I want to thank Mr Thula Bopela for his careful, lengthy setting out of the differences between us in his article, "Paul Trewhela should play the ball not the man" (Politicsweb, 19 October 2011).

Mr Bopela's article came in response to an earlier article by myself, "Tutu and the Dalai Lama: A reply to Thula Bopela" (Politicsweb, 9 October 2011). His response provides a step towards discussion of the distinction between the roles of state, government, political party and the individual in a democratic constitutional society, by comparison with a dictatorship in one form or another.

Mr Bopela is a retired, senior civil servant who had the crucial position of Head of Security at the National Assembly between 2005 and 2010. As he writes, not a single incident of security violation took place under his command. For this he deserves the respect and appreciation of the nation.

As a young man, he left South Africa to join his father and brother in the then Rhodesia in 1963. Soon afterwards he joined the banned African National Congress and its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), received military training at the Odessa Military Academy in the former Soviet Union, took an active part in MK's first significant military engagement in the Wankie area of then Rhodesia in 1967, and was captured and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted, and he served a lengthy term of imprisonment until Zimbabwean independence in 1979, when he was released.

Umkhonto we Sizwe: Fighting for a Divided People (Galago, Alberton, 2005) is Thula Bopela's autobiographical account, co-authored with his fellow MK colleague, Daluxolo Luthuli. It is one of the most important firsthand accounts of the exile period and the subsequent ending of the low-intensity civil war in KwaZulu-Natal, written from the position not of one of the celebrated political leaders but of a soldier in the ranks. It carries information not available anywhere else.

The crucial point of difference between us is not his or my or anyone else's "struggle credentials" (or lack of them).

What is at issue are two matters with direct bearing on that supreme political issue, the "distinction between the roles of state, government, political party and the individual in a democratic constitutional society, by comparison with a dictatorship".

I will approach these in reverse order from Mr Bopela's article, with the main aim not of scoring points against him but of trying to establish what should be the criterion governing the conduct of a state employee and what should not. There is a matter of principle here.

First point, then: What is the appropriate conduct of a civil servant, in relation to matters of partisan political conflict - the normal currency of life in a parliamentary democracy, as established in South Africa by the Interim Constitution of 1993 and the Constitution of 1996?

Mr Bopela's conduct in prevention of security violation at Parliament is not in dispute. Nor is the right of all members of the civil service to vote in elections.

The crux of the matter is whether a civil servant - especially a civil servant in an extremely sensitive post such as Head of Security at Parliament - should give public expression to party political opinions of a strongly partisan nature, while in office as a state official.

In his criticism of my article, Mr Bopela does not provide an adequate response to my criticism of his expression of political opinion while holding office as Head of Security at Parliament, as set out in my article of two and a half years ago, "Friend of Jacob Zuma: An abuse of Parliament?", posted on Politicsweb on 2 February 2009 (see here).

Mr Bopela's article on the Friends of Jacob Zuma website of 21 January 2009, posted on 15 December 2008 (in which he makes reference to "imperialists"and "counter-revolutionaries"), is titled "Why some people are turning on the party of the poor once they are through the door of opportunity". The concluding passage reads:

 "That is why we hear our leaders talking about 'counter-revolutionaries'. Julius Malema puts it even more strongly: 'We are prepared to kill for Zuma!' Although to many people Julius sounds like a mad young politician, he is not. He spends time with people like Gwede [Mantashe], Blade [Nzimande], Buti Manamela and Fikile Mbalula and he gets to know that the split in the ANC is being engineered, financed and masterminded from overseas capitals."

There then follows the identification of the author: "Thula Bopela is a Head: Security Management at Parliament, and member of the media & communications team for the ANC Jhb region."

The issue here is: Should the Head of Security at Parliament in a constitutional state make this kind of public statement, given that the post is financed out of the public pocket to protect every Member of Parliament, from whatever political party the voters of South Africa had chosen to send that person to Parliament?

The matter becomes even more explicit. How appropriate was it that the Mail&Guardian website should have published a letter by Mr Bopela on 17 October 2008 - still in post as Head of Security at the National Assembly - attacking by name a sitting MP, Mosiuoa "Terror" Lekota, one of the elected representatives he had been hired to protect? The heading to this contribution states: "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to."

Defence Minister of South Africa from June 1999 to September 2008, Mr Lekota continued in office as an MP until the general election in April 2009. It was during this time he was the subject of public criticism in the media by Mr Bopela, as Head of Security at Parliament.

Mr Bopela's article reads: "Mosiuoa ‘Terror' Lekota laments the departure of the current ANC leadership from the tenets of the Freedom Charter. ...Where does Lekota come from with this talk about the Freedom Charter? ...Those who differed from Mbeki were silenced by people like Lekota. Maybe he asked them whether babhadlile na? (were they of sound mind?), as he did with Zuma. If he is going to be the leader of the new organisation, we wish him strength, because he is going to need it. But we wonder whether ubhadlile na uTerror."

The point here is not the sentiments expressed by Mr Bopela. Suppose that these sentiments were justified 100 percent. That still leaves the question: should the Head of Security at Parliament issue any public political statement of this kind while in post, especially in relation to a sitting MP?

The real offender here, however, is not principally Mr Bopela. The problem is systemic, rather than personal.

The President of the Republic, the Speaker of the National Assembly, the secretary general of the ANC and, if necessary, the Constitutional Court should explain: can it be justified, in a non-dictatorship, for the Head of Security in Parliament to criticise verbally one of its elected members, in the manner of Mr Bopela's remarks about Mr Lekota?

Confusion over this issue threatens democracy, since it has the possibility of leading to a cross-over from Security at Parliament (in Mr Bopela's sense, of preventing security violations) to that of Securitate: the political police in Romania under President Nicolae Ceaucescu - for which the repression of dissenting political opinion is top priority.

With this institutionalised confusion of roles right in the heart of South Africa's Parliament, there is far too great scope for MPs coming to feel less - not more - secure in giving expression to the interests they are elected to represent.

My second point is that Mr Bopela's criticism of Archbishop Desmond Tutu follows the model of his attack on Mr Lekota, with the major difference that Mr Bopela is now no longer a salaried employee of Parliament.

In the recent article which initiated this phase of the discussion between us, Mr Bopela asked: "Who does the bishop really speak for?" (Politicsweb, 6 October 2011)

 My article, "Tutu and the Dalai Lama: A reply to Thula Bopela", was an attempt to clarify the Archbishop's right as a Christian leader and as a citizen to speak out as he did over the act of the government in refusing a visa to the Dalai Lama. The issue here concerns the right to free speech by the individual, in the exercise of criticism of perceived abuse of state power by the ruling party holding office as government.

In a democracy, any citizen has an absolute right to comment on the great affairs of the society. In the case of Archbishop Tutu, it is his right as an individual and it is his right (and duty) as a major representative of civil society, in particular of the community of believers he represents. He had every right, especially, to protest loudly in public about the refusal of a visa in a matter in which there were no security or criminal issues, and which he interpreted - with justice - as an abuse of constitutional government. Every other comment about Archbishop Tutu is beside the point. The question "Who does the bishop really speak for?" is provocative, and irrelevant.

There is no more crucial matter to be clarified in the public life of the society than that between state and the individual.

I must make one further correction to Mr Bopela's article this week.

Mr Bopela describes me as a "former editor of the ANC's newsletter Searchlight". This is incorrect. I was the editor of the MK underground newsletter, Freedom Fighter, inJohannesburg during the Rivonia Trial, which defended the military programme of the ANC and the SACP. Although I was detained and imprisoned as a member of the South African Communist Party between 1964 and 1967, I was very lucky that the security police did not find out about my role or that of my colleagues on Freedom Fighter. Text from four issues is reproduced on the Heart of Hope website (here).

The journal Searchlight South Africa, which was banned in South Africa, was published in London between 1988 and 1995 over 12 issues by my former prison colleague, Dr Baruch Hirson, and myself. (The final issue was published by Baruch Hirson alone). From February 1990, the journal included factual, first-hand essays on abuses in exile towards their own members carried out by the future governing parties of Namibia and South Africa.

These formed the basis for the core of my book, Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile Histories of the ANC and SWAPO (Jacana, 2009).

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