Apartheid, guns and money: book lifts the lid on Cold War secrets

A London bus displays anti-apartheid message at the height of South Africa’s isolation.
Flickr/rahuldlucca

It’s not very often that a book really reshapes our perception of an issue, but Hennie van Vuuren’s “Apartheid, Guns and Money: a tale of profit” is one. It is a massive work: over 600 pages and the result of a decade of meticulous, painstaking work.

From a modest office in a rundown suburb of Cape Town, Van Vuuren has been beavering away to probe into the stories that could never be told during the apartheid years. Formerly director at the Institute for Security Studies, he now runs Open Secrets, which peers into economic and human rights violations. This volume, first published in South African in 2017, is the result.

The extraordinary tale that Van Vuuren tells is how – as the South African state gradually became an international pariah and as the truth about apartheid became internationally known – it moved from a normal member of the world community to a covert operator. It began working in shady ways, through even more shady operators.

To ensure that it had access to arms and oil, Pretoria moved from legitimate to illegitimate trade; from overt to covert deals and from legal to illegal transactions. This was supported (or at least connived at) by many western powers. That the US, Britain and France did this has been known, or at least suspected, for many years. Van Vuuren fills in the blanks and gives us plenty of new information on this. Although shocking this is less than astonishing.

What is really novel is that he uncovers a completely new set of actors: the Chinese and the Soviet Union. In the past it has been assumed that, for the most part, they were completely wedded to the liberation movements. The support from Moscow and Beijing for the African National Congress and – to a lesser extent – the Pan Africanist Congress, was so widely reported that few suspected there might be less than total solidarity between the communist powers and the liberation movements.

Yes, there were the odd stories about the South African diamond giant – De Beers – being spotted at the ballet in Moscow doing deals with Russian diamond companies, but this was seen as a small aberration. After all, both countries wanted to keep up the prices of diamonds on international markets, so some kind of arrangement was perhaps inevitable.

But – if Van Vuuren is right – these relationships went far, far beyond the odd contact.

Mind-boggling complexity

Take one example: the voyage of the Pia Vesta, now a rusting hulk, lying off the coast of Venezuela. This vessel was, says Van Vuuren

once at the centre of one of the greatest arms heists of the 1980s involving socialist East Germany, South Africa, Peru, Panama, probably the CIA and a crafty French arms dealer by the name of Georges Starckmann.

The tale begins with a top secret minute of a meeting between the head of the South African Defence Force, Jannie Geldenhuys, and his senior officials in connection with operation “Daisy”. This was an attempt to recover $20 million that Starckmann had allegedly swindled out of the South Africans.

The story is of mind-boggling complexity, but involves Starckmann doing a deal with an East German firm called IMES, run by the East German deputy foreign minister with Stasi employees – members of the East German secret service. The result was an arrangement which involved 60 shipments of weapons to South Africa via a Danish shipping company. The shipments were to be trailed half way around the world to disguise their final destination.

These shipments were for vital military equipment, including 1,400 anti-tank missiles. The weapons, which had Peruvian end-user certificates, ended up off the coast of Panama where the ruler, General Noriega, had apparently given the green light for the operation. In the end the dictator reneged on the deal. When the Pia Vesta arrived in Panama on 14 June 1986 its crew was arrested and the vessel impounded. In 1989 General Noriega was ousted by the Americans.

How the ship ended up sunk off Venezuela is a bit of a mystery, but then, as Van Vuuren points out, so is much of this story. He concludes that South Africa’s state arms dealer, Armscor, was involved:

But for all the smoke and mirrors, one thing is as clear as day. There is more than sufficient evidence that Armscor bought arms from IMES, a Stasi-run East German company operating behind the Iron Curtain. During the Cold War, much was not as it seemed.

Nor was this an isolated incident. Van Vuuren says he has evidence that Armscor had a team of military experts working inside the Soviet Union with an office in Leningrad. So close was the relationship that when the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster took place in 1986, the Russians turned to South Africa for medical support.

The relationship with China

The relationship that the book portrays between South Africa and the Chinese is just as complex. It involves purchases of Chinese military equipment – everything from machine guns to missiles and rocket launchers – using Congolese companies as a front. Sometimes the shipments were destined for South Africa’s Angolan allies, UNITA, sometimes not.

Overall the book is a compelling and convincing narrative: our understanding of apartheid’s global supporters has been transformed.

“Apartheid, Guns and Money: a tale of profit” will be published by Hurst, 1 November 2018, Hardback: £25. pp. 620

Martin Plaut, Senior Research Fellow, Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Can the centre hold, or will South Africa get its own Bolsonaro?

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa faces the daunting task of fighting corruption and winning votes for his party.
GCIS

Present indications are that South African voters are not gearing up to “do a Brazil” in the face of a mounting economic crisis and high levels of corruption within the ruling party. Polls indicate that they are unlikely to
totally abandon the African National Congress (ANC), which has governed the country since the end of apartheid in 1994, for existing political alternatives.

The reasons are familiar. Although the ANC has lost prestige, ground and voter loyalty, many South Africans continue to cleave to their memories of its past virtues and hope for it to return to better ways. Furthermore, President Cyril Ramaphosa will make copious and not unconvincing promises of tackling corruption.

Meanwhile, although almost a decade of misrule by former President Jacob Zuma should have rebounded to the major advantage of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the leading opposition party has failed to convince. And, the long running fight with it mayor for Cape Town Patricia De Lille has made it look divided, poorly-led and tainted by racism. It’s unlikely to go much forward, even if it is unlikely that it will actually go backwards.

So, that effectively leaves the radical but smaller Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). But, the red berets continue to look more like a party of protest than a party seriously preparing to govern. And, while its leader Julius Malema’s populist charisma may appeal to a minority, especially the black youth, he continues to frighten the many. End of term report: continues to improve but should be doing better.

Ramaphosa’s daunting task

It wasn’t so long ago that predictions were being made that the 2019 election will result in the formation of a coalition. That continues to be a possibility, although the ANC’s experience at running an electoral campaign will more probably edge it above 50%. But if that is so, it only delays dealing with its problems, and South Africans are left to speculate about future possibilities.

One option is that, following an election victory, Ramaphosa will dispense with the Zuma hacks who continue to populate his cabinet and appoint an honest and capable team to lead the country, tackle corruption and put the economy back on track. It’s a scenario which the overwhelming mass of the population will support, and if he were to meet anything resembling a success, the ANC will reap the benefit.

However, the obstacles in the way of this path are formidable. Ramaphosa is already battling concerted fight-back by the Zuma crowd, and this is only the beginning. The looters, from the heights of the parastatals Eskom, the power utility, and Transnet, the transport utility, to the depths of the most miserable municipality in the country, will fight as hard and as dirty as they can to hang on to newly acquired wealth. And, there are enough crooked lawyers around to help them do it (all in the name of Black Economic Empowerment course).

In any case, increasingly the ANC has come to function as an extended patronage, jobs and cash machine. Hopefully, Ramaphosa and his team will prove capable of cleansing the upper reaches of the state. But, carrying the fight downwards, into the provinces and local government, will simultaneously mean reforming the ANC. That may well prove beyond the bounds of practical politics, especially given that Ramaphosa himself will need to maintain his support base for an attempt at a second term as president.

A more likely second option, therefore, is that even if Ramaphosa does a reasonably decent job, the economy will at best enjoy only slow rates of growth and improvement. Overall, it will do little more than limp along if not actually decline. Even with the best will and efforts in the world, turning the economy around so that it makes a serious dent in inequality, unemployment and poverty is going to prove a massive job. And it’s probably beyond a political party which, for all the appalling legacy of apartheid, itself bears heavy responsibility for the mess the country is in.

Future prospects

So, in coming years, the probability is high that South Africa will experience even higher levels of popular protest and class tensions than is happening at the moment.

How politicians respond to these, and how they are handled, matters hugely. On the one hand, they will offer opportunities for genuine renewal, for doing things in a more progressive and democratic way. On the other, they will offer opportunities for cynical exploitation of popular frustrations by tellers of untruths and sellers of snake-oil, wrapped up in radical language, probably with some charismatic prophet at their head.

Whether latter-type calls come from within or from outside the ANC South Africans will have to see. But they will probably be made by appealing to the dispossessed, impoverished masses in rhetoric which obscures the greedy interests of a frustrated, kleptocratic, Zuma-style bourgeoisie.

It is then that South Africans will have to face down the risk of a local Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil’s new president is threatening a lurch to political authoritarianism of the most brutal kind. This after a campaign in which he rode to power on an extreme right programme in which he questioned the most basic of democratic values.

Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

South Africa's new finance minister postpones tough decisions

South Africa’s Finance Minister Tito Mboweni must walk a fiscal tightrope.
GovernmentZA/Flickr

South African finance minister Tito Mboweni’s 2018 medium-term budget policy statement brought no surprises. Standing before the National Assembly on Wednesday 24 October, Mboweni presented the Natural Treasury’s fiscal policy and projections for the next three years.

The country’s economic growth has been officially revised down to 0.7% – it was at 1.5% in the Budget tabled in February by one of Mboweni’s predecessors, Malusi Gigaba. Revenue collection is lower than had been forecast. This all means that national debt levels will, again, be higher than projected.

In short, there’s very little tangible good news. That is to be expected. The economy and public finances have been in a poor state for some time. The current level of economic growth is below estimates of population growth, meaning that South Africans will have become poorer per person by the end of the year.

But with debt levels having repeatedly exceeded the levels previous ministers of finance had promised, numerous risks on the horizon and an election looming, there was relatively little room for Mboweni to manoeuvre.

What Mboweni and National Treasury have tried to do is to keep walking an increasingly thin tight-rope. This involves containing the growth in debt while not reducing government expenditure or increasing taxation to the point where it greatly harms economic growth or South Africans’ well-being.

Unless economic growth improves, the country will have to step off this tightrope. Either debt must be increased well beyond what had been planned, possibly leading to downgrades, higher borrowing costs and the associated consequences. Or expenditure will be cut and more taxes imposed – leading to immediate negative effects for citizens.

Public finances

One way that Treasury is trying to stay on the tightrope is by making use of other borrowing and spending capacity in the state. In particular, it’s looking to government’s development finance institutions such as the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Industrial Development Corporation and the Land Bank to use their borrowing and lending capacity.

The medium-term budget policy statement also argues that various municipalities have sufficiently reliable revenue streams to borrow and spend more than they currently do.

The Treasury has indicated in the policy statement that it hopes to keep tax rates at their current levels and not introduce new ones. One important exception will be at the forefront of many South Africans’ minds: increases to the cost of fuel, in this instance possible large increases in the Road Accident Fund levy, to address the massive accumulated liability in the Fund itself.

Last year the medium-term budget policy statement discussed risks to public finances, including possible further downgrades of debt by international rating agencies and the likely consequences. This year’s statement avoided such references – but some debt downgrades and their negative results remain a possibility.

Mboweni made it clear that one of the most serious risks to public finances is the perilous condition of state-owned enterprises. More than R9 billion is going to be given to South African Airways, SA Express and the Post Office in the current financial year to prop up their finances.

Beyond this, all he could do was express the hope that restructuring these and other state-owned entities means it could reduce the risk although he offered little detail about what “restructuring” actually means.

Even though he said that there should be “no holy cows”, it’s questionable whether structural shifts could really deal with the financial risks; in certain circumstances, restructuring could actually increase the state’s financial burden.

Reforming key state institutions in general is critical. But there will be little to show for that in the short term when it comes to public finances. In fact, in some instances, doing the right thing can lead to short-term costs.

Hints, but little detail

There were some suggestions in the statement of a sensible, “New Deal” way of thinking. These include the reallocation of existing funds to the Expanded Public Works Programme, clothing and textile industry support and faster-spending infrastructure programmes. But with such limited resources this is likely to only have a small positive effect.

And in parts, Mboweni provided too little or no detail. There remains inadequate information on the costs of providing “free higher education” as promised by former President Jacob Zuma to new entrants. This reflects the irresponsibility of committing to a blank cheque to university student funding at a time when public finances are under huge strain.

Politically, the cabinet will be hoping that local and global risks will be kept in check until the 2019 election. But if some of those materialise then the government could face the unenviable task of either presenting a very unpopular budget in February 2019, or allowing public finances to deteriorate to a concerning degree.

Seán Mfundza Muller, Senior Lecturer in Economics and Research Associate at the Public and Environmental Economics Research Centre (PEERC), University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Why Ramaphosa's "new dawn" will break slowly for South Africa's finances

South Africa’s Finance Minister Tito Mboweni must answer several big questions about the country’s economic plans.
Sebastiao Moreira

South Africa’s newly inducted finance minister, Tito Mboweni, will this week deliver the country’s 2018 medium-term budget policy statement setting out the government’s fiscal policy and projections for the next three years.

The medium-term budget comes at a time when South Africa’s economy is on a downward trajectory. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration is trying to deal with this in several ways. One is a “stimulus plan” to promote economic growth. Another was a recently convened “jobs summit” to identify ways of addressing the country’s high rates of unemployment.

In addition, commissions of inquiry have been instituted, or are underway, into the South African Revenue Service and the broader problems of state institutions that have been undermined and compromised by corruption. The Public Investment Corporation, which manages public sector pensions and is South Africa’s biggest fund manager, is also being investigated for alleged corruption and mismanagement.

Numerous other matters relating to critical sectors such as water, communications, transport and electricity are before various parliamentary committees.

Against this backdrop, Mboweni’s speech will reflect a harsh reality. The damage done during the preceding decade under president Jacob Zuma will have a negative effect on public finances and the economy for some time to come. Economic growth has been repeatedly below population growth for some time. The causes of this are such that the trajectory cannot be rapidly altered.

The “new dawn” promised by Ramaphosa’s administration will break slowly for South Africa’s public finances.

Dealing with the past

A year ago, when Zuma was still running the country, the destructive effects of his presidency were being keenly felt in the country’s budgeting process.

In the 2017 medium-term budget policy statement, economic growth and tax collection were forecast to be significantly lower than expected. As a result, national debt levels were forecast to rise rapidly. Worse, no concrete action was proposed to address the likely escalation of national debt beyond what had previously been planned.

Unsurprisingly, the country’s local currency sovereign debt ratings were subsequently downgraded to “junk” – that is, sub-investment grade – by two of the three major ratings agencies. That followed downgrades of the foreign currency rating earlier in 2017.

Shortly after the budget was delivered, the senior official in the National Treasury responsible for preparing the budget resigned. Reports suggested this was due to unprocedural and irresponsible efforts to fund a populist allocation to higher education.

This appeared to be confirmed when Zuma, in a shock mid-December press statement shortly before the governing African National Congress’s elective conference, announced “free higher education”.

Despite the dubious circumstances and the country’s serious fiscal situation, the 2018 Budget announced the intention to allocate an additional R12.4 billion (about US$863m) in 2018/19, rising to R24.3 billion (about US$1.7bn) in 2020/21.

Among the major proposals to fund this new outlay, while still trying to stabilise national debt levels, were a controversial 1% increase in value-added tax. Significant cuts were also proposed to planned expenditure in other areas.

But the government has never actually produced a detailed costing of the “free higher education” plan. Worryingly, the 2018 Budget referred to these costs as “uncertain”. The Treasury has now had enough time to properly address such uncertainty; that ought to be reflected in Mboweni’s medium-term expenditure proposals.

As well as dealing with this recent history, Mboweni will need to provide details of the plans referred to by Ramaphosa to boost the economy in the coming years.

The medium-term budget policy statement should reflect the fiscal details of the commitments in Ramaphosa’s stimulus plan. We already know that the term “stimulus plan” is somewhat misleading. It actually involves reallocation of resources, not an increase.

Mboweni must outline where the funds will be redirected to, and – as important – where they’re going to be taken from. One possibility in the medium-term is cutting back on the bloated bureaucracy that was introduced under Zuma.

Seeking sustainability

The broad question Mboweni will need to answer is how the government is going to maintain its plan for sustainable public finances in the face of even weaker economic growth and possibly a further decline in the performance of the South African revenue service in collecting taxes.

Some supposedly “radical” economic commentators argue that the government should spend more to stimulate the economy, regardless of debt levels. But there is little evidence to suggest this would work given the rather dire state of public sector institutions.

And a significant increase in debt without a large increase in economic growth could lead to a crisis.

A major concern is that recent budgets have maintained expenditure constraints by capping or reducing public sector employment. This is a strategy which could reasonably be referred to as “austerity by stealth”. The stimulus plan commits to filling 2,200 critical posts in the healthcare system. But it remains unclear how the impact of the government’s fiscal stabilisation is being passed on to public sector employment. It’s also not clear how that could be affecting service delivery.

There is a strong argument to be made for maintaining or even increasing public sector employment. This could be achieved by removing overpaid and ineffective senior managers and redirecting those funds to filling, or creating, posts for core front line staff.

Risk factors

Another area to watch is how Mboweni deals with the issue of state-owned entities. These were often the primary targets of efforts to loot the state under the Zuma presidency. And many, from South African Airways to the national power utility Eskom, pose a serious risk to public finances.

There are two aspects to the risk: the need for cash injections which come directly from the government budget, and the need for state loan guarantees which increase the broader precariousness of public finances. The medium-term budget policy Statement should provide a sober assessment of those risks and how they are going to be managed.

Seán Mfundza Muller, Senior Lecturer in Economics and Research Associate at the Public and Environmental Economics Research Centre (PEERC), University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

CAPE FLATS LIVES MATTER TOO!!!

 

PLEASE READ AND SHARE!

I recently visited a street block in Hanover Park, where within the space of 12 hours, 3 dead bodies laid sprawling on the pavement. Yet this was not covered by any media. No politicians came to pay their respects – because these were once again simply young men from the Cape Flats who were killed in gang-related shootings. Their lives meant little when they were alive – it now means absolutely nothing when they are dead.

And sadly, it is not only the outside world that attributes no value to Cape Flats lives, residents don’t either. They have become numb to death. It’s just another shooting, another body, another day. When speaking to people of the area, I heard one of the most bone- chilling comments ever: “Wanneer hulle uiteindelik die lyke van die pavement kom afhaal – dan spoel ons maar net die bloed weg met ’n bietjie water. Die lewe gaan aan.”

The young men killed in violence on the Cape Flats lose more than just their lives. They lose their identity and their value. We don’t draw media and political attention to their deaths because they are seemingly just a statistic. But guess what, they are not! Everyone that dies is someone's child!

That dead body lying in a pool of blood on the pavement, on a road with no name was someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s father. Though the world attaches no value to him – someone would have loved him enough to grieve. This dead body is the source of pain, trauma and grief to someone. This dead body mattered, because Cape Flats lives matter too.

Overwhelming oppression and genocide is taking place on the Cape Flats. Drugs and gangsterism is wiping out an entire generation of our people. Should you disagree with these statements, I suggest you climb down out of your ivory tower and come and see for yourself. For right now when you speak of the Cape Flats’ problems, or even more arrogantly yet of solutions – from the outside, you speak from a vantage point of pure ignorance and arrogance!

And it is usually in these times of arrogance and ignorance when politicians nauseatingly put on bullet proof vests and surround themselves with armed body guards and take a stroll through the neighbourhood (Obviously with the cameras and media properly positioned close by.) And it is usually after these publicity stunts that some politician will come up with a grand master plan and solution.

Therein lies the problem. You will never find appropriate solutions for problems which you are not truly familiar with. For you will be viewing the problem from your vantage point of ignorance, from your towers of privilege – and therefore your solution will not be one that fits this particular problem faced by these particular communities.

The MyCiti bus is a true case in point. It worked in South America and some bright spark in ignorance thought that all poor people's transport problems were the same – and brought it to our shores (Look at how cost-effective and well that has worked out for us).

In order to find ways to curb this community genocide, you have to listen to the community. I’m not talking about the paid informants and your data researchers. I’m speaking of those who wash the blood off the pavements after the bodies have been removed. Those community members who patrol the streets in the dark of the night. Those mothers who grieve the sons they birthed into this abnormal society.

If you care enough to help the Cape Flats – then listen to the Cape Flats. Hear our voices.

As a community we also have a role to play. We firstly need to start looking inwardly at the parents we are and have become. We need to start taking control of our households and our children.

We have to get rid of the NUMBNESS that violence and death has brought about within in. We need to dig deep and find our compassion again. And we CERTAINLY have to resist the urge to sell our votes (and our souls) to politicians who only use us to boost their own personal salaries!

I encourage those who sincerely want to assist in finding solutions to the overwhelming issues of poverty, drugs, gangsterism and subsequent violence and death on the Cape Flats to step up and unite. PUT THE EGO'S AND DIFFERENCES ASIDE, FOR WE ARE LOSING THIS BATTLE, MUCH LESS THE WAR!

I will say it till the day I die. I will always be proudly Cape Flats. My Cape Flats community is uniquely awesome! There are JUST SOOOOOOOO MANY good people caught in the middle of this war zone. There is so much greatness in the midst of this humanitarian crisis. This community is not a lost cause. But this community needs to be heard. We have to stop this genocide, for our lives matter. Cape Flats lives matter too!!!👊🏼👊🏼 PLEASE SHARE !

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