South African Secret Service

The South African Secret Service (SASS) is a South African intelligence agency. It is responsible for all non-military foreign intelligence and for counterintelligence within the Service itself. It is also responsible for gathering, correlating, evaluating and analyzing this intelligence. The Service is run by a Director-General, who is also a member of the National Intelligence Co-Ordinating Committee (NICOC), to which he reports. The service performs intelligence at the request of the President and the Minister of State Security.

History
The SASS was formed in 1995 following South African first multiracial elections. It was created to take over the foreign intelligence functions of the now-defunct National Intelligence Service (NIS), with the domestic intelligence responsibilities taken up by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). Both the SASS and NIA were created as part of the Intelligence Act of 1994.

Current status
Unsurprisingly, the Service is extremely secretive about its operations, and thus few details reach the public. However, when taking current South African policy and concerns into account, it appears the attentions of the SASS are currently focused on two main areas: The activities of Al-Qaeda and similar groups abroad in relation to South Africa's security, and the activities of illegal South African mercenaries, most especially in parts of Africa and Iraq. The South African Secret Service is one of the elite intelligence organisations in Africa; another is the State Security Service in Nigeria.