The Bureau for State Security (; also known as the Bureau of State Security (BOSS)) was the main South African state intelligence agency from 1969 to 1980. A high-budget and secretive institution, it reported directly to the Prime Minister on its broad national security mandate. Under this mandate, it was at the centre of the Apartheid state's domestic intelligence and foreign intelligence activities, including counterinsurgency efforts both inside South Africa and in neighbouring countries. Like other appendages of the Apartheid security forces, it has been implicated in human rights violations, political repression, and extra-judicial killings. For most of its existence, BOSS was headed by General Hendrik van den Bergh, who, while special Security Adviser to Prime Minister John Vorster, was instrumental in its establishment. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission saw BOSS as an artefact of the growing politicisation of the South African intelligence and security services, which had begun to dominate the state apparatus and which in turn had begun to be dominated by Vorster's office. Even as BOSS cooperated closely with other parts of the intelligence and security services – especially the South African Defence Force, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Security Branch of the South African Police – they were frequently locked in competition over power and resources. Van den Bergh resigned as Director-General in 1978 in the wake of the Muldergate scandal, and BOSS was renamed the Department of National Security. In the same year, Vorster was replaced by his Defence Minister, P.W. Botha, whose government pursued a protracted restructuring of the intelligence services, culminating in the replacement of the Department with the National Intelligence Service in 1980. Background Though BOSS was not formally established and legislated until May 1969, it is generally understood to have been operating from late 1968. It replaced the Republican Intelligence unit of the Security Branch of the South African Police. Under Minister of Justice John Vorster, Republican Intelligence and the police generally had benefitted from an expansion of their powers, through legislation such as the Sabotage Act of 1962 and the General Law Amendment Act of 1963, which allowed arbitrary arrest and detention. However, in the middle of 1968, the Cabinet approved the creation of a centralised security service. On 28 August 1968, Hendrik van den Bergh, the head of the Security Branch and Deputy Police Commissioner, was instructed to start planning the new organisation. On the 1 October,