's non-existent” - and even if that should be available, such intelligence would likely just be pushed in a direction or ignored…The ANC has a laager mentality…They close ranks like it happens with ZanuPF, like it happens with Frelimo. And what happens in that laager, stays within that laager.” As for corrupt and sexually deviant officials being vulnerable to recruitment from foreign intelligence agencies, Opperman says: “Already recruited...if you start talking about the leaking of intelligence, I would love to know how many of them…that raw intelligence reports are leaking at the speed of light, that it's being given to Iran to BRICS countries…this is a probability”. Another “red light” is the Presidency’s grip on intelligence. “If you…see how many of those issues are being run directly from the Presidency. That's a serious issue. It's not right. Something is wrong here: a president cannot run the country out of this office on all these issues.” Opperman also gives an update on the ransom demand for the South African and others kidnapped by ISIS in Mozambique, as well as the 11 Iran-SA-Hamas crypto wallets..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 every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.182)Welcome to the NdB Sunday Show with me Chris Steyn and intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman of Fulcrum Analytics. Welcome back, Jasmine.Jasmine Opperman (00:12.056)Good morning, Chris, and good morning to your viewers. And thank you for having me back. It's really an honour.Chris Steyn (00:16.968)You're welcome. I've had such feedback from people from the intelligence community about what a brilliant analyst you are. So thank you for making time.Jasmine Opperman (00:25.614)Humbled and appreciated.Chris Steyn (00:28.712)What can you tell us about the ransom being demanded by ISIS in Mozambique for the ten people they kidnapped, including one South African?Jasmine Opperman (00:40.91)Chris, I think we must just see this in a broader context. There's a lot of focus now on this kidnapping that has taken place because of the expats that have been taken. And just to your viewers, I'm sharing the latest information that is available, is that there were five South Africans in the camp when the attack took place. Two of them are back in South Africa. Two in Mozambique safe and sound. As you know, the one was captured. The other one is Zimbabwean. And then there were kids taken and other Mozambicans taken as well. Numbers differ, but in a war context, because this is what it is, numbers will always be a problem. But we're looking at 10, 11. We do know that the Zimbabwean consulate has already reached out to the insurgents to negotiate and try to get the Zimbabwean out. There has been no reaching out from the South African embassy in Mozambique.Chris Steyn (01:51.454)Just recap the details of that attack for us on the hunting lodge in Niassa.Jasmine Opperman (01:57.773)Okay, interesting July, August, we started picking up a group of about, and here we go numbers again, please don't see this as a dead count, about 115 insurgents moving…back northwards because of the pressure that was being put on them. But it's quite clear then that there was a group that split off and went back into Niassa. We're looking at 30 to 50 of them. They then executed the attack. They burned, the first thing they went to, Communication Tower…And then they went for the hunting facilities available, the medical facilities available, police station available, destroyed that. And we remember it's this hunting season in Niassa. It was economically a big advantage for the Mozambicans at that point in time, or still is, because there were quite a few of them. They took about, and again, let's say 10 to 14 vehicles. Interestingly, most of them were found as the insurgents started fleeing back…, but they just left them. They didn't destroy them.And so where they are now exactly, Chris, I do not know. Are they moving? Yes, they will keep on moving. And this is the thing about the Islamic State in Mozambique. We must realize that it is a recognised affiliate of the Islamic State. It is not a bunch of criminals. It is not hooligans going out. These people have a loyalty to the Salafist extremist point of view. And you can see that in attacks down the coastline when they engage the communities and how they do it. So they, and I think what this attack has shown us,Jasmine Opperman (04:12.852…is that it was an opportunistic attack. In the claims to credit, there were no references made to the expats or the people taken. That means ransom was not the main issue. It was food, it was supplies, and it was them on the move because of the security force activities. And that is the reason, because Niassa has been attacked previously. And I will not go through all the details. I don't want to overload your people. But I mean in 2025, we have seen an…attack, one of the most violent attacks where two people were beheaded. In 2021, we saw a series of attacks. And this is the thing with Niassa. It is not an expansion of the insurgency. It's always been part of the insurgency as an escape, as a pullback. And I think we must be careful not to blow this out of proportion. Yes, expats were taken, but it was the opportunity during the attack that allowed them to take the expats.Chris Steyn (05:24.021)So they're using the opportunity now to ask for ransom. Do we know what kind of ransom demand/ demands are being made?Jasmine Opperman (05:28.974)No, I've tried to get, I knew that questions were going to come. I can just say to you, if one looks at kidnapping since 2025, there has been a sharp increase in kidnapping. It makes about, roughly speaking, 10% of the income, because usually they take locals. So it's not, it's $20 to $50 that they ask. In 2021, a Portuguese guy was taken, and they asked for a million dollars for him, but the government and the security forces intervened, and it was never paid. They do target fishing vessels because you know the communities on the coastline, they're dependent on fishing, but the money they're making from it is not the mainstream of income. With the Islamic State, they…in Puntland, Somalia, have a very specific way of paying their affiliates that's linked to the attacks. The moment the attacks go down, the money goes down. We had the US coming in recently and bombed the Hell out of them, if I may use that word. And I think that caused a bit of a disruption. But I can recall in DRC the Islamic State…was silent for quite a while and they got a message from ISIS, pick up your attacks or we cut funding and immediately it increased. So we must remember that the funding is a structured process within ISIS. Now how does this funding take place? Mobile networks. So what you have is you have collaborators in urban centres, the money gets paid in there: they go for it via their cell phones, draw the money and then gets it back to the insurgent. So it's not that the money is getting paid directly to this decentralised group in Cabo Delgado.Chris Steyn (07:38.773)There's also been a sharp increase in kidnappings in South Africa. Do you know whether…and in fact multi million ransom payouts have been made? Do you know whether any of those can be linked to terror funding?Jasmine Opperman (07:56.303)Like I said to you in the last talk, the way for the Islamists in South Africa has always been organised crime. If you look at Abbadiga, and we know the whole saga behind him, the questions that remain unanswered, that he was involved in the Ethiopian syndicate, that he was involved in vehicle hijackings, criminal, that funds some of these organised crime syndicates and their funding can end up with terror groups, highly probable. Do I have the effects to substantiate that? I'm looking at a degree of probability. But yes, it is probable.Chris Steyn (08:36.031)Last time we spoke, you revealed eleven cryptocurrency wallets that are being used to funnel money to Hamas via South Africa. Has there been any movement on those wallets or accounts?Jasmine Opperman (08:54.35)You had to ask that question? Yes, there has. Let me put it to you that way. I'm not willing to go public and to talk about that, but guaranteed that your interview did draw attention from the people that can do something about it. And it's my obligation as a terrorist analyst to fight them at all costs. There has been movement, yes, to the better.Chris Steyn (09:21.749)How long have you been in intelligence, Jaspine? What decades? How many years?Jasmine Opperman (09:27.586)I'm giving away my age. I was in the State Security Agency, went to the Eastern Cape, and then the CIA, FBI had this AS Desai… I don't know if you can recall that whole issue. He's an Al-Qaeda member. What is he doing in South Africa? So I said to my provincial head, let's go and see. Let's go and visit him. And we visited him frequently. The most awesome library, here’s this man sitting writing his … his interpretation, and then the next thing linked to a Greenfields training camp in PE that we investigated. And at the end of the day, we said to the CIA and to the FBI, as a State Security Agency, at that time, the National Intelligence Agency, there is simply no evidence, but that's where it started. But when I left the... And when I went into the covert structures in the National Intelligence Agency under the lead of Arthur Fraser - and what a brilliant leader he was at that time - he gave me terrorism to work. He allowed me all the freedom, and that's where I set up my networks, I left, got involved with terrorism research and analysis consortium, and here I am today. How many years later? Here I am.Chris Steyn (11:08.665)Giving us the benefit of your research. I have a question, Jasmine. Even though the State Security Agency is not the best, surely they must have knowledge of which cabinet ministers are corrupt, which officials are paedophiles. What do they do with that intelligence? Do they just say, okay, and sit on it?Jasmine Opperman (11:13.966)Mmm.Jasmine Opperman (11:34.383)You will see I'm now taking care to answer the question, the reason being you have to be in there but what I can tell you and this is my hypothesis, okay, if you don't have a set analysis structure in an intelligence service, you have nothing. If you rely on raw source reports from contacts that you know personally, that allows the door for manipulation.And I am still stunned that the whole national analysis capacity has been diluted to the extent that it's non-existent. So even if that should be available, even if it should be available, I think it will just be pushed in a direction or be ignored. And I'm not saying it's the case, but I think it is the most likely scenario at play because it's as easy as going back to the cases of what I do know. That case that came to nothing…while there were clear indications of clear links and all we wanted was due process. The Thulsie case, delayed for so many years. So Chris, what I can say to you, for me the question is not do they have the intelligence. Let's call it intelligence, that is what they do. The mechanism to share that I think is not at play.When you talk to people…, any foreign embassy, especially in the Western world, they keep on saying, we are not getting cooperation. You cannot fight extremism, terrorism in isolation. Cabo Delgado is the same. There were five, six French teenagers that wanted to join the Islamic State, Mozambique. Fortunately, they were stopped in France. So it's not...Jasmine Opperman (13:39.257)…that it's an isolated thing happening because the people of Cabo Delgado are poor and socioeconomic deprivation, nonsense. That is linear thinking. There is much more to play if you look at any insurgency. What is interesting, if I may, Chris, and I'm going around Cape Town again. The Cabo Delgado insurgency has a unique characteristic. If you look at terrorism on Africa as a continent, it expands. It continually expands. You go to Mali, Benin, Guinea, and so on… they keep on pushing it. They keep on pushing out. Not in Cabo Delgado. It's not pushing out. Yes, they move down…but then they move back.We had at one stage…killed in 2000, either 2021, 2022 by the security forces, where he was static. He did not move, and that was shared, and nothing was done. And he was there for three, four days, ideal opportunity. 2020, 2021, high point of the insurgency… They were in full control. Their government missed a great opportunity. And that's why I'm asking certain questions. I'm not going to go into conspiracy theory. That's where the whole Total issue came from. The DAG choppers. It was not part of their mission to get involved. They did it on their own. They moved in and tried to save lives. If Total allowed them to use their space, their landing to get fuel,Jasmine Opperman (15:31.033)…we could have saved so many more lives. So you sit with so many variables in this insurgency. You cannot see it only as an economic issue. The LNG sector, the promises that were made to the local communities. You sit with the Mapandis, the Mwani, the two main ethnic groups that are playing a crucial role in this insurgency. We cannot ignore it. But it is as if Cabo Delgado is up north. It's interesting, Chris, if you go to more south of Pemba and you start talking to people about the insurgency, they say, no, we don't talk about it. We don't know about it. It is as if there is a complete clamp down on this discussion the further south you go. So if you're going to start asking about our intelligence service, and what's happening there. I hope I've answered the question to the best of my ability. I have similar questions when it comes to Cabo Delgado.Chris Steyn (16:38.687)So with this broken chain, there's a link missing between the intelligence agencies receiving information and in some cases turning it into intelligence and not passing it on to people who can actually do something about it. Did I understand that correctly?Jasmine Opperman (16:58.484)Absolutely correctly. And I said, I think I said this the last time to you, so bear with me if I repeat myself. You must remember, as the intelligence service, you have the right, if you feel you're giving early warning and you ring that clock repeatedly and nothing gets done, you have the right to go to the Constitutional Court. It has not happened once in the history of our intelligence service.If you look, and please I'm not talking politics, I am no political analyst. If you look at this State of the Nation address by President Cyril Ramaphosa, and his national security review, just do yourself a favour and see how many of those issues are being run directly from the Presidency. That's a serious issue, Chris. It's not right. Something is wrong here. You can't, a president cannot run the country out of this office on all these issues. What's wrong with our structures? And I don't want to go into that debate because then I'm going to give you my opinions and not my analysis. But there the red lights are on for South Africa.Chris Steyn (18:20.533)But if you're just thinking about the corrupt politicians and the perverts, pervert officials, Jasmine, surely these constitute a threat to the state because foreign intelligence agencies can recruit those people by blackmailing them.Jasmine Opperman (18:38.252)Already recruited. Already recruited. How many ... I mean, if you start talking about the leaking of intelligence, I would love to know how many of them. Not that they would always have intelligence that foreign intelligence services do not know. I asked the question to a foreign intelligence service, and please let me be careful…And please, I'm no agent for a foreign intelligence service before the State Security Agency again jump on their chairs and tell you that I'm taking too many hormone tablets. If only they listened, if only they listened.Chris Steyn (19:09.429)Nor am I, Jasmine, a foreign spy, for the record, you know, I'm sure the hundred and seventy eight intelligence agencies that have investigated me have now come to that conclusion.Jasmine Opperman (19:21.67)We're in the same boat. Anyway, sorry, what was your question? Oh yeah, the foreign intelligence No.. that raw intelligence reports are leaking at the speed of light, that it's being given to Iran to BRICS countries - and I think the crucial problem in South Africa and I will go further and say this is a probabilityI don't want to sound like a political analyst, but I'm going to sound like one now. As if the concept of national interest has no meaning. Now if you start talking about national security, you have to understand national interest and national values. It is as if that simply does not exist.And this is why we find ourselves. …Let me give you an example. Christian, I'm a non-economist. That's why my credit card bill is thicker than the Bible. That was a joke. If you look at our relationships with Iran, why are our fuel prices going up like crazy? Shouldn't we get oil and have a stable fuel price? An economist maybe will have a different explanation. It does not make sense to me what is going on here. It's time to stop thinking about personal interest, political party interest. And the ANC has got a hell of a surprise coming. I was listening to an interview, a podcast the other day, where the panel said that the ANC, and they've been right with the previous election, will be lucky to get 40% in urban areas. Will that change South Africa? I don't think so. I think the one thing that can happen is the ANC-MK-EFF could move much closer, God forbid, but Jacob Zuma…Jasmine Opperman (21:19.116)He knows what he's doing. Don't underestimate him. We're talking politics, but anyway. But I think...Chris Steyn (21:25.659)You're free. You're free to do so.Jasmine Opperman (21:32.879)When people vote, it's not only that you're opposing someone, you're voting for a better alternative. And I think the party that can present the better alternative will be the party, because the ANC has proven. I mean, if you look, and I worked under Thabo Mbeki, you know that, Ronnie Kasrils, Barry Gilder, Sandy Africa, Wow, those were good. We worked. Weekends in and out. But we worked for a goal.Jasmine Opperman (22:07.487)And it's gone. It is as if it simply does not exist anymore. That passion...that Nelson Mandela bought and he did. He made a lot of mistakes. No one is perfect. He's just not there anymore. And that for me is sad in intelligence. I was involved in training for eight years. And I've always said to my students, if you joined us to become rich, leave. This is a calling. For long as people don't see it that way. And here I'm stating it as a fact, you will never be an intelligence officer. It's a calling in terms of protecting the Constitution and the national interest of our country, which I've diverted completely. Chris Steyn (23:00.959)No, not at all. It's very interesting. Jasmine, meanwhile, the Inspector General of Intelligence has been on suspension for a year. Who's watching the spies?Jasmine Opperman (23:14.628)Just repeat that.Chris Steyn (23:16.253)I say the Inspector General of Intelligence has been suspended for a whole year already. Is no one watching the spies? Or is there?Jasmine Opperman (23:27.16)Who's watching the spies? If you don't even have that in place, and that is crucial. You know, Chris, there's a perception. It was interesting in my time in the private sector, which I really enjoyed, admittedly, is when I walk in, oh, you're going to spy on us now? I said, no, I'm not here to spy on you. There's a perception of intelligence, accountability in a democracy like ours, a constitutional democracy like ours, an intelligence service remains accountable at all costs. You remember the RICA debate, listening to telephone conversations. It's a crucial source. You know what process…when I was in intelligence, what we had to go through before approval was granted. I remember with the - Jasmine, be careful what you say - I wanted two interceptions on police members. Something did not make sense. It was not approved. But at the end, there was a process. When you talk about sources, there's a source file that is secured, that has been updated and your source evaluations are updated, which is fundamental. If those accountability structures fall into disarray, intelligence will become rogueAnd can I go back to Abbadiga? And I don't have answers, Chris. I wish I had. I have serious concerns. In the Abbadiga case, the Special Forces, Military Intelligence. Do we really want to go back to that? Is this what is happening? Is bringing an Islamic State member back to South Africa? And I'm stating this as fact, with the knowledge of the South African government. My God, what's going on? Excuse to your audience for my...Jasmine Opperman (25:31.926)…language. My Mum will not be impressed with me but anyway something's wrong here it's wrong something's wrong hereChris Steyn (25:37.183)Quite with everything that's come out at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, is it a reasonable assumption that dangers and threats and dirty secrets of officials are simply being buried under the Official Secrets Act?Jasmine Opperman (26:01.742)Sorry, and we...Chris Steyn (26:04.137)Take your time.Jasmine Opperman (26:05.774)I don't want to give your audience speculation, disinformation. The ANC... May I be frank: I voted for Nelson Mandela. I voted for Thabo Mbeki. I worked under him as provincial head Eastern Cape. Ronnie Kasril, they believed in the Freedom Charter…Since then I have not voted. The ANC has a laager mentality … They close ranks like it happens with ZanuPF, like it happens with Frelimo. And what happens in that laager, stays within that laager.So yes, it's happening. I'm sorry, Chris, that's my experience.Chris Steyn (27:00.415)Thank you. That was intelligence analyst Jasmine Opperman of Fulcrum Analytics speaking to me, Chris Steyn, on the NdB Sunday Show. I was speechless there for a minute, Jasmine. Thank you.Jasmine Opperman (27:00.589)Mm.Jasmine Opperman (27:16.098)Thank you, Chris, and thank you to your listeners. I appreciate it.