By Anthony LoBaido
This is Part 2 of WND international correspondent Anthony LoBaido's three-part series on the current official probe into crimes and abuses, on both right and left, during South Africa's long and bloody Marxist revolution. Part 1 dealt with crimes of the African National Congress. In this installment, LoBaido details the misdeeds of the right wing during its fight to contain the rebellion against apartheid.
While the crimes of the left wing in South Africa have been well documented for many years, the crimes of the right wing during its conflict with the African National Congress are just now finally coming to light.
Under the direction of Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has investigated crimes of both the apartheid-era government and Marxist African National Congress.
Many white Afrikaners consider the trials to be nothing more than "witch hunts," aimed at demoralizing the Afrikaner remnant in the nation. ANC supporters claim the trials are needed so that all South Africans can move into a new era with a clear conscience.
The misdeeds of the right wing in South Africa are shrouded in mystery. To be certain, there was a small cabal of men in the right wing who committed crimes against blacks in the name of fighting communism. During the apartheid era, right-wing misadventures ranged from the alleged theft of nuclear weapons to the torture and killing of Marxist ANC activist Stephen Biko.
The disclosure of one of those right-wing crimes occurred when Gen. Christoffel van der Westhuizen, the former chief of South Africa's military intelligence branch, stood trial before the TRC for ordering the execution of a black campaigner against apartheid.
Nyameka Goniwe, the widow of the man van der Westhuizen had ordered to be killed, spoke of finding her husband's scorched body lying on a bleak prairie. At a break in the TRC proceedings, van der Westhuizen approached Ms. Goniwe and said, "Don't blame me for what happened."
"I understand," she replied to the general. "But where was your heart?"
Matthew Goniwe was 38 years old when he died. He was a point man for the United Democratic Front, the legal arm of the African National Congress. As part of its operations to discredit and harass Goniwe, he was fired from his job teaching mathematics and jailed for three years. The South African army even sent helicopters equipped with loudspeakers into the townships where Goniwe lived to broadcast propaganda messages against him.
The testimony of van der Westhuizen before the TRC was groundbreaking. It provided the first evidence that there existed under the apartheid government a covert military unit tasked with the termination of anti-apartheid activists. Goniwe's case clearly demonstrated that the chain of command for terminations went from the cabinet-level State Security Council of the ruling apartheid government down through the generals and finally to their officially-sanctioned secret hit squads.
Termination with extreme prejudice
Wider reaching yet were the assassinations of more than 200 anti-apartheid activists overseas by the shadowy Civil Cooperation Bureau, or CCB. Operating with a global reach, the CCB set up front companies in Western Europe to beat U.N. anti-apartheid sanctions -- even managing to import sensitive materials needed to build several atomic bombs. Assassination, however, was what it did best.
 |
| Nelson and Winnie Mandela alongside KGB colonel and then-South African Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, giving communist salute in front of Soviet flag. |
One particular assassination of note is subject to great debate even now. On the day Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa in 1994, Sweden sent a team of intelligence experts to gather evidence of what they believe was the murder of Prime Minister Olaf Palme by the Civil Cooperation Bureau. The man accused of killing Palme on Feb. 28, 1986, is a Swedish man named Christer Pettersson. Pettersson was identified at the scene of the murder by Palme's wife Lisbet -- who claimed he shot her husband. Pettersson, now 50 years old, was convicted of murder in 1989. Four months later, however, Pettersson was acquitted for lack of evidence.
Strangely, Pettersson was the victim of an assassination attempt himself last year.
A Stockholm police spokesman contacted by WorldNetDaily said, "Christer Pettersson was attacked by a man aged about 35 and under the influence of alcohol. The attacker stabbed Mr. Pettersson multiple times with a knife. He was suffering from heavy hemorrhaging after suffering several stab wounds to the chest. As far as I know, he was admitted to the hospital and was in serious condition. Yet he survived."
"This is the classic CCB method of assassination -- recruiting a committed foreigner to carry out the termination, then either kill off or jail or discredit the recruited assassin," said Garth Volk, a South African policeman with the intelligence branch.
"No one is putting together all the pieces. First, Olaf Palme, a top European ANC supporter, was murdered. Second, the links to the European Union elite and the ANC are very old and very strong. Third, how could Pettersson have been identified at the scene by Palme's wife, convicted in court and then acquitted? Fourth, why did the Swedish intelligence people come to South Africa on the day Mandela was inaugurated to conduct further investigation? Fifth, why has Pettersson been the victim of a murder attempt on his life? ... The CCB allowed too much circumstantial evidence to surface and one day some brave soul will put all the pieces together."
The assassination of Chris Hani
One of the most noted of CCB-directed assassinations was carried out in 1993 against African National Congresse leader Chris Hani, the man who would have most likely replaced Mandela instead of Mbeki.
 |
| Eeben Barlow, head of the private mercenary army Executive Outcomes. |
Hani was assassinated by a 40-year-old white Polish immigrant named Januzu Jakub Wallus. The recruitment of Wallus was not unique for the Civil Cooperation Bureau. After World War II, South Africa was the destination of choice for many Italian and German fascists. Wallus is the archetype émigré that South Africa encouraged to swell the ranks of the white minority between 1950 and 1993.
During those decades, strong anti-communist Czechs, Poles and Hungarians fleeing Soviet rule in Eastern Europe came to South Africa in search of a new life. They were given generous help from the apartheid government in terms of housing and financial assistance. Right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, the South African government was recruiting East German émigrés with the promise of jobs, housing and safe passage.
"Hani has run ANC terrorist groups in Lesotho and also was a soldier for Mugabe's Marxist takeover in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. He ordered many terrorist acts. Hani lived by the sword and so it is only fitting that he died by the sword," said Volk.
"In the early '90s, over 363 people died while in police custody," added the South African policeman. "And hundreds of white police were killed by the ANC. So it has been madness, back and forth with all the killing. And it still hasn't stopped. In fact, it's getting worse by the day."
Clive Derby-Lewis, a former parliament member of the Conservative Party, was arrested, convicted and jailed for his involvement with the Hani assassination. WorldNetDaily has learned that Derby-Lewis took over the leadership of the so-called Western Goals Institute from Roberto D'Aubission, the notorious leader of the Mano Blanco "White Hand" death squad in El Salvador. D'Aubission was accused of killing liberal Archbishop Oscar Romero for his alleged support of the communist insurgency in Central America.
South African Intelligence sources told WorldNetDaily that Romero was assassinated in 1980 as "the quid pro quo for the assassination of the South African ambassador to El Salvador." In the late 1970s and early 1980s, South Africa was actively arming the right wing in Taiwan and Central America against the communists.
"I know Chris Hani killed many people, but it was wrong to assassinate him," said Mrs. P.P. Pretorius, a former leader of the South African Conservative Party.
Says Peter Hammond of South Africa's missionary group Frontline Fellowship, "I once met Hani. I told him nicely that terrorism and murder were wrong. In response, he starting cursing that there was no God."
Before his death in 1993, Hani seemed to soften his tone. For example, he told Newsweek writer Joe Contreras: "Whether we like it or not, whites are South Africans like ourselves. They took power away from us and oppressed us, but we didn't get into the struggle to destroy the white group. We want to convince whites that democracy is better than apartheid and that they will continue having a better life and a more normal life. I live in a conservative part of Johannesburg called Boksburg, and my kids have not been harassed. I've had no problems. I'm an optimist, and it may take some time, but political democracy will triumph."
Adds Pretorius: "Murder is wrong. It is not Christian. And killing Hani did not stop the communists from taking over our nation anyway. You can kill a person, but you can't kill the wickedness of their ideas if millions of others are willing to pick up the banner. We can't call Hani a murderer, then commit murder ourselves. That is hypocritical. What are we fighting for as Afrikaners? Basically, it comes down to one thing. Will the white race join the multicultural world or do we want to continue our own culture and traditions?"
Willem Ratte, a former South African Special Forces soldier and the leader of the Afrikaner patriot movement, told WorldNetDaily: "The Afrikaner is not a terrorist. He will not fight unless it is under his own elected leaders, wearing a uniform and with specific goals in mind."
Onward Christian soldiers
Other misdeeds of the right wing in South Africa include the use of conservative Christian churches as political fronts. For example, John Van Breda, a youth pastor at a leading charismatic church, was forced to leave his post in the early 1990s when revelations surfaced in the South African media that he acted as a conduit for secret South African Defense Force funding of youth projects in the 1980s.
Van Breda admitted that Col. Lourens du Plessis has supplied him with more than one million rand for Christian youth outreach projects in the eastern Cape province between 1987 and 1991. Du Plessis was also implicated as the officer who sent the "permanently remove" message on behalf of van der Westhuizen in regard to the termination of Matthew Goniwe. Du Plessis, in fact, confirmed the authenticity of van der Westhuizen's order for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and said he "understood it to mean Mr. Goniwe and others should be killed."
An organization called Lion Life, which had run evangelical outreaches for black and white teen-agers in Port Elizabeth suburbs and black townships, was ordered to be shut down in June 1991, when then-South African President F.W. de Klerk learned of the inappropriate funding of Christian outreaches for political ends.
The revelations of such funding sent shock waves throughout the Christian community in South Africa.
Another bold act by de Klerk came in 1993 when he dismissed several high-ranking generals who were planning a military coup against his government. The coup was aimed at preventing de Klerk from handing over power to the Marxist ANC.
At that time, de Klerk said, "We are not dealing with children. We are dealing with well-trained people who are taking constant precautions against being caught."
No comments:
Post a Comment