How the CIA defeated Apartheid & placed the ANC in power
Date Posted: Thursday 08-Mar-2007
From International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Summer 1995:
A Diamond Is Forever: Mandela Triumphs, Buthelezi
and de Klerk Survive, and ANC on the U.S. Payroll
by Richard Cummings
Nelson Mandela is the president of South Africa, an event of
monumental significance in world history. This great personal
triumph is for him a vindication of his struggle. But now that the
South African elections are long past, the record must be set
straight about what really happened and why. The press has
concealed as much as it reported; ideologues of all stripes have
rushed around to rationalize their hypocrisies, and American
politicians have been spreading around largesse as if the money
were their own. That the results were so perfect, historically so
symmetrical, is rather remarkable.
But, those with power, or who are connected to it, do not want the
facts about the funding of the election to be known because it
would reveal a pattern of deception and control, both to influence
the outcome and to moderate the African National Congress. And
those on the radical left don't want it known that the ANC has
compromised itself by joining the list of organizations taking
money from the United States, because they think it will hurt the
cause of revolution. Everyone involved, across the ideological
spectrum, has therefore joined in a kind of game to cloud the minds
of outside observers.
Most hypocritical perhaps was the attempt to make a devil out of
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi by characterizing him as the tool of the
oppressors and an obstructionist in the transition to democracy.
His anomalous situation in post-apartheid South Africa led to
suggestions that he was an enemy of democracy, and the cause of
dissension that led to violence in an attempt to disrupt the
electoral process that black South Africans struggled for decades
to achieve. Chairman of the Inkatha Freedom Party and chief
minister of KwaZulu, this prince and descendant of Shaka Zulu was
then cast in the role of villain and reactionary. But it was not
always so.
ANC and the CP
The triumph of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress in
South Africa was, for many years, viewed in certain circles as an
extremely undesirable result. During the Cold War, the power of the
South African Communist Party in the ANC made the ANC unacceptable
as a holder of power in a post-apartheid South Africa. Yet, because
apartheid and the white supremacist Nationalist Party were anathema
to the rest of Africa, and because white racism fueled the
sentiments for communism among the black majority in South Africa,
a reliable black alternative to the ANC became essential. As Harry
Rositzke, the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in New
Delhi from 1957 to 1962, and coordinator of operations against
Communist parties abroad from 1962 until his retirement from the
CIA in 1970, wrote in 1977: "In Africa, an area of
primitive, unstable states, Soviet influence is substantial in
Somalia, Guinea, Nigeria, and Angola. The support of black
independence movements against the Rhodesian and South African
governments may extend that influence. The training of five
thousand African students each year in the Soviet and East European
universities is a direct investment in the future leadership of a
largely illiterate continent."1
Noting the "Chinese competition the Soviets face in ... the South
Africa liberation movements," Rositzke argued candidly for covert
action in the Third World: "Do we try to make a deal with
the leftists -- covertly at least to start? Do we take any covert
political action to ensure the continued supply of chrome from a
black Rhodesia that threatens to boycott its sale to the United
States if we do not withdraw our investments in South Africa?
However unlikely these scenarios, we cannot forecast what
will happen in the economic world to threaten our
prosperity."2
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http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=11102&