Moe Shaik (born 1958 or 1959), also spelled Mo Shaik, is a South African civil servant, diplomat, businessman, and former intelligence operative who has been the South African High Commissioner to Canada since 2022. He 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.
During apartheid, Shaik practiced as an optometrist and worked in the underground structures of the African National Congress (ANC) in Natal province, reporting to Umkhonto weSizwe commander Jacob Zuma. He was known for his work in ANC intelligence, particularly as part of Operation Vula. In the post-apartheid period, he worked as a special adviser to Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Lindiwe Sisulu in the Ministry of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation.
Shaik was also a key political ally of Zuma, who was elected President in 2009 and appointed Shaik to lead the South African Secret Service in October 2009. He left the position in February 2012 due to his poor relationship with Siyabonga Cwele, Zuma's Minister of State Security.
Early life and education
Riaz "Moe" Shaik was born in 1958 or 1959 in Johannesburg, in the former Transvaal, and grew up in Durban in the former Natal province. His 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. He is one of six brothers: his elder brothers are Salim, Faisal, Schabir, and Yunus, and his younger brother is Chippy.
The 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. After matriculating, Shaik earned a Bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Durban-Westville, where he became involved in student politics and the Natal Indian Congress. He also received a Master's degree in optometry.
Early career
In the 1980s, Shaik practiced optometry in Durban while working secretly for the anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC). His brother Yunus recruited him into the ANC in the early 1980s, inducting him into an underground intelligence cell that reported to the ANC's southern command in Swaziland. Jacob Zuma was Shaik's direct superior in the chain of command of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK).
In 1985, Shaik and Yunus were arrested by the Security Branch of the South African Police; they were detained without trial under the Internal Security Act and were held in solitary confinement for nine months, during which Shaik said he was tortured by police officers. According to Shaik, he and Yunus had allowed themselves to be arrested in order to provide a decoy while MK commander Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim was smuggled across the South African border.
Some time in 1986 after his release, Shaik was visited at his optometry practice by a Security Branch officer who had met the Shaik brothers in jail and who offered to provide the ANC with access to confidential Security Branch files. In subsequent years, Shaik became the handler of the Security Branch double agent, who was nicknamed Nightingale, in an MK operation codenamed Operation Bible. Operation Bible was later incorporated into Operation Vula and while running it Shaik was sent by the ANC to receive intelligence training in East Germany. When the Security Branch uncovered Operation Vula in 1990, Shaik went underground and remained in hiding until South African President F. W. de Klerk indemnified all Vula operatives in 1991.
In the negotiations that ended apartheid, Shaik was a member of the ANC's delegation to the Convention for a Democratic South Africa. Ronnie Kasrils praised his contribution to the negotiations and to the security legislation drafted during the talks. In 1994, he was a member of the Transitional Executive Council and served on the sub-council on intelligence that restructured South Africa's intelligence services for the post-apartheid era.
Post-apartheid career
Until 1996, Shaik was the chief of the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, one of the most senior positions in the post-apartheid intelligence sector. He went on to serve as head of ministerial services in the Ministry of Intelligence Services and from 1997 as Deputy Coordinator of Intelligence Services.