19 May 2019

Leaders depend on the advice of intelligence practitioners to make informed decisions in the quest to develop their nations under a peaceful environment, Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DIS) director general Brigadier Peter Magosi has said.

Speaking at the Committee of Intelligence and Security Services of Africa (CISSA) Southern Africa regional meeting, Brigadier Magosi, who is also the committee’s chairperson in the region, pointed out that intelligence practitioners derived their credibility from maintaining professionalism, the covenant of objectivity and the duty to serve their citizens.

About the meeting, which was held in Gaborone, he said it came at an opportune time when the whole region was going through comparable challenges among them diminishing natural resources, continuous drought, threats to human security, transnational organised crime and other emerging threats.

“I hope my colleagues will agree with me that finding solutions to tackling these security challenges is a priority for all member services,” Brigadier Magosi said.

He said the meeting had served its purpose of adopting a collaborative approach to finding solutions to common threats as well as embracing diversity in the search for knowledge, facts and truth.

For his part, CISSA executive secretary’s representative Mr Bons Abambora said the occurrence of conflict of resources was inevitable.

He said the workshop, which followed the meeting, was aimed at discussing the prevention of  preventable conflicts as well as the management, mitigation and resolution of those which were avoidable.

According to Mr Abambora, the core responsibilities of intelligence professionals were to pick up early warning signs of possible conflicts before they erupted and to provide predictive intelligence to policy makers to enable them to implement preventative measures. ENDS