Abstract
This article uses the recent cyber attack on one of South Africa’s largest financial institutions
Liberty Holdings as an entry point to illustrate the challenge of cybercrime for the boardrooms
of big capital in South Africa. This breach reinforces arguments raised for enhancing the
state’s capacity to police cybercrime. Against this backdrop, the article reflects on the debate
around the policing of cybercrime in South Africa, highlighting arguments that the way in
which the state attempts to deal with this growing problem has also created fears of the
emergence of a surveillance state with unfettered powers lodged in intelligence agencies. This
debate has been sharpened by recent exposés of the corruption seemingly endemic to South
African intelligence services, revelations that some of its leading personnel were
gerrymandered to settle internal battles within the ruling African National Congress (ANC),
and more shocking, the allegation that a key agency tasked with providing IT to the country’s
entire public service might have been captured by one supplier.