Khehla
I don’t doubt Madikizela-Mandela made all these remarks and
then, such is the taboo on honest discussion of Mandela,
backed down. No one doubts that Mandela has fine qualities
but there are many murky questions on which light needs to
be shed.
- He was president at
the time of the arms deal. Was he so out of touch that he
didn’t know what was going on? Was he really the first
third-world president not to profit out of such a deal going
through on his watch? *1
- Where does all his money come from? He is clearly very
rich and there is no transparency.
- It is absurd to say he betrayed
anyone by accepting the Nobel Prize with De Klerk but it is
clear that the various Mandela foundations support absurdly
fat-cat bureaucracies. Is it true that they are used as
slush funds?
One hears appalling
reports all the time including of gross exploitation of
Mandela’s fund-raising powers.
- Madikizela-Mandela,
of course, is a convicted fraud and child kidnapper
and she also lives
high on the hog. Perhaps she could
start the ball rolling with a full declaration of interests?
Then we need Madiba’s and those of all the foundation staff
and hangers-on, not to mention Graça Machel, who has the
effrontery to cut empowerment deals here though not even a
South African citizen.
Regards, Bill
Dear Bill
Madikizela-Mandela has since denied ever granting an
interview to the journalist who reported the matter. Comment
attributed to her, however, will no doubt linger for a while
longer. There is hardly a taboo on criticism of Mandela; it
abounds in publications and some of the most acerbic
emanates from very high ANC echelons.
The public record on Mandela’s role in politics is
unambiguous. It is important to remind all that by
negotiating with the National Party government, Mandela did
nothing that had not been canvassed fully with the ANC,
which, with all its warts, has enjoyed the confidence of
voters. The people of SA also gave their consent by voting
to accept the outcome of the constituent assembly. Thus,
Mandela’s stance in the negotiations was endorsed by all.
The ANC has benefited from Mandela’s ability to raise funds.
Any audited statements of the ANC will show that without
Mandela’s fundraising acumen the party may not have had the
enormous balance sheet
everyone knows it had to fight elections.
Mandela’s personal balance sheet is unknown to me. But it is
not complicated to work some of it out. He won many awards,
among them the Nehru as well as the Nobel Peace Prize. The
latest winner of the latter prize, US President Barack Obama,
received 1,4m. If Mandela had invested sums from his
numerous awards, they should have turned into a comfortable
retirement nest. Besides, as a former state president, he is
entitled to what must be a reasonable pension.
Regards, Khehla
Dear Khehla
I don’t believe MadikizelaMandela. The quoted interview
sounds just like her and she has a long record of denying
she said things that she did. And of course there’s a
tremendous taboo on proper discussion of Mandela. Look at
the furious attempt to suppress English journalist Jeremy
Clarkson’s account.
It’s quite clear from what Madikizela-Mandela has said
earlier that Madiba no longer understands much of what
happens in the world. There is no disgrace in that but the
parasitic bureaucracies of the Children’s Fund,
Mandela-Rhodes and the Mandela Foundation all feel very
threatened by the thought that a dead or ga ga Mandela
cannot be milked any more. They are leeches, pure and
simple. They police the taboo and try to force people such
as Clarkson to sign away their rights to free speech. He is
my colleague and I can tell them they are wasting their
time.
The ANC are also keen to maintain the taboo for Mandela is
now the only person of moral standing associated with them.
It’s not good enough for you to imagine what Mandela’s
financial position is. In effect, he and President
Jacob Zuma both want to be treated like great
chiefs with no one disturbing their rights to sleaze with
demands for transparency. I know
the head of one bank
who was recently phoned by Mandela and asked for a large
donation to be put into a relative’s bank account.
He saw no difference between this and a donation to one of
his foundations, which tells you something about those
foundations.
Regards, Bill
Dear Bill
In Mark Gevisser’s book on Thabo Mbeki ,
Mandela stands accused of perpetuating the “one good native”
idea, prevalent among whites, by promoting reconciliation to
the exclusion of transformation. In his own book on Mandela,
Anthony Sampson suggests Mandela’s book Long Walk To
Freedom was not published from the time it was received by
the ANC in 1977 after it was found by Joe Slovo and Yusuf
Dadoo, South African Communist Party (SACP) honchos at the
time, to have underplayed the role of the SACP in the
struggle. As is now well known, the book was published once
Mandela was released from prison. These are ad hominem and
far-reaching attacks on Mandela that belie the notion that
he has been spared criticism.
If individuals at foundations spawned by Mandela seek to
preserve his life so he can be available to help raise funds
for them, they are behaving rationally. Show me anyone
anywhere who works to threaten what they perceive to be good
for raising their revenue.
Arguing Mandela is sleazy in the same breath as arguing that
he is the only person of moral standing is disingenuous. It
will come as a pleasant surprise to Zuma to learn some think
he is comparable to Mandela in this respect.
Regards, Khehla
Dear Khehla
There is a whole murky history here. Mandela was clearly a
high SACP member when he launched Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) but
then tried to deny his SACP membership at his trial and
later. Without doubt Slovo and co viewed him with great
distrust because of this, which was why the ANC refused to
campaign for his release or for him by name until the late
’70s when it became clear that Mangosuthu Buthelezi, as a
result, was the runaway leader in terms of popular support.
But I really don’t think such literary footnotes constitute
serious popular criticism or negate what I said about there
being a powerful taboo on any proper discussion of Mandela.
I didn’t say Mandela was sleazy. We just don’t know what
goes on. At the time of his divorce from Madikizela-Mandela
there were threats that she would expose how much money he
had smuggled into illegal foreign accounts, but clearly a
deal was done to buy her silence.
What is foolish is the claim that Mandela let blacks down
because he didn’t make them all rich. People such as
Madikizela-Mandela just want to forget that there was a
political deal, not a take- over. Winnie, of course, ended
up a rich woman anyway, but the road to wealth in SA remains
education and hard work. No one should be sorry about that.
Regards, Bill
Dear Bill
No, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick Mandela never
was a communist. The SACP would have expelled him from the
party for arguing as he did that if implemented, the Freedom
Charter would create propitious conditions for the black
bourgeoisie to flourish. The SACP had already created their
fighting force before Mandela launched MK. Were he a member
he would have been expelled from the party.
Walter Sisulu, that other pillar of the fight for freedom,
worked tirelessly to bring Mandela and Moses Kotane, the
foremost fighters for liberation at the time, together.
Kotane, the long-serving general secretary of the SACP, is
now despised by the leadership of the SACP for arguing he
was an African first, then a communist, a view Sisulu
shared. Blade Nzimande has pilloried him for this.
And Mandela never laundered any money.
Regards, KhehlaWith acknowledgements to
RW Johnson and Business
Day.
*1 This
is the most important reason that the Arms Deal has never
been properly investigated.
The second reason is that, other than Mandela's involvement,
the who's who of the ANC including Mbeki also had their
noses deep in the trough.
Other than the Schabir Shaik trial, only investigations in
other countries have given the slightest prospect of
investigation there and by co-operation.
By very quickly the big wigs have been called in, firstly to
stiffle the co-operation at the functional level and then at
the political level to get even the entire investigations
abandoned in the UK and Germany.
The only major investigation overseas that got initiated
from here was the French leg in the early days of the 2000
to 2003 era. French investigating magistrate Edith Boizette
spurned on by her South African counterparts Advocates Gerda
Ferreira and Billy Downer were making serious progress on
this leg until Minister of Justice Penuell Maduna and
National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka
flew to France and personally intervened at higher levels in
the French Justice Department to have the French
investigation abandoned. This was mainly to protect Mbeki,
but also the ANC as a major beneficiary of bribery money. It
is not implausible to think that Mandela was involved as
well.
Certainly there were other interesting aspects of the French
leg.
Firstly all the chronology, negotiation and financial
aspects of the corvette combat suite contract point to the
French paying some R300 million in bribes to get their
contract price of R2,599 billion, get this uncontested (BAe
Systems, CelciusTech of Sweden and STN Atlas of Germany were
literally champing at the bit to make competitive offers)
and to only provide about half the equipment originally
specified, costed and budgeted.
After bone fide cost negotiations in respect of the corvette
combat suite between the DoD on the one hand and Thomson-CSF
and ADS on the other hand, all benignly watched by the GFC,
effectively broke down in early 1999, Armscor instructed the
GFC to procure alternatives offers for the corvette combat
suite.
But it never did so - clearly because it was not in its
interest after having been forced by the DoD and Armscor to
appoint ADS as its combat suite partner in terms of its May
1998 corvette offer - and because it was now so severely
compromised having paid Tony Yengeni USD2,5 million to swing
the corvette contract from Spain in 1995 and then agreeing
to pay another USD22 million to the ANC and it head honchos
and another USD3 million to Chippy Shaik and a group
represented by him in mid-1998 for doing the same thing in
the second round, i.e. swinging the corvette contract from
Spain to Germany.
Mbeki was right up to his snout in dealing directly with
Thomson-CSF.
Despite his so-called recusal Chippy Shaik was dealing
directly with Thomson-CSF in respect of the corvette combat
suite.
One of Thomson-CSF South African shareholders was Gestilac
Gestiion S.A. of Switzerland.
All the indications are that Gestilac was set up as a
special purpose vehicle to house and transport the financial
interests of an individual or group of high-level South
Africans in the French portion of the Arms Deal, i.e. the
corvette combat suite.
Clearly the controlling mind of Gestilac was one Jean-Yves
Ollivier great friend of both Nelson Mandela who awarded him
the Order of Good Hope and personal friend of Mummy, Winnie
Mandela.
Gestilac was closed down soon after the Arms Deal contracts
were actually awarded and the advanced and initial payments
made by Armscor in 2000.
Yet the NPA and DSO never came close to even looking at the
role played by Gestilac.
My information is that they were precluded from doing so by
Bulelani Ngcuka.
It was just far too close to the bone.