Banking on liberation, bankrupting democracy
Monday, March 02, 2009 - 18:54, by Khadija SharifeThere is a reason Cope’s president will not reveal the details of the arms deal, a deal that will lock South Africa into servicing billions in debt over the next 20 years — the same deal that Lekota was in all probability privy to as former minister of defence and chief of intelligence of the ANC. It’s no secret that the arms deal lies at the root of the ANC’s crisis of integrity, a stain that should by all rights be transferred to Cope as an entity composed of people who were until recently, members of the ANC.*
Does Cope’s split symbolise a significant shift from the political culture of the ANC? Or does it reveal the ire of those who resent the manner in which the Zuma edifice managed to arrange facts — playing the victim card in a way that proved highly advantageous to his political career — while ensuring that the ANC understood the larger menace — Zuma’s threat to disclose all, should he go down.
It is alleged that Zuma was personally enriched by the arms deal, rigged to benefit certain suppliers. Zuma’s trump card is that the ANC as a whole allegedly was a beneficiary of the kickbacks, using the money, for example, to fund the elections of 1999 as MP Andrew “Mr Clean” Feinstein and others have claimed. This is why Zuma, it is claimed, believes he should not be singled out, and also why many ANC members believe he should be — the ANC allegedly did it for the “greater common good”, Zuma allegedly received funds for his personal enrichment.
Zuma is innocent until proven guilty — as he should be. But, if the trial is postponed until after Zuma is elected president, what are the chances of finding a judge with enough guts to convict the president, if guilty? If Zuma is guilty, will this inspire lawmakers to make distinct the blurred context of tithes in a world where political parties and politicians are often sustained on the side by corporate patrons?
Moreover, is South Africa a unique case?
Is it all that uncommon for governments of developing (read: exploited) regions to collaborate with arms companies in an attempt to generate funds? Transparency International states that 100% of arms deals are corrupt, accounting for 50% of global corruption. The Grimmet Report, prepared for US Congress, disclosed that more than 70% of all arms manufactured by governments and multinationals — or subsidised warrant agents of developed countries — were delivered to exploited countries such as Nigeria.
Were we to use Nigeria as an example, we could draw on the militarisation of the region as directly corresponding to the presence of natural capital such as oil and water, the vehicle used by the Nigerian government to oppress the nation and repress ground-up movements agitating for freedom.
In 2008, oil corporations including Chevron, Shell and Exxon-Mobile jointly invested $3,7-billion beefing up concessions. Since 1990, the population of people living on less than the proverbial dollar a day has increased by 10%; 70% of the population has been blessed with a life of extreme poverty (or simplicity if you would prefer, uncluttered by useless services like water and electricity). Nigeria supplies a minimum of 22% of US oil imports, and is on the verge of overtaking Saudi Arabia as the US’s geopolitical oil cushion. By paying for the limo and arming the parking lot, the US (and China and India and Malaysia) have expended their sphere of influence in Africa.
It is therefore important for us to contextualise the roots of the arms deal, a creaking, rust-bitten ladder extended by developed countries to bankrupt corrupt governments as a means of financially botoxing penniless state coffers, often sweetened by mythical offsets.
During an interview with Terry Crawford-Browne — anti-apartheid activist, economist, author and head of the Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR) I learned: “the arms deal goes right to the top in South Africa, and beyond to Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Helmut Kohl in England, France and Germany. Tony Yengeni and Jacob Zuma may have had [allegedly] ‘dirty fingers’ but they are only ’small fish’ in the saga”.
He went on to say, “because of the revolving door between BAE and the British government, Tony Blair was considered the number one salesman for BAE because the pressures he exerted on governments, including ours, to buy BAE warplanes we did not need”.
Blaire visited South Africa twice in 1999, allegedly to hasten the SA deal.
Note: Mirroring the South African connection is the notorious Al Yamamah arms deal, said to be the most lucrative deal in history, involving BAE and concluded by the British and Saudi governments. Characteristic of the arms industry, the Serious Fraud Office was effectively prevented from furthering investigations into the nature of the rigged and dirty dealings when Saudi Arabia threatened to shut off “intelligence sharing”.
The UK, led by Blair, pulled the plug on the case.
Robin Cook, the former Labour foreign secretary who opposed the sale of BAE equipment to countries with lethal human rights records stated: “I came to learn that the chairman of BAE appeared to have the key to the garden door to No 10. Certainly I never knew No 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to BAE.”
Wafic Said, the deniable facilitator of the deal stated: “The agent for British Aerospace (BAE) is the British government and the contract was a government to government project. King Fahd and Lady Thatcher were responsible. The big role was played by Lady Thatcher.”
The UK has insured all BAE deals; should Saudi Arabia collapse due to Middle Eastern attempts at democracy. The Al Yamamah deal kept BAE afloat via the Saudi’s $40-billion.
The Defence Review states that “deals with the ministry of defence tend to come wrapped in the Union flag”. BAE deals are underwritten by the British taxpayer via the ECGD (Export Credit Guarantee Department), and facilitated by the DESO (Defence Export Services Organisation).
BBC journalist Will Self described the intimate relations between BAE Systems chairperson Dick Evans and Tony Blair. “Dick got Blair to write a piece for the BAE SYSTEMS newsletter in the run-up to the 1997 election saying: ‘Winning exports is vital to the long-term success of Britain’s defence industry’.”
“In short, Blair, John Major and Margaret Thatcher were all in BAE’s pocket and they dress up British arms exports as the ‘national interest’ to create jobs and earn foreign exchange and rah-rah for England and the Queen! I would describe BAE as organised crime on a scale that makes the Mafia look like amateurs,” said Crawford-Browne.
What is the present value of the arms deal anyway?
The R30-billion figure was a thumbsuck rand equivalent at R6,25 per $1 back in 1998. There have been huge escalations since then, including foreign exchange losses, so with finance costs up to 20 years we are probably talking about R100-billion. It is very complicated to calculate this, but the National Treasury apparently has a computer model for this purpose. That’s the direct costs.
What was the state of our economy at the time?
In 1994, the ANC was forced to sell state-owned assets in order to pay off odious apartheid debts, — one of the historic compromises that Mbeki alluded too. This debt — demanded in full by commercial banks — was valued at R189,9-billion in 1994.
It should be noted that the IMF, et al, made odious loans as recent as 1982 in flagrant violation of the UN’s repeated calls to divest from South Africa. Professor Dennis Brutus, Mandela’s former cellmate on Robben Island and leading light in the Jubilee Movement, was told to keep quiet when he contested the legitimacy of apartheid debt.
And though South Africa was emancipated politically, this magic button — the right to vote — was diluted, constrained and undermined by the inherited economic structure of apartheid, as evidenced in the blanket amnesty granted to corporations that financed and facilitated the longevity of the apartheid regime. The latter has often been portrayed as one-dimensional in nature, a militarised state of pigmentocracy that has since been dismantled.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The purpose of apartheid is best understood when examined in light of the close ties to developed countries — beneficiaries of exploited natural capital, and multinationals that financially propped up the regime. Former prime minister John Voster once stated, “each bank loan, each new investment is another brick in the wall of our continued existence”.
These loans were extended by banks ranging from Chase Manhattan (JP Morgan) who led a consortium of 10 banks to invest a minimum of $40-million after the Sharpeville Massacres, Commerz Bank, estimated by the UN to have injected $870-million via 30 capitals loans over a six-year period, and Dresdner Bank AG, who invested more than $1,767-billion via 54 loans over a 30-year period. Barclays, also known as the colonial piggy bank, was highlighted by the United Nations as being responsible for “one of nine major loans to the SA government and its corporations, totaling $478-million”.
The Truth and Reconciliation Committee established by the state to redress wrongs committed during apartheid, conveniently allowed for these bankrollers — who have not yet requested amnesty nor offered reparations, to escape scrutiny.
Basil Hersov, former head of Barclays during the apartheid era, later acquisitioned in part by Anglo-American — labeled the pillar of apartheid in 1988 — even served on Mbeki’s economic advisory panel, while Chris Stals, apartheid’s central “banker”, was retained in his position of governor of the Reserve Bank. Ali Mazrui summarised South Africa’s political emancipation by stating, “black people [were told] to assume the crown of political power, and white people should retain the jewels of economic prosperity”.
Various class-action lawsuits instituted by civil-society groups such as Khulumani charged corporations such as Barclays with aiding and abetting apartheid via the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), have been blocked by the SA government under the guise of “interference”. Is such interference necessary given the SA government’s protection of said multinationals via the blanket amnesty, among other acts of legal fellatio? Never did these entities conceal their interest in South Africa, for example, Ford, suppliers of armed vehicles, openly said, “Why are we in South Africa? We would not be there were there not an opportunity to make a profit.”
Though Dullah Omar, the former Minister of Justice, gave his full support, his successor would nix it, later threatening to “get Khulumani by the jugular”.
This same minister would later represent the apartheid corporations in his capacity as an advocate.
According to an excerpt of an article, “the Minister of Justice was instructed by the US government to oppose lawsuits brought in the US against multinational corporations which allegedly benefited from apartheid, lawyer Michael Hausfeld has alleged.”
The US government classified multinational support of the apartheid regime as “constructive engagement”.
ATCA cases like that of Khulumani represent lifelines for the peoples of various countries from Nigeria, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire to Burma, who find no safety in courts situated on home ground against exploitative non-state entities collaborating with, and often sustaining, despotic third world governments.
These days, the South African economy is almost entirely controlled by foreign capital, much of which is speculative. This is not unknown to the corporations, nor is it incidental. As early as the 1980s, Mbeki wised up to the nature of “corporate democracy”, heading a delegation that began directly negotiating with corporations such as Anglo-American.
In 1985, Mbeki met with Anglo’s chairperson Gavin Relly in Zambia. Several years later, in 1988, Relly was quoted as saying that financial investment in apartheid SA generated a stabilising effect. Perhaps Mbeki understood that without a political platform from which to agitate for economic freedom, such a reality would not be realised.
Pigmentocratic apartheid may have ended, but as George Soros stated in Davos, “South Africa is in the hands of international capital”. Mandela would describe retirement as, “like being out of jail a second time”. The global financial architecture regulated by the World Bank, and IMF via loans, debts and structural adjustment, allows for the governments of developed countries to control and direct the extent and degree of development (maldevelopment and underdevelopment) of former colonies, while corporations dominate the free market by way of large portfolios, subsidies and export credits, and the overall power of oligopsonies.
This is the continuation of economic resource colonialism by other means. Yet it requires and has attained the full support of most comprador — or native regimes — from Equatorial Guinea to Angola. The latter have endorsed the inherited structures of colonialism — in the case of South Africa — apartheid. Each year the African continent experiences a loss of $20-billion to $28-billion in capital flight that remains largely unrecorded — a situation manufactured by developed countries on the receiving end of corrupt and criminal cross-border outflow. It must also be said that this form of economic iron-fisting centered on the plunder of the ecology did not begin with those we assume to be the first and last victims of colonialism …
Prior to the discovery of “new lands”, Europe enacted privatisation (enclosures), dispossession, exploitation of the commons and other instruments of organised state terror on their own populations by criminalising the displaced, while shipping abroad “malefactors” to work on British colonies. It was only when the slave trade proved profitable that whites were freed from the whip. Colonialism used race as a flammable mobilising tool, and so racism, packaging the newly discovered as barbaric peoples in need of civilising, was manufactured.
Even the formation of South Africa as a nation, initially composed of privatised portions of land granted by the Crown to pioneering corporate barons such as Cecil Rhodes, was rooted in the expropriation of resources. Cheap sources of labour were used for extracting wealth, which was then exported, unprocessed, for personal profit and the favour of the crown.
Colonialism — a system facilitating economic and ecological injustice, deliberately disassociated from its context — has created a fundamental gap in our thinking; a yawning chasm firmly entrenched in the dialectics of apartheid and the present legacy.
Is it even legal to peddle arms to a country mired in poverty?
Not so, said Crawford-Browne.
“Criterion eight of the EU Code requires consideration of the socioeconomic conditions in recipient countries. This was ignored and the economic absurdity was concocted that expenditure of R30-billion on armaments would translate into offsets worth R110-billion to create over 65 000 jobs, and this would provide economic stimulation.
“Offsets are internationally notorious as a scam promoted by the arms industry to fleece the taxpayers of both supplier and recipient countries.”
In 1998, advocate Anton Katz requested that Crawford-Browne, “take up the arms deal as important constitutional matter”.
A brief glimpse into the history of the deal reveals that as early as 1991, BAe approached Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) through the vehicle of Joe Modise, later to become Minister of Defence. Then there is the subject of Chris Hani, assassinated in 1993. Hani allegedly advocated a policy of demilitarisation, and was pegged by some as a potential future minister of defence.
This link between arms companies vying for the South African market and the murder of Chris Hani, was taken up by investigative journalist Evelyn Groenink. A summary of her book, prepared for the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) can be seen here. Groenink narrows the motives behind Hani’s assassination down to a few people, including Modise.
In 1993, Modise allegedly began negotiating with Victoria Buxton (allegedly connected to Barclay’s Buxton). The main loan agreement would later be concluded by, “Barclays Bank, British government and South African government: Loan Agreements for the BAe Fighter Aircraft Contracts.”
In his book Eye on the Money, Crawford-Browne writes, “The arms deal is interrelated with criminal activity on a significant scale. I filed an application asking the High Court to set aside the loan agreement signed by the Minister of Finance that gave effect to the arms deal. Collapse the loan agreements, I believed, and that would collapse the deal itself.”
In 2002, Trevor Manuel, signed an affidavit under oath claiming that the arms deal stood independent of the loan agreement.
Barclays would provide the largest of the loans for the arms deal — $3-billion — alongside Commerzbank of Germany and Societe Generale of France.
Covenant 21.16 of the main loan agreement between Barclays bank, the UK and SA government (for the purpose of BAe products) states: “The Republic of South Africa is … eligible to use the resources of the International Monetary Fund.’
Crawford-Browne writes: “The default clauses in the agreements filed in court confirmed that the Minister had ceded control over South Africa’s economic and financial policies to European banks and governments, and the International Monetary Fund.”
From afar, these issues appear to be nothing more than a crack, a single jagged black line extending across the canvas of our democracy; a somewhat worrying hitch, but nothing too pressing given the global state of affairs, and the current spirit of our pay-as-you-go political culture, to the detriment of the true heroes of the struggle and the wealth of talent in our government and political parties — all immobilised, imprisoned.
Are we truly liberated then, or do we just imagine ourselves to be, that we may sleep at night for a little while longer, safe from the kind of truths that require us to stand up once again and face the beast? And if we are forced to demand that these issues be raised come election time, will it reveal our democracy as a semi-banged-up tin can, with parties banking on a liberation we are still in the process of achieving?
* In an attempt to check some facts, I sent this article to the rainmaker and was informed that Dr Desai debated Lekota, raising this point, among others.
A brilliant speech!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7iywptHpn4
Khulumani: http://www.khulumani.net/
Does Cope’s split symbolise a significant shift from the political culture of the ANC? Or does it reveal the ire of those who resent the manner in which the Zuma edifice managed to arrange facts — playing the victim card in a way that proved highly advantageous to his political career — while ensuring that the ANC understood the larger menace — Zuma’s threat to disclose all, should he go down.
It is alleged that Zuma was personally enriched by the arms deal, rigged to benefit certain suppliers. Zuma’s trump card is that the ANC as a whole allegedly was a beneficiary of the kickbacks, using the money, for example, to fund the elections of 1999 as MP Andrew “Mr Clean” Feinstein and others have claimed. This is why Zuma, it is claimed, believes he should not be singled out, and also why many ANC members believe he should be — the ANC allegedly did it for the “greater common good”, Zuma allegedly received funds for his personal enrichment.
Zuma is innocent until proven guilty — as he should be. But, if the trial is postponed until after Zuma is elected president, what are the chances of finding a judge with enough guts to convict the president, if guilty? If Zuma is guilty, will this inspire lawmakers to make distinct the blurred context of tithes in a world where political parties and politicians are often sustained on the side by corporate patrons?
Moreover, is South Africa a unique case?
Is it all that uncommon for governments of developing (read: exploited) regions to collaborate with arms companies in an attempt to generate funds? Transparency International states that 100% of arms deals are corrupt, accounting for 50% of global corruption. The Grimmet Report, prepared for US Congress, disclosed that more than 70% of all arms manufactured by governments and multinationals — or subsidised warrant agents of developed countries — were delivered to exploited countries such as Nigeria.
Were we to use Nigeria as an example, we could draw on the militarisation of the region as directly corresponding to the presence of natural capital such as oil and water, the vehicle used by the Nigerian government to oppress the nation and repress ground-up movements agitating for freedom.
In 2008, oil corporations including Chevron, Shell and Exxon-Mobile jointly invested $3,7-billion beefing up concessions. Since 1990, the population of people living on less than the proverbial dollar a day has increased by 10%; 70% of the population has been blessed with a life of extreme poverty (or simplicity if you would prefer, uncluttered by useless services like water and electricity). Nigeria supplies a minimum of 22% of US oil imports, and is on the verge of overtaking Saudi Arabia as the US’s geopolitical oil cushion. By paying for the limo and arming the parking lot, the US (and China and India and Malaysia) have expended their sphere of influence in Africa.
It is therefore important for us to contextualise the roots of the arms deal, a creaking, rust-bitten ladder extended by developed countries to bankrupt corrupt governments as a means of financially botoxing penniless state coffers, often sweetened by mythical offsets.
During an interview with Terry Crawford-Browne — anti-apartheid activist, economist, author and head of the Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR) I learned: “the arms deal goes right to the top in South Africa, and beyond to Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Helmut Kohl in England, France and Germany. Tony Yengeni and Jacob Zuma may have had [allegedly] ‘dirty fingers’ but they are only ’small fish’ in the saga”.
He went on to say, “because of the revolving door between BAE and the British government, Tony Blair was considered the number one salesman for BAE because the pressures he exerted on governments, including ours, to buy BAE warplanes we did not need”.
Blaire visited South Africa twice in 1999, allegedly to hasten the SA deal.
Note: Mirroring the South African connection is the notorious Al Yamamah arms deal, said to be the most lucrative deal in history, involving BAE and concluded by the British and Saudi governments. Characteristic of the arms industry, the Serious Fraud Office was effectively prevented from furthering investigations into the nature of the rigged and dirty dealings when Saudi Arabia threatened to shut off “intelligence sharing”.
The UK, led by Blair, pulled the plug on the case.
Robin Cook, the former Labour foreign secretary who opposed the sale of BAE equipment to countries with lethal human rights records stated: “I came to learn that the chairman of BAE appeared to have the key to the garden door to No 10. Certainly I never knew No 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to BAE.”
Wafic Said, the deniable facilitator of the deal stated: “The agent for British Aerospace (BAE) is the British government and the contract was a government to government project. King Fahd and Lady Thatcher were responsible. The big role was played by Lady Thatcher.”
The UK has insured all BAE deals; should Saudi Arabia collapse due to Middle Eastern attempts at democracy. The Al Yamamah deal kept BAE afloat via the Saudi’s $40-billion.
The Defence Review states that “deals with the ministry of defence tend to come wrapped in the Union flag”. BAE deals are underwritten by the British taxpayer via the ECGD (Export Credit Guarantee Department), and facilitated by the DESO (Defence Export Services Organisation).
BBC journalist Will Self described the intimate relations between BAE Systems chairperson Dick Evans and Tony Blair. “Dick got Blair to write a piece for the BAE SYSTEMS newsletter in the run-up to the 1997 election saying: ‘Winning exports is vital to the long-term success of Britain’s defence industry’.”
“In short, Blair, John Major and Margaret Thatcher were all in BAE’s pocket and they dress up British arms exports as the ‘national interest’ to create jobs and earn foreign exchange and rah-rah for England and the Queen! I would describe BAE as organised crime on a scale that makes the Mafia look like amateurs,” said Crawford-Browne.
What is the present value of the arms deal anyway?
The R30-billion figure was a thumbsuck rand equivalent at R6,25 per $1 back in 1998. There have been huge escalations since then, including foreign exchange losses, so with finance costs up to 20 years we are probably talking about R100-billion. It is very complicated to calculate this, but the National Treasury apparently has a computer model for this purpose. That’s the direct costs.
What was the state of our economy at the time?
In 1994, the ANC was forced to sell state-owned assets in order to pay off odious apartheid debts, — one of the historic compromises that Mbeki alluded too. This debt — demanded in full by commercial banks — was valued at R189,9-billion in 1994.
It should be noted that the IMF, et al, made odious loans as recent as 1982 in flagrant violation of the UN’s repeated calls to divest from South Africa. Professor Dennis Brutus, Mandela’s former cellmate on Robben Island and leading light in the Jubilee Movement, was told to keep quiet when he contested the legitimacy of apartheid debt.
And though South Africa was emancipated politically, this magic button — the right to vote — was diluted, constrained and undermined by the inherited economic structure of apartheid, as evidenced in the blanket amnesty granted to corporations that financed and facilitated the longevity of the apartheid regime. The latter has often been portrayed as one-dimensional in nature, a militarised state of pigmentocracy that has since been dismantled.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The purpose of apartheid is best understood when examined in light of the close ties to developed countries — beneficiaries of exploited natural capital, and multinationals that financially propped up the regime. Former prime minister John Voster once stated, “each bank loan, each new investment is another brick in the wall of our continued existence”.
These loans were extended by banks ranging from Chase Manhattan (JP Morgan) who led a consortium of 10 banks to invest a minimum of $40-million after the Sharpeville Massacres, Commerz Bank, estimated by the UN to have injected $870-million via 30 capitals loans over a six-year period, and Dresdner Bank AG, who invested more than $1,767-billion via 54 loans over a 30-year period. Barclays, also known as the colonial piggy bank, was highlighted by the United Nations as being responsible for “one of nine major loans to the SA government and its corporations, totaling $478-million”.
The Truth and Reconciliation Committee established by the state to redress wrongs committed during apartheid, conveniently allowed for these bankrollers — who have not yet requested amnesty nor offered reparations, to escape scrutiny.
Basil Hersov, former head of Barclays during the apartheid era, later acquisitioned in part by Anglo-American — labeled the pillar of apartheid in 1988 — even served on Mbeki’s economic advisory panel, while Chris Stals, apartheid’s central “banker”, was retained in his position of governor of the Reserve Bank. Ali Mazrui summarised South Africa’s political emancipation by stating, “black people [were told] to assume the crown of political power, and white people should retain the jewels of economic prosperity”.
Various class-action lawsuits instituted by civil-society groups such as Khulumani charged corporations such as Barclays with aiding and abetting apartheid via the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), have been blocked by the SA government under the guise of “interference”. Is such interference necessary given the SA government’s protection of said multinationals via the blanket amnesty, among other acts of legal fellatio? Never did these entities conceal their interest in South Africa, for example, Ford, suppliers of armed vehicles, openly said, “Why are we in South Africa? We would not be there were there not an opportunity to make a profit.”
Though Dullah Omar, the former Minister of Justice, gave his full support, his successor would nix it, later threatening to “get Khulumani by the jugular”.
This same minister would later represent the apartheid corporations in his capacity as an advocate.
According to an excerpt of an article, “the Minister of Justice was instructed by the US government to oppose lawsuits brought in the US against multinational corporations which allegedly benefited from apartheid, lawyer Michael Hausfeld has alleged.”
The US government classified multinational support of the apartheid regime as “constructive engagement”.
ATCA cases like that of Khulumani represent lifelines for the peoples of various countries from Nigeria, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire to Burma, who find no safety in courts situated on home ground against exploitative non-state entities collaborating with, and often sustaining, despotic third world governments.
These days, the South African economy is almost entirely controlled by foreign capital, much of which is speculative. This is not unknown to the corporations, nor is it incidental. As early as the 1980s, Mbeki wised up to the nature of “corporate democracy”, heading a delegation that began directly negotiating with corporations such as Anglo-American.
In 1985, Mbeki met with Anglo’s chairperson Gavin Relly in Zambia. Several years later, in 1988, Relly was quoted as saying that financial investment in apartheid SA generated a stabilising effect. Perhaps Mbeki understood that without a political platform from which to agitate for economic freedom, such a reality would not be realised.
Pigmentocratic apartheid may have ended, but as George Soros stated in Davos, “South Africa is in the hands of international capital”. Mandela would describe retirement as, “like being out of jail a second time”. The global financial architecture regulated by the World Bank, and IMF via loans, debts and structural adjustment, allows for the governments of developed countries to control and direct the extent and degree of development (maldevelopment and underdevelopment) of former colonies, while corporations dominate the free market by way of large portfolios, subsidies and export credits, and the overall power of oligopsonies.
This is the continuation of economic resource colonialism by other means. Yet it requires and has attained the full support of most comprador — or native regimes — from Equatorial Guinea to Angola. The latter have endorsed the inherited structures of colonialism — in the case of South Africa — apartheid. Each year the African continent experiences a loss of $20-billion to $28-billion in capital flight that remains largely unrecorded — a situation manufactured by developed countries on the receiving end of corrupt and criminal cross-border outflow. It must also be said that this form of economic iron-fisting centered on the plunder of the ecology did not begin with those we assume to be the first and last victims of colonialism …
Prior to the discovery of “new lands”, Europe enacted privatisation (enclosures), dispossession, exploitation of the commons and other instruments of organised state terror on their own populations by criminalising the displaced, while shipping abroad “malefactors” to work on British colonies. It was only when the slave trade proved profitable that whites were freed from the whip. Colonialism used race as a flammable mobilising tool, and so racism, packaging the newly discovered as barbaric peoples in need of civilising, was manufactured.
Even the formation of South Africa as a nation, initially composed of privatised portions of land granted by the Crown to pioneering corporate barons such as Cecil Rhodes, was rooted in the expropriation of resources. Cheap sources of labour were used for extracting wealth, which was then exported, unprocessed, for personal profit and the favour of the crown.
Colonialism — a system facilitating economic and ecological injustice, deliberately disassociated from its context — has created a fundamental gap in our thinking; a yawning chasm firmly entrenched in the dialectics of apartheid and the present legacy.
Is it even legal to peddle arms to a country mired in poverty?
Not so, said Crawford-Browne.
“Criterion eight of the EU Code requires consideration of the socioeconomic conditions in recipient countries. This was ignored and the economic absurdity was concocted that expenditure of R30-billion on armaments would translate into offsets worth R110-billion to create over 65 000 jobs, and this would provide economic stimulation.
“Offsets are internationally notorious as a scam promoted by the arms industry to fleece the taxpayers of both supplier and recipient countries.”
In 1998, advocate Anton Katz requested that Crawford-Browne, “take up the arms deal as important constitutional matter”.
A brief glimpse into the history of the deal reveals that as early as 1991, BAe approached Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) through the vehicle of Joe Modise, later to become Minister of Defence. Then there is the subject of Chris Hani, assassinated in 1993. Hani allegedly advocated a policy of demilitarisation, and was pegged by some as a potential future minister of defence.
This link between arms companies vying for the South African market and the murder of Chris Hani, was taken up by investigative journalist Evelyn Groenink. A summary of her book, prepared for the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) can be seen here. Groenink narrows the motives behind Hani’s assassination down to a few people, including Modise.
In 1993, Modise allegedly began negotiating with Victoria Buxton (allegedly connected to Barclay’s Buxton). The main loan agreement would later be concluded by, “Barclays Bank, British government and South African government: Loan Agreements for the BAe Fighter Aircraft Contracts.”
In his book Eye on the Money, Crawford-Browne writes, “The arms deal is interrelated with criminal activity on a significant scale. I filed an application asking the High Court to set aside the loan agreement signed by the Minister of Finance that gave effect to the arms deal. Collapse the loan agreements, I believed, and that would collapse the deal itself.”
In 2002, Trevor Manuel, signed an affidavit under oath claiming that the arms deal stood independent of the loan agreement.
Barclays would provide the largest of the loans for the arms deal — $3-billion — alongside Commerzbank of Germany and Societe Generale of France.
Covenant 21.16 of the main loan agreement between Barclays bank, the UK and SA government (for the purpose of BAe products) states: “The Republic of South Africa is … eligible to use the resources of the International Monetary Fund.’
Crawford-Browne writes: “The default clauses in the agreements filed in court confirmed that the Minister had ceded control over South Africa’s economic and financial policies to European banks and governments, and the International Monetary Fund.”
From afar, these issues appear to be nothing more than a crack, a single jagged black line extending across the canvas of our democracy; a somewhat worrying hitch, but nothing too pressing given the global state of affairs, and the current spirit of our pay-as-you-go political culture, to the detriment of the true heroes of the struggle and the wealth of talent in our government and political parties — all immobilised, imprisoned.
Are we truly liberated then, or do we just imagine ourselves to be, that we may sleep at night for a little while longer, safe from the kind of truths that require us to stand up once again and face the beast? And if we are forced to demand that these issues be raised come election time, will it reveal our democracy as a semi-banged-up tin can, with parties banking on a liberation we are still in the process of achieving?
* In an attempt to check some facts, I sent this article to the rainmaker and was informed that Dr Desai debated Lekota, raising this point, among others.
A brilliant speech!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7iywptHpn4
Khulumani: http://www.khulumani.net/
Khadija Sharife
She likes to blog about politics, human rights and the environment in Africa, specifically relating to the nexus between conflict and exploitation of natural resources.
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5 Comments:
Dr Selim Y Gool writes:
"The Show Must Go On" ... (ABBA)
"We thank you for the contributions that you made ...", I think is the key to this conundrum above, for before you can have "Broad-Based Black-Elite-Enrichment" they must first be force-fed at the trough of Good Fortune, no doubt, to settle into their new Broad Band Roles. Yes, Folks, the new black South African kleptocracy are many things, but their appetites and their bulging bellies belie to F(st)ate of the Nation. Let's take a step back to the mid-1980s: Quito Quananvale, a small town in southern Angola, proved to be the nail_in_the coffin for the old SADF's military adventures in Africa; Thabo M. and the olde SACPs Central Committe (with JZ in the wings) was playing host to Afrikaaner and Brit/Yank Capitalists in exotic venues in Dakar and Lusaka (and where-else?), sipping choise vintage whiskey and smoking the Peace_Pipe ("Weed_of_another-Brand)"; Gorby's 'Perestroika' was intoducing "Omama-style" 'Change' and so on, while Yeltsin, then Putin, promoted themselves as the sponsors of the Russian Oil Oligarchy and New Mafiocracy in Moscow. And so it goes, Yesterdays' Communists are Todays' Capitalists and the "Show Must Go On" sing ABBA, "Money, Money, Money .... Its Not Funny!", eh?
by Dr Selim Y Gool
March 11th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
selcool writes:
For the REAL truth without any phoney reconcilliation, go to:
www.politicsweb.co.za
ANC constitutionalism and the death of Thami Zulu, part 2 »
ANC constitutionalism and the death of Thami Zulu, part 3 »
"Zuma’s missing years come to light" at www.thetimes.co.za, David Beresford, Published:Feb 22, 2009
http://politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=117498&sn=Detail Paul T. on the ANC's Quatro Prison Camps: http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/supplem/Hirson/Quadro.html also at: http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.PSAPRCA0007&pgs=&cookieSet=1 http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=118244&sn=Detail
Hilsen, selcool
March 12th, 2009 at 5:40 am
Dr Selim Gool writes:
Zulu proves an albatross around Zuma’s neck
Published:Mar 15, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NO COMMENT: ANC supporters hoist a Jacob Zuma banner in Cato Manor, Durban. An issue their hero probably won’t address on the election trail will be the death of Thami Zulu. Picture: RAJESH JANTILAL
It shocked many that in 1989 the security department could act with such impunity to hound to death a very senior official without having to give any account of its actions
‘Who killed my son, and why?’ — TZ’s father Philemon Ngwenya at the TRC
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Silence on death of MK commander speaks volumes, writes Paul Trewhela
There is very serious material in the public domain concerning Jacob Zuma — material that was published in the early ’90s, before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which Zuma has not addressed in any way.
The principal focus remains the murder in Lusaka, Zambia, of Thami Zulu (real name, Muziwakhe Ngwenya, also known as “TZ”) a former commander of Umkhonto weSizwe, the military wing of the ANC and the South African Communist Party in November 1989.
I discussed the matter in an article in October 1993, in a banned exile journal, Searchlight South Africa No 11, under the title “The dilemma of Albie Sachs: ANC constitutionalism and the death of Thami Zulu”.
The subject was also dealt with this month by one of South Africa’s most highly regarded journalists, Patrick Laurence, in an article in The Star, “Jacob Zuma and the trail of blood” (March 3).
Zuma has not responded publicly to this material, which appeared in print in South Africa in the early ’90s in different sources.
He similarly failed to respond to the pleas of Zulu’s parents, Philemon and Emily Ngwenya, both school teachers from Soweto, for information about the death of their son. Their request was repeated publicly in their testimony to the TRC on July 26 1996.
In an article by Paul Stober in the Weekly Mail, “The question remains: who killed Thami Zulu?” (October 23 1992), he wrote: “It is known that Zuma opposed Zulu’s appointment as commander of Natal MK operations in 1983 because he favoured a Natal-born candidate for the position.
‘‘Zulu was born and bred in Soweto. And by the time Zuma assumed the powerful position of head of ANC intelligence in the late 1980s, he was among those convinced that Zulu was a South African agent.”
Referring to the “persistent allegation that (then) assistant ANC secretary-general Zuma was involved” in the detention of Zulu for 17 months by its security department, Imbokodo (in which Zuma had been head of counter-intelligence), Stober reported that the ANC was treating the matter as “particularly sensitive”.
Stober noted that an ANC-appointed commission of inquiry into Zulu’s death, headed by Judge Albie Sachs “cleared him of being a state agent, and concluded that he died from unnatural causes. But it failed to answer the question: who killed Zulu?”
Stober wrote that there was a “reluctance to come clean” about Zulu’s death, which was being “noted by ordinary ANC members who fear a cover-up”.
Forensic laboratory analysis, he wrote, had “found traces of a deadly pesticide, diazinon” in Zulu’s blood.
“The poison had to have been administered during the five days between Zulu’s release from detention by Imbokodo and his death because it was a quick-acting drug.
‘‘For whatever reason, Zulu was poisoned, it is assumed.”
Prior to Stober’s article, the Weekly Mail and the Guardian (London) had already jointly reported on the likely involvement of the ANC in the murder of Zulu.
The article in the Weekly Mail, written by Phillip van Niekerk, is remarkable for its account of a very sharp, direct, personal criticism made by the late Chris Hani, the then chief of staff of MK, about the arrest, detention and death of Zulu.
Hani’s comments on this matter can only be read as an implied criticism of Zuma, the ranking head of ANC security in matters such as the arrest of Zulu.
There has never been any suggestion of direct involvement in this matter of Joe Nhlanhla or Sizakele Sigxashe, the other two heads of the ANC’s intelligence and security departments at the time, who had other responsibilities.
Hani’s words sounded a warning about the abuse of power by Imbokodo, as led by Zuma.
Van Niekerk wrote: “A suggestion has been made that there was rivalry between TZ and intelligence chief Zuma over control of Natal operations. The journal Southscan reported that Zulu ‘won the post (as head of Natal command) in the teeth of opposition from Zuma, who favoured a Natal-born candidate’.”
Van Niekerk added that Hani “apparently raised the issue of TZ’s detention at the level of the ANC’s national executive committee”.
He went on to quote Hani from what appeared to have been the outcome of a personal interview.
Van Niekerk quoted Hani as saying: “TZ’s detention was not discussed with us. Our response was one of bitterness and led to a straining of relations between the army and security.
“Security was very powerful — it had the powers of life and death. The death of TZ is an indictment of the methods we used against suspects, ignoring his track record and the views of those who worked with him closely.”
Van Niekerk reported further that, at the time of his release, Zulu feared he was going to be murdered.
This is exactly what appears to have happened.
Zulu’s friend, Ralph Mgijima (in whose house TZ was poisoned, while Mgijima himself was in hospital) told van Niekerk: “Thami did not want to go to a doctor because he said the intelligence guys were going to finish him off.”
Van Niekerk continued: “Despite being one of the most senior commanders of Umkhonto weSizwe, Zulu was given a lonely burial in Swaziland.
“The ANC only paid for the body to be moved from the government hospital to a funeral parlour in Zambia. The family had to foot the bill to move the body to Swaziland, where he was buried with few ANC comrades in attendance.
“A statement by Hani was read at the funeral eulogising TZ, saying ‘we will never forget your theoretical and practical contribution to our armed struggle’.”
The remarks by Hani, as quoted by Van Niekerk, are all the more remarkable since at the time Hani was general secretary of the SACP, chief of staff of MK and a member of the ANC’s national executive committee.
The reporting by Southscan, Van Niekerk and Stober is in accord with feelings of concern about the TZ matter, as described by Tsepo Sechaba in the still unrivalled study by him and Professor Stephen Ellis in James Currey’s book Comrades Against Apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party in Exile.
Sechaba was the ANC nom de guerre of Oyama Mabandla, who was the primary source for this book and a former “member of the ANC intelligence apparatus”. Mabandla’s perceptions about the opposition within Umkhonto weSizwe to TZ, by implication referring to Zuma, can be taken as representing the understanding of the matter from inside Imbokodo.
Mabandla, who subsequently trained in law at Columbia University, is chairman of the Vodacom group in South Africa and was deputy chief executive of South African Airways until 2004.
Mabandla and Ellis wrote that, although Zulu was a “senior commander of Umkhonto weSizwe and prominent in the party, there were those who disliked him”.
“The reasons for this dated back to his appointment to head the Natal underground machinery in 1983. ”
They add that “few in the ANC believe Zulu really was a spy, but blame his death on the excessive zeal of the ANC security apparatus”.
“It shocked many that in 1989 the security department could act with such impunity to hound to death a very senior official without having to give any account of its actions.”
In the following years, Zuma made no accounting to the TRC about the detention and death of Zulu, despite references to him in the public domain which indicated his at least formal responsibility as head of ANC counter-intelligence.
No amnesty was sought or granted.
Discussing the role of the intelligence department within the politics of the ANC, Ellis provided a considered conclusion in his academic paper on Imbokodo.
He wrote: “It was the specific contribution of the SACP during the years of its ascendancy. . . to introduce into the ANC. . . a direct input from the scientific Marxist-Leninist method.
“A Stalinist notion of the correct political and ideological education of soldiers spread to other parts of the ANC, and tended to penalise critical thought even among non-soldiers. In the hands of political commissars and zealous young security officers, persons suspected of failing to conform to this line were equated with security suspects.
“In the ANC, particularly after 1969, this gave to the practices of the security organ a coherent ideological justification.”
The failure, or rather, refusal, by Zuma, the ANC and the erstwhile leaders of the ANC, now leaders of the Congress of the People, to do a proper moral accounting for this crime, suggests there is a potential threat to civil liberties in the region should Zuma become president.
In the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a sailor is doomed forever to carry the curse of having killed a great sea bird, the albatross, for no good reason.
The death of Zulu may prove to be the albatross around Zuma’s neck.
The question repeated before the TRC in 1996 by Thami Zulu’s father, Philemon Ngwenya, is still hanging in the air: “Who killed my son, and why? Who killed my son, and why?” — Trewhela was a political prisoner in Local Prison, Pretoria, and in The Fort, Johannesburg, between 1964 and 1967, as a member of the South African Communist Party. He had previously been editor of the underground journal, Freedom Fighter, and co-editor of banned exile magazine, Searchlight South Africa
March 15th, 2009 at 5:13 am
selcool writes:
"This hypothesis of the key function of hidden, secret, state funding of the ANC has other explanatory advantages too. Mbeki was central to the arms deal, but has so far not been suspected of having derived personal corrupt advantage from it. As a politically-driven man, personal corruption of Mbeki is not a necessary factor in my interpretation of the arms deal, any more than it is a factor in understanding, say, Stalin, or Hitler, or many other politicians. But secret state funding in perpetuity of the ANC!
There one has a single thread uniting the arms deal, Imvume and the Eskom scandal with Mbeki, probably also with Mendi Msimang (as former Treasurer-General of the ANC: a possible source also of Mbeki’s extraordinary underlying connection to his failed Health Minister, Dr Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang, the wife of Mendi Msimang), and possibly also with the new deputy president of the ANC, Kgalema Motlanthe (through the Imvume deal). What may have been regarded as beyond the pale in that milieu in terms of personal self-enrichment may very well have been considered as a Right by Destiny on behalf of the ANC".
Paul Trewela (www.ever-fasternews.com)
Also relevant here is not the STATIC picture which Mbeki paints but the REAL situation as it is TODAY - the recently published PPI (price index) shows inflation to be into double digits already (over 10%+), and this is before the total costs of the power, fuel and food price increases are included - which hits the poor differentially greatly as they spend almost all their disponble incomes on these items; increases in the Reserve Banks repo rate (disconto or interest rate of borrowing) will hit the middle strata say they struggle to pay back loans on mortages, cars and other consumer durables ... and so on. So the Wizard of Oz spins his tales further - but check the picture in a few months time and no statistical sophistry will 'prove' that the poor have not borne the BRUNT of the Mbeki teams mismanagement of the levers of power! Who said you cannot lie with statistics or use these as political levers - we have seen this for a decade and still the Gini coefficient tells another story!”
Selcool [2008]
”During the French Revolution of 1789, the leaders of the sans coulottes (that is “without knickers” or crotchless panties, for the uninitiated) would cry out: “OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!” to the great approval of the underprivilegded and oppressed underclasses. I think that it is high time we here in the southern-most corner of Africa (”The Fingertip of Africa”) re-introduce this system of the guillottine, but then we should pick those ESCOM heads and Government bodies whose ‘heads should roll’ - any takers or any suggestions?"
Lets start with the Prince of Darkness him self - Alec Erwin
Minister of Minerals and Energy - Buyelwa Sonjica
ESCOM CEOs - Thulani Gcabashe (ex), Jacob Maroga (present)
Chariman of ECSOM -Vali Moosa (also ex- Minister of Environment and sexy pin-up boy for Wildlife and Environmental shoots)"
March 18th, 2009 at 14:39 pm
Dr Selim Y Gool writes:
More on 'Bra Joe' Modise, MK in exile and the Arms Deal:
"There was always a strong suspicion amongst MK operatives and ANC activists in exile that 'Bra Joe' Modise was a possible police informer. What IS known is that he was a member of the 'Spoiler's Gang' of Alexandra, which was in competition with the Msomi Gang. This is what R. W. Johnston [see below for book details] actually writes (p.27):" 'During the 1980s in Lusaka there were three recognizable groups in the ANC leadership' .... [according to Sibusiso Madlala, a senior MK operative] One was the Xhosas - Tambo, Mbeki, Nzo and Hani ... The next was the SACP lot - Moses Madhiba, Josiah Jele and Stephen Dlamini - all Zulus, plus of course, Slovo andHani. Finally, there was the Alexandra Township group - Joe Modise, Tom Nkobi, Nzo and Jele. They were lose shifting groups - Nzo, for example, was a member of all three'... Modise was the central figure, for he commanded the most resouirces and was the most feared. He was regarded by Madhiba, Hani and Slovo as a mere township thug - for Modise had been a member of the Spoilers, who had contested supremacy withinthe Alexandra Township of the 1950s with another gang, the Msomis ... As a Spoiler, Modise was thus one of the few blacks bold enough to pack a gun in the 1950s. He knew all the sheben queens and all the rackets. Inevitably, he also knew all the police, for there was often a symbiotic relationship between gangsters and police, with the latter taking a cut in return for turning a blind eye. (Only after Modise went into exile in 1962 did the police act to crush the Spoilers and Msomis.) .... Modise soon found himself swept up into the ANC . He became Mandela's bodyguard and a founder member of MK. By the early 1980s he was its commander, with Hani as commisar and Slovo in third position as chief of staff. [pps. 28-29]'["Hani and Slovo distrusted him and thought he was an informer for the Boers" said Madlala] They suspected him because they knew that all the township gangsters had police links but also there was a suspicious pattern. Whoever got into Bra Joe's way tended to get caught by the Boers' security police on their next mission. That was why Thami Zulu ["T.Z."] was poisoned by ANC Security - he was MK commander for Natal, reporting to Modise, and you couldn't but notice that all the Natal boys got rounded up by the security police in no time. They knew he had killed people himself, that he was completely ruthless and that he presided over mass torture and executions in the MK punishment camps like Quatro. In any case he was the only one from the Sotho group - he was actually a Tswana - in the whole leadership. That made him sort of untouchable. On top of that he maintained his own gang, so everyone thought that if you crossed him he could find a way to make you disappear. Maybe he'd get the Boers to do it, or MK, or his own gang - but one way or another you were a goner... [Tom] Nkobi [the ANC Treasurer] had been in the Spoilers with Joe and they were thick as thieves - well, they were thieves - with one another and with Alfred Nzo [General Secretary]. The ANC needed money and so it encouraged the stolen car racket and bank robberies - we use to call it 'repossessing' the cars and money .... In addition, as MK commander he had ANC intelligence reporting to him too.' It was not a pretty picture, but the ANC contained many things: principled heroism, Stalinist appartchicks and plain thuggery. The poisoning of Thami Zulu [ real name Muziwakhe Ngwenya, known as "TZ"] was not an isolated incident. [p.30] .... "The big question about Modise was whether, like so many in the ANC, he was actually a spy for the other side. Or other sides, for once an ANC activist had decided to pass intelligence to 'the Boers', it usually followedthat he was ready to make sinmilar deals with the CIA, MI5 etc. The evidence against Modise is overwhelming ... [p. 31] Everything about their life in exile and Modise's post-1994 career also suggests that Modise and Nkobi were both informants for the apartheid security police. Certainly, when I (R W Johnston) interviewed operatives of the old apartheid security police (some by then in Mbeki's employ), I found they universally agreed that Modise had been a police informer."Finally, [p.32] "... Modise threw all his weight behind Mbeki [after the ANC 1992 conference] - The resulting alliance between Mbeki and Modise was the pivot on whioch ANC politics turned"."
Quote from R W Johnson's new book: 'South Africa's Brave New World - The Beloved Country since the End of Apartheid', Allen lane/ imprint of Penguin Boks, London, 2009. Highly recommended!
April 15th, 2009 at 14:49 pm