I am sure, at this moment, that my every email, my cellphone calls, everything . . . I am sure that they are all being recorded and noted by an intelligence agency.

Yet I am nothing in the general scheme of things. I am surely on a database somewhere, such that somebody in a distant unlit control room can type some keywords and all my past deeds will be revealed. But they will find that, actually, I am nothing. I am only a hero to my dogs, Tommy and Sophie.

I always feared and thought that intelligence agencies should be, well . . . intelligent. But I have in the past had evidence to the contrary. Once I was asked to assist with the security proofing of a boardroom for a parastatal. By this they wanted to make sure that no conversations could be heard outside the room, that it would be impossible to install bugging devices and similar requirements.

So I set to work and wrote a long specification of what had to be done and gave a list of contractors I would recommend for the work. My recommendations were swept aside. I had recommended certain types of glass and electromagnetic shielding, a specific way of wiring electrical circuits and Telkom lines and similar. My clients told me that all my specs were rubbish and that they would rather use their own consultant and contractor. I was invited to meet these parties, which I did. After an exchange of sentences, it was obvious to me that the consultant and contractor seemed to be only dimly aware that they were alive. In short, they were living proof that evolution can go backwards.

I tried to explain what I thought must be installed for good security against electromagnetic intrusions but all they cared about was the best way of making a door soundproof. It was like teaching an octopus to play the clarinet. So I gave up, left the client to get on with it and cast the memory from my mind – until the night of the State of the Nation address and the incident of the cellphone jamming. My incident with the challenged consultant and contractor had been forgotten but it all came rushing back. Surely, the South African intelligence service could not be that stupid!

Now I know you think I am referring to the actual jamming incident – the fact of it happening being stupid. I am not; what is stupid is how they did it. If you jam all communications, what you are telling your enemy is: “Your transmissions are being jammed.” This is not the way to do it. What you should do is create a jammer which emulates the ‘breaking up’ syndrome and the ‘dropped call’ syndrome.

So, there are the politicians, all in Parliament. They are furiously trying to communicate using their cellphones, iPads, iPods, satellite phones and two tins linked together with a piece of string (okay, I made that last bit up). What they find is that the signal breaks up all the time, that calls get dropped but can reconnect when redialled . . . in fact, all the issues which do happen with cellphones.

Now, which politician would ever dream that they were in fact being jammed under those circumstances? But no, evidently, the old bunch I met years ago were still in charge – they introduced a full jamming signal which the politicians notice and object to.

Further, on this topic, if you are in Cape Town, on the N2 highway, when the President is being taken to Parliament, you will know this since the traffic comes to a complete halt. The M3 is cleared of traffic. Then, after 20 minutes, the Presidential convoy goes past. I have often wondered about this. Is it not a bad idea to advertise the movements of a public figure so blatantly? By the time the N2 traffic has been reduced to a 6-km-long standstill, it is a bet that a large chunk of the public knows that the President will pass by shortly. Bad security? Well, yes. And probably the idea of the consultant and contractor of earlier years, now appointed to high office.