19 Facts About Moe Shaik

Moe Shaik is a former chief of the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee and a former director of the foreign intelligence wing of the State Security Agency, at that time still called the South African Secret Service.

Moe Shaik was known for his work in ANC intelligence, particularly as part of Operation Vula.

Moe Shaik was a key political ally of Zuma, who was elected President in 2009 and appointed Moe Shaik to lead the South African Secret Service in October 2009.

Moe Shaik left the position in February 2012 due to his poor relationship with Siyabonga Cwele, Zuma's Minister of State Security.

Moe Shaik was born in 1958 or 1959 in Johannesburg, in the former Transvaal, and grew up in Durban in the former Natal province.

Moe Shaik's father, Lambie, was an upholsterer, a Muslim, and an Indian South African from Pietermaritzburg in Natal; his mother, Rabia, was half-white and died in a car accident when he was a child.

Moe Shaik is one of six brothers: his elder brothers are Salim, Faisal, Schabir, and Yunus, and his younger brother is Chippy.

The Moe Shaik brothers lived in a Coloured area of Durban but attended a school designated for Indians under the strict racial classifications of apartheid South Africa.

Some time in 1986 after his release, Moe Shaik was visited at his optometry practice by a Security Branch officer who had met the Moe Shaik brothers in jail and who offered to provide the ANC with access to confidential Security Branch files.

In subsequent years, Moe Shaik became the handler of the Security Branch double agent, who was nicknamed Nightingale, in an MK operation codenamed Operation Bible.

Until 1996, Moe Shaik was the chief of the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, one of the most senior positions in the post-apartheid intelligence sector.

Moe Shaik went on to serve as head of ministerial services in the Ministry of Intelligence Services and from 1997 as Deputy Coordinator of Intelligence Services.

Moe Shaik was widely identified as a personal friend, close associate, and political supporter of his former MK comrade Jacob Zuma during and after the latter's tenure as Deputy President of South Africa from 1999 to 2005.

The claim was found untrue by a specially appointed commission of inquiry, the Hefer Commission, and in 2020 Moe Shaik said that he regretted having made the allegation.

Moe Shaik served as chief executive of CorpAfrica, which managed the affairs of Schabir's company, Nkobi Group, during his trial.

The Democratic Alliance and the Freedom Front Plus, both opposition parties, condemned his appointment, primarily because of Moe Shaik's perceived political links to Zuma.

Moe Shaik resigned from the State Security Agency in February 2012, following months of reports that he had fallen out with Siyabonga Cwele, the Minister of State Security.

Moe Shaik confirmed this in 2019; he said that one source of tension had been Cwele's instruction to abort an intelligence investigation into the Gupta family, who later were widely suspected of involvement in state capture under Zuma's administration.

In 2020, Moe Shaik published an autobiography, The ANC Spy Bible: Surviving Across Enemy Lines, which he co-wrote with Mike Nicol.