Independence Commission for Africa: Attachments 6a ,24 and 26 of icazar as shown at http://icazar.weebly.com

Pleased that you see the rationale behind the ending of Economic Slavery of Africa

Attachment 6a: San and Congo, with reference to the mining corporations and Fracking in the Karoo.

The oldest known indigenous tribe of Southern Africa is the Bushmen, called The San by The Khoikhoi. Western scholars call them the KhoiSan from their Language Group. Many of the Khoikhoi people had moved up north from the Cape, after the colonisers arrived in the Cape forming new groups such as the Griqua. They settled in the areas which were harsh to survive in, the deserts of southern Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).

Repeatedly when natural elements considered to be of wealth are discovered in the area inhabited by the KhoiSan, the KhoiSan are displaced and the wealth taken from the land they inhabit without their permission and without compensation.

Namibia diamond mines

After the discovery of diamonds during the 1800’s in the Kimberley area, which is situated below South West Africa, the precious mineral bearing veins were followed into South West Africa, and once again, the indigenous people of Southern Africa were attacked and their land annexed by the Crown. These people now live in abject poverty, whilst the mining magnate associates of the Crown, inclusive of the De Beers mining corporation, rape the land of all its wealth. Not only do they take possession of the minerals of the land they invade, but also rule the economies of the land they invade, and have become a law unto themselves. To point, Namibian Mines and Energy Minister Erkki Nghimtina signed an agreement to create the Namibia Diamond Trading Company with Nicky Oppenheimer, Chairman of the De Beers Group. Neither the Minister, nor the Chairman, are of the KhoiSan tribe.

The modus operandi of the mining corporations

The modus operandi of the mining corporations remain the same throughout Africa, wherein we can see most clearly what had happened in South Africa, and caused instability amongst the people who live in the land they operate in.

The inhumane Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, instigated by these same mining interests - to gain control of the mineral wealth of the Transvaal - saw 24,000 Boer children and 3,000 women killed in British concentration camps; and the Boer farm houses, crops and livestock burned down in the British "Scorched Earth Policy".

The Boers thus impoverished after the war, were obliged to find an income where ever they could. Many flocked to work in the mines, which now belonged to the enemy of the Boers, on the land which had been stolen from the Boers.

In 1922, Ernest Oppenheimer fired them overnight, and replaced them with illiterate African workers. Boers had worked for £30.00 a month; the Africans would work for only £3.00 a month.

After the Anglo-Boer War, Milner, whose aim it had been to exterminate the Boers "for ever and ever," declared: "It is no longer war with guns and bullets, but it is war still." So it has been ever since, and is still today, though a new generation of Rothschilds and Oppenheimers now direct matters.

Cyril Ramaphosa, prominent African National Congress member, one of the Black oligarchs created by the Oppenheimer-Rothschild financial empire, was detained in the 1970’s for his work as a black consciousness movement organizer. He had organized and unionized South Africa's mineworkers, who were forced to live in single-sex, military-style barracks under the control of the mining houses.

The Machiavellian Oppenheimer profited from cheap labour under the Apartheid government, forcing his workers to live under these conditions, while simultaneously financially supporting the African National Congress, and developing strong ties to their leaders; this association has paid off very beneficially for the Oppenheimer family as various exceptions to regulations in government have been made by the African National Congress in government to the benefit of the Oppenheimers at the cost of the nation, including astronomical tax concessions, disinvestment by the Oppenheimer conglomerate De Beers, and protection of mining enterprises by the South African security forces, even at the cost of South African lives.

Mining conglomerates do not contribute to the progress of the country they are in

Following a trend from 1980, by 1990, just four mega- corporations, mainly mining companies, controlled 82% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), which represented almost the entire GNP of South Africa: Oppenheimer's Anglo-American (including De Beers) by itself, controlled over 52% of the JSE, however the gold mining companies paid a mere 2.9% of the taxes.¹

Mining corporations forge links with rebel groups in Africa with reference to the Congo

AngloGold Ashanti, part of the international mining conglomerate Anglo American (Oppenheimer), won the mining rights to the vast gold concession in Mongbwalu, DRC in 1996. Prevented by ongoing war, (until a peace agreement was signed and a transitional government was established in Kinshasa), from gaining access to its claims, the company forged links with the armed group, Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), which retained control of the gold-rich mining site in the north-eastern Ituri district.

Human Rights Watch researchers documented meetings between the company and the armed group leaders. FNI president, Floribert Njabu, told Human Rights Watch, "The [Central] government is never going to come to Mongbwalu. I am the one who gave Ashanti permission to come. I am the boss of Mongbwalu. If I want to chase them away, I will."

(i) Mass genocide of indigenous people in the Congo

The mineral-rich North-eastern Congo has been one of the worst hit areas during Congo's devastating seven-year war. Competing armed groups carried out ethnic massacres, rape and torture.

According to United Nations estimates, a local conflict between Hema and Lendu ethnic groups, allied with national rebel groups and foreign backers, including Uganda and Rwanda, claimed over 60,000 lives between 1999 and 2005. These losses are just a portion of an estimated four million civilians dead throughout the Congo, during the same time period, yet artisanal gold mining continued throughout the conflict.

(ii) Gold smuggled out of the Congo

Millions of dollars worth of gold is smuggled out of the Congo each year, some of it destined for Switzerland.

One starving miner told Human Rights Watch: "We are cursed because of our gold. All we do is suffer. There is no benefit to us," while a Congolese government official lamented: "We just watch our country's resources drain away with no benefit to the Congolese people." However, Anglo AngloGold Ashanti is showing a huge profit ...but it was this conglomerate which toppled SA's white so-called 'apartheid regime' on 'moral' grounds^.2

Fracking in the Karoo

In September 2012 it was announced that the African National Congress had given permission for fracking in the Karoo, despite huge protests against fracking in the Karoo by the people who live in that area. To add to this consternation, the KhoiSan who live in the desert areas, depend on the underground water systems for their survival. Fracking not only uses the underground water, but poisons the water once it has been used.

Fracking in the Karoo is a direct onslaught on the lives of the people who live in that area, and should be seen as treason by a government who are allowing for the destruction of the means by which its nation lives. Fracking in the Karoo is further discussed in Footnote 1 – Fracking in the Karoo.

The KhoiSan are calling for their right to self determination

The KhoiSan have publically called for their independence from the South African government in 2012 during a peaceful protest during which they handed over their demands to Parliament as was seen on public television.

As yet, the nation has heard no response from the present government.

References:

¹Although White individuals constituted only 15% of the population, they contributed 77% of the taxes. The state then spent 45% of all taxes on the Black population, 5% on the Coloureds (mixed race), and 5% on the Indians, but only 38% on Whites. (The Star, 2nd May, 1990)

^.2http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/02/congo11041.htm

Footnote.

Footnote 1 – Fracking in the Karoo.

FRACKING THE KAROO - THE PEOPLE SAY NO!

Somerset East; Jan 31, 2011

“Do you know what fracking the Karoo is like?” demanded Esme Senekal of Somerset East. The people from Royal Dutch Shell and their consultants didn’t reply, their faces impassive.

“It’s like you coming and drilling holes in our mother, and then leaving us to look after her and take her to hospital. Leave the Karoo alone!

Heaven forbid

“This is the last piece of holy nature in this country. No money is worth this. You can’t replace pristine nature with money.”

The surrounding sunburnt Karoo farmers, not a group usually given to high emotion, loudly applauded her.

The public meeting, organised by Shell’s consultants, Golder Associates (slogan: “Engineering Earth’s development, protecting Earth’s integrity”), was held at the Somerset East Town Hall, and started with a prayer to protect God’s creation, nature.

Most of the attendees bowing their heads were farmers who face the possibility of losing everything if, heaven forbid, shale gas is found under their farms – or for that matter, anywhere in the Karoo.

The municipality, which has just as much to lose since Somerset East depends completely on groundwater, had sent not a single representative. In fact, most Karoo towns depend wholly on groundwater, as do farmers.

What the Frack?

Fracking is simply this: it is a process of drilling 1 to 5 km under the surface to a layer of shale where natural gas is trapped. Using millions of litres of water, sand and an array of chemicals (many of which are carcinogenic, endocrine disrupting or just plain toxic), the rock is repeatedly fractured by high-pressure explosions underground, allowing the gas to be collected. Tens of thousands of wells have been dug in 32 American states, Canada, Australia and many other parts of the world, and a groundswell of popular protest has started.

This is because groundwater has frequently been contaminated as a result, either with methane or the chemicals.

Just Google ‘fracking’ (short for hydraulic fracturing) on the internet and you’ll be hard put to choose between the hundreds of heartrending accounts and YouTube videos from all around the world. Ordinary people who have experienced this method of gas extraction close to their homes have recorded their experiences.

Poison, radioactivity, contamination

They are horror stories. The water coming out of their taps becomes flammable, contaminated with methane and oil, undrinkable. They suffer strange lesions, cancers, tumours. Their livestock is poisoned, sometimes with radioactive substances brought up from underground as waste material. Arsenic and other substances poison their vegetables and crops.

Each account is a little different, but almost every one mentions the fact that the oil and gas companies who came to drill and fracture the earth assured them that it was safe.

Shell did the same to this crowd, but the attendees had done their homework and remained completely sceptical except for one emerging farmer who asked hopefully about job creation.

No benefits, only risk

Shell at least had the good grace not to even pretend there will be jobs or any benefit whatsoever to the community. The only ones to benefit will be Government (which owns any and all minerals, gas and oil underground) and Shell, and they admitted as much.

Again and again Shell were asked if they could give an assurance (and to back it with money) that groundwater and therefore the health, livelihoods, communities and towns in the Karoo would not be affected. All Adam Dodson could say was that Shell had never any incident of contamination while doing exploratory fracking.

He also said the Government was the only recourse for compensation of any kind. There was a stifled groan from the crowd.

Rupert to the Rescue?

A few of those attending told me they were buoyed by the front page story in the Afrikaans weekly, Rapport (30 January 2011), which had come out the day before. In it, industrial giant Johann Rupert (no stranger to mining, but a man who has property and roots in the Karoo - in particular the Graaff-Reinet area) pinned his colours to the mast.

“We are not against responsible exploration or extraction; we are against Russian roulette.”

Rupert gave his assurance that he and his family will be fully involved in the battle against Shell to the bitter end, and added they will not be using Shell products.

Not a Clue

Wherever public meetings have been held in the Karoo (including Graaff-Reinet and Hofmeyr), angry community members asking pertinent questions came away with nothing.

According to Adam Dodson, Shell’s Unconventional Oil & Gas Exploration Manager (New Ventures), they still have no idea where the millions of litres of water needed for fracking will come from. Possibilities at this stage included treated surface water (for which read sewage), deep saline aquifers or seawater trucked in by train.

They also could not say which of the chemicals would be used underground, what quantity remained underground after fracking (in other parts of the world, between 20% and 40% have been found to remain).

In fact, Shell and Golder made it clear there would be no real answers at all – this was just the first phase of a very long campaign.

“You’ll be seeing us a lot,” Tisha Greyling of Golder Associates assured the discontented crowd.

The Karoo lives on Groundwater

Also present at the meeting was Ernest Pringle, president of Agri-Eastern Cape and a farmer in the affected district. He stood up in front of the meeting to emphasise the importance of groundwater. The recent crippling drought in the Bedford and Somerset East region was just a reminder, he said.

“I spent all my time trying to pump up more groundwater to keep going. So we want to know with certainty what the effects will be to the underground water supply.”

When asked if there was any kind of possibility that contamination could happen, Dodson pursed his lips and looked down.

Dr Fiona Brown, who also farms nearby, implored Shell to use the precautionary principle.

Radioactive Karoo

“You know nothing about the Karoo’s groundwater and how aquifers are interconnected. No one does. And you don’t know what can go wrong.”

Shell and Golder representatives were unmoved. Tisha Greyling of Golder conceded that there will, inevitably, be unhappy people.

One of the things that can go wrong of course, is that the Karoo is riddled with uranium, and the chance of raising radioactive waste rock to the surface is better than excellent.

Still, despite the complete lack of information coming from Shell or Golder Associates, a few eyebrow-raising facts did come through. One was that Shell was not alone in wanting to frack the Karoo. Just south of their concession was Falcon Oil & Gas’s one. This American company received a permit from the Petroleum Agency of South Africa late last year.

Attack of the Falcon

Their concession area covers a slightly narrower band than Shell’s band including the towns of Merweville, Leeu Gamka, Rietbron, Jansenville and Aberdeen. Sasol and other companies are looking at another broad swathe northwards, including Bloemfontein and surrounds.

Also, they revealed that the long term plan for the gas was that it would be used for power stations to be set up across the Karoo (with the attendant power lines, substations and the rest).

After the repeated entreaties for Shell to drop the bid or to rather look into solar and wind energy, the last ominous word on the matter came from Tisha Greyling of Golder Associates.

“If it’s not Shell, it will be someone else.”

Famous on Facebook

Popular Karoo writer and photographer Jonathan Deal has opened a Facebook group called chase SHELL OIL out of the Karoo! Within 24 hours, hundreds of people from all over South Africa and beyond signed on as supporters of this group.

Attachment 24: War in Africa to rape her wealth by corrupt leaders.

Before the Romans came to Africa, the continent now known as Africa was called Kemet or Al-kebulan. There may have been other names as well since this is the birthplace of mankind.

We believe that the wealth of Africa should benefit Africans first and foremost, irrespective of the colour of their skin, the language they speak, or their preferred religion. All people born in Africa, and who have ancestry in Africa, are Africans.

Warfare in Africa for possession of minerals in her ground has been ongoing for centuries. We do not want this war in South Africa, nor do we want South Africa to be a participant in this war against Africa.

The continent of Africa is endowed with mineral wealth, but what is special about South Africa is that our mineral wealth has been confirmed by economics from Citibank, among others, to be worth 2,5 trillion US dollars, that is extractable and can be processed. This is unequalled because it has been verified.¹

A. Blood diamonds for sale in Africa to create war in Africa

On the 1^st of December 2011, British politician Claudia Dalgleish reported that Blood Diamonds were to be sold on auction, of which the proceeds would go towards a war to force a regime change in South Africa, when she made the following statement:

“On Friday De Beers and Botswana Government will be auctioning Blood Diamonds. The proceeds of this sale will help fund Malema and other dissidents living in Botswana to attempt a regime change in South Africa. If anyone is interested in demonstrating against the sale of polished and unpolished Blood Diamonds please get in touch with me. The Article 1174 of UN Council for Angola is a precedent to stop these diamonds being sold to fund civil wars.”

Her claim for the sale of these diamonds were confirmed in an article in the Guardian dated the 1^st of December 2011, titled “Zimbabwe diamond auction to go ahead despite human rights fears”, which stated:

“Diamonds worth hundreds of millions of dollars are due to be put on sale on Friday by a joint Chinese-Zimbabwean company with strong military ties. The auction follows last month's decision by the industry watchdog, the Kimberley Process (KP), to lift a ban on sales from Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields despite objections from human rights groups, writes David Smith.” ²

It is reports of war in Africa which draw attention to the politics being played out in Africa, where at the expense of the majority of indigenous people, the few elite wallow in luxury.

The interference of countries outside of Africa on the political and economical playing fields of Africa cannot be ignored.

B. Genocide in Africa

Genocide of the people in Africa has been caused by greed. We take information from the documentary called ‘All diamonds are blood diamonds’ written by the African People’s Solidarity Committee, ^2ain which the suffering of Africans is discussed. From this document, we point out the following past and present strife in Africa:

Colton in the Congo

Our cell phones and computers require the mineral coltan from the Congo, where 5 million people have been slaughtered since 1998 in U.S.-backed coltan wars.

Plans to strip Africa of its wealth

In 1875, despite the ravages of the slave trade, 90 percent of Africa was still controlled by African people.

Ten years later the colonial era was officially consolidated. In 1884-5, without a single African present, the heads of European governments sat in a conference in Berlin for the sole purpose of carving up every inch of the African continent. The objective of this gathering was to parcel out all of Africa to Europeans to exploit all possible resources-human beings, gold, land, animals, rubber, iron, ivory, tourism, fishing, farming and of course, diamonds.

The conference was a move on the part of the European powers to attempt to reduce conflict within Europe and inside European countries themselves by sharing the vast stolen loot of Africa.

Even the Catholic pope, the moral authority of Europe, gave his tacit blessing to the Berlin Conference and the plans to colonize all of Africa.

All the imperialists had to do now was defeat the powerful African resistance and then slaughter, subdue and enslave the Africans who survived. Imperialist diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes was passionate about colonialism as a solution for the English masses. Rhodes once wrote, “I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread, bread!’ and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism…My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40 million inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and mines. The empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.”

British war in Zimbabwe for gold

Ambitious to consolidate British imperialism in Southern Africa, Rhodes set out for Zimbabwe in 1886 where gold was thought to have been discovered. The Shona and Matabele people launched a fierce resistance to defend their lands from Rhodes’ invasion.

Rhodes recruited hundreds of British men into his army that he organized to defeat the Matabele and Shona. With the use of just four Maxim machine guns, Rhodes’s army slaughtered more than 5,000 African people in one engagement alone. As payment, each of Rhodes’ 672 soldiers were given 6,000 acres of land in what would be known as the colony of Rhodesia for the next hundred years.

Belgium war on the Congo for rubber

Today there are diamond mines in the Congo that are highly profitable for imperialism, but Belgium’s King Leopold did not know that in the 1890’s when he was colonizing African people there. Leopold was interested in rubber, an increasingly significant commodity at the dawn of the automobile age.

Africans in Congo resisted the Belgian invasion fiercely. The Chokwe people, for instance, fought for 20 years, inflicting heavy casualties on the Belgians.

In order to force the Africans to harvest the rubber, the Belgians killed ten million people in the Congo. Women were rounded up, raped and held as hostages as an attempt to force men to work. Villages were burned. Children were kidnapped into concentration camps to be trained as soldiers for the Belgians. Men were chained at the neck and used as beasts of burden until they dropped dead.

The signature mark of Belgian conquest in the Congo was the massive cutting off of the people’s hands to force them to kneel down to the colonial power. Men, women and children were mutilated in this way, and huge mounds of hands piled up throughout the land.

One Belgian soldier wrote home that he had “killed 150 men, cut off 60 hands, crucified women and children, and hung the remains of mutilated men on the village fence.”

The Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company reaped a profit of more than 700 percent as bicycles and automobiles in Europe and America were outfitted with rubber tires.

German war on Namibia or land

In Namibia today alluvial diamonds are gathered from ships off the coast by Africans forced into near slave-like conditions. Alluvial means that the diamonds do not have to be mined, they can simply be picked up off the ground or from the water.

When the Germans colonized the land they called South West Africa at the turn of the twentieth century they knew nothing of the diamonds. They made money from fishing, hunting and farmland and saw their African colonies as their “place in the sun,” hoping to eventually rival Britain’s empire upon which “the sun never set.”

The Herero and Nama peoples rose up in 1904 and ‘07 to fight courageously against the German colonizers. With the backing of Deutsche Bank, Germany sent in General von Trotha with orders to exterminate the Africans.

Von Trotha declared: “Any Herero found within the German borders [sic] with or without a gun, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall no longer receive any women or children; I will drive them back to their people. I will shoot them. This is my decision for the Herero people.”

Von Trotha was true to his word, even as the Herero were careful in their resistance to spare German women, children and missionaries.

The Germans machined-gunned the Herero people of all ages, poisoned their wells, killed their cattle, ran human experiments on them and rounded them up in the Kalahari Desert to die a slow, torturous death without food, water or shelter. Eighty percent of the Herero were killed and half of the Nama.

Namibia today has only 1.8 million people in an area bigger than Texas, one of the smallest populations in the world.

The survivors of the Herero people have filed a $4 billion lawsuit against the German government and corporations as reparations for the genocide. The Germans have paid over $100 billion to the Israeli government and Jewish people as reparations, while they scoff at the just demand from the Herero people.

De Beers have created the campaigns against buying “blood” diamonds to protect their monopoly

In recent years, as a result of U.S. backed wars in Western Africa there have been popular campaigns against buying “conflict” or “blood” diamonds. Rap songs, movie stars and articles in cyberspace warn us against these tainted stones. No conscious, progressive American would buy such a diamond.

These campaigns insist that anyone buying diamond jewellery must be careful to select only those diamonds certified by the accepted, legal Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS). This scheme supposedly protects Africa from diamonds mined by the perpetrators of the deadly wars in West Africa characterized by rape, mutilations, displacement and outright slaughter carried out over the past 15 years or so.

The fact is though, it was the powerful DeBeers diamond cartel itself that created the concept of “blood” diamonds, fearful that diamonds coming out of the war-torn areas of West Africa would flood the market and undermine their long standing worldwide control of the price of the stones. The Kimberley process scheme is just that—their scheme to maintain control of the world’s diamond supply.

Today the DeBeers cartel still controls at least 80 percent of the world diamond trade. As we see, the other 20 percent are the ones they call the “blood” diamonds.

All diamonds are gained through conflict and spilt blood.

The legacy of the diamond is steeped in the slavery, colonialism, genocide and terror that built and maintains the Western capitalist system. Those who benefit from the sales of diamonds are the beneficiaries of this genocidal system.

Today, diamonds from African soil are worth billions of dollars, wealth that is concentrated mostly in the U.S., Europe, Israel and with those who control South Africa. African people on their own land, labouring in the mines under slave-like conditions for pennies a day, have no control over the diamond trade whatsoever and see no benefits from its profits.

The DeBeers diamond cartel has always done what the U.S.-backed rebels of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo have done to African people, and even worse. DeBeers simply had the power to hide it from the view of the world, for whom the fate of African people has never been a concern in any case. This is the context for the definition of “blood” or “conflict” diamonds. It’s not just a particular atrocity that comes to our attention at any given moment. It’s a centuries-long institutionalized process of ripping the humanity, the beauty, the resources, land and independence out of the soul of Africa.

De Beers inflated the value of diamonds

To bolster a sagging diamond economy in the 1940’s, the cartel hired a public relations firm that launched DeBeers’ now-famous slogan, “a diamond is forever,” convincing every American woman that she must have a diamond ring to get engaged or married.

The DeBeers cartel was built on their fabrication that diamonds are a rare commodity. Diamonds appear anywhere in the world that there is carbon—and that is almost everywhere. They also are easily manufactured. DeBeers has used its own private armies and other forms of intimidation to manufacture diamond scarcity by forcing countries to keep them off the market.

Unlike other precious gems and metals, the price of diamonds is always going up but the resale value is very low, no matter how much one pays for them in the first place.

In the third century BC, diamonds were found and used in India for religious and artistic purposes. In China, because of their hardness, diamonds were mounted on the tip of an iron tool as an engraving instrument. Traditionally diamonds were considered by many cultures to have healing properties. When diamonds were found in Africa all that changed.

The DeBeers Diamond Cartel—an empire inside of imperialism

Cecil Rhodes named his Kimberley diamond mines DeBeers, after the farmer who had previously colonized the land. In 1888 he formed the DeBeers Consolidated Mines, a diamond cartel. This means that he sought to control the entire world market for diamonds. He bought up all other diamond mines in southern Africa, restricted supply and raised prices.

When Rhodes was alive the diamonds at Kimberley were still alluvial, easily picked up from the ground. Africans, enslaved on their own land, had tin cans tied around their necks. They were lined up and forced at gunpoint to get down on their hands and knees to pick up the diamonds and put them into the cans.

After the death of Rhodes, the German Jew Ernest Oppenheimer took over the ownership of DeBeers in the 1920’s and it has remained in the control of his family ever since.

Today DeBeers is a multi-billion dollar operation that acts like a state power with armies of its own.

DeBeers and the Oppenheimer family are the real reigning power behind South Africa. DeBeers was the driving force behind the setting up of apartheid and the system that violently forced African people off their land in order to create the workforce for the mines in highly profitable slave-like conditions.

DeBeers pushed for multiple taxes to be imposed on the people to drive them into the mines to earn money to pay the taxes. DeBeers backed the pass laws and the concentration camp-like conditions for the mine workers who were virtually imprisoned for months working at least 60 hours a week, forced to sleep out in the open with no protection from the weather.

For every 10-hour shift Africans were given a crust of bread and a flask of cold tea. They were housed in bunkers with 20 men to a room and forced to eat out of aluminum buckets. If an African worker somehow managed to scrape together the means to buy a car or house he was arrested on suspicion of stealing diamonds.

Africa still under colonial conditions

Life for African diamond workers today has changed very little.

South Africa - In the past few years DeBeers has slashed the wages of South African mineworkers. They now live in the shanty towns that have burgeoned in South Africa since the fall of the apartheid system and the rise of neocolonialism.

African men are still stuffed into compounds and ramshackle huts near the mines, while African women who work as cleaners must stay in the women’s barracks. If a husband and wife are found sleeping together they are fired.

Namibia - In Namibia the unionized diamond workers live in abject poverty in hovels without running water, electricity, health care or education for their children. The men live in compounds separated from their families. They are given bunk beds without mattresses to sleep in and are exposed to radiation and other health hazards.

Congo - In the past century since the genocidal Belgian colonialism in Congo, African people have been subjected to ongoing war, bloodshed and powerlessness. The poverty is so severe that most African people have nothing to eat for days at a time. Yet Congo alone holds immeasurable wealth from diamonds, coltan and a wide variety of other valuable minerals essential to the daily functioning of the capitalist world. By all rights, every single resident of the Congo should enjoy the highest standard of living in the world. Every child should grow up in a prosperous family with a lovely house, with access to the highest quality education and the best possible health care.

In the past 10 years proxy wars financed and backed by the U.S., other imperialist powers, including DeBeers, have ravaged the Congo to get or maintain control of those bountiful resources whose benefits never reach the average African person.

Five million people in the Congo have been slaughtered in those wars so that life in the white world can go on in peaceful, prosperous, hi-tech tranquility. No one in America protests this new generation of genocide in the Congo. No one even talks about it.

West Africa - Most of Africa is blessed with this profuse wealth of natural resources. Yet half the people in diamond rich West Africa live on less than a dollar a day. It has the lowest life expectancy at birth in the world—in 10 countries in Africa the life expectancy is 46 years. Sierra Leone has the highest infant mortality rate in the world with 284 deaths per every thousand live births.

DeBeers and the U.S.-backed defeat of African liberation

Ghana - In the late 1950’s, Kwame Nkrumah became the first elected president of Ghana. With the supposed ousting of British colonial control, Nkrumah pursued his ideals of attempting to eliminate all the imperialist-imposed borders and creating one continental African nation working for the benefit of each and every African.

In Ghana, as in most of colonial Africa, centuries of expropriation by colonial powers left the nominally independent nations without an industrial infrastructure to process those resources. Nkrumah began to talk about nationalizing Ghana’s resources and beginning to build its own production capabilities. In the few short years of his power he made enormous strides in this direction.

In the early sixties Nkrumah decided to begin to market Ghana’s diamonds independently, rather than through the process demanded by the DeBeers cartel. Profits from diamond sales could help develop the country. Nkrumah also did not want to sell diamonds to the company behind the apartheid regime of South Africa. Not long after Nkrumah began taking steps towards this end the U.S. attempted a failed coup against him. In 1966 the U.S. was finally successful in ousting Nkrumah and he died in exile.

A major player immediately involved in the coup attempts against Nkrumah was CIA operative and DeBeers emissary Maurice Tempelsman (who was romantically linked with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis until her death and is today linked with the former Secretary of State Madeline Albright).

Congo - Following the first unsuccessful coup attempt against Nkrumah, the popular young anti-colonial leader Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister in Congo. Like Nkrumah, Lumumba was committed to his promise that the resources of Congo would benefit the workers and peasants.

During this period Congo was very important to DeBeers, because a third of the world’s known diamond supply was located there. This was during the Cold War and the U.S. was stockpiling industrial diamonds needed for airplanes and armaments.

The U.S. could not deal directly with DeBeers because they had indicted the diamond cartel during the Second World War for violating U.S. anti-trust laws. Maurice Tempelsman became the middleman for DeBeers, supplying millions of dollars worth of diamonds to the U.S. from Congolese mines on the behalf of DeBeers.

As soon as Lumumba took office in 1960, he made it clear that Congo’s resources were for African people.

Tempelsman immediately began working under the Kennedy administration to plot the U.S. and Belgian assassination of Lumumba which took place in January 1961, just months after his election.

After the murder of Patrice Lumumba, Tempelsman secured a diamond deal with Congo that was extremely lucrative for both the U.S. and DeBeers. It also allowed him to end up with control of several profitable mines while giving some of the biggest, most valuable diamonds in the world to Joseph Mobutu, the pliable new puppet who would brutally do the bidding of U.S. imperialism in Congo for the next 30 years.

Despite the fact that Lumumba was only in power three months, his leadership had sparked the enthusiasm of the masses of the people and the confidence that they could begin to control their own destiny as African people on their own land.

For many years following the assassination of Lumumba, Congo (known as Zaire under Mobutu) was in a state of mass rebellion. Well-organized resistance fighters held liberated territory in some areas, prompting Che Guevara to take a brigade of Cuban revolutionaries to join the struggle there.

It took all of Mobutu’s military force and a reign of terror to subdue the peoples’ resistance. Mobutu’s forces were trained, armed and paid by the U.S., with the CIA operating both openly and covertly throughout the country, often with its own mercenary forces.

As a U.S. puppet, Mobutu was vicious to those who challenged him. He was known to gouge out the eyes of opposition leaders or cut off their limbs while they were still alive. He tortured and locked up hundreds of thousands of African working people and students.

Mobutu was paid well for his terror, raiding the coffers of the country and amassing nearly $5 billion, which he stashed in Swiss banks, while the African masses starved and suffered.

Diamonds wars of Sierra Leone

A British colony since the late 18th century, Sierra Leone is rich in coffee, bauxite and diamonds, which were found there in 1930. By 1937 one million carats had been extracted and exported to Europe.

According to a recent study by the Canadian government, between 1937 and 1996 $15 billion worth of diamonds have been exported and sold from Sierra Leone. Yet the people of Sierra Leone live on about 30 cents a day.

The DeBeers group of diamond companies have controlled the diamond interests of Sierra Leone since 1935. Sierra Leone was granted nominal independence in 1961. Ten years later Sierra Leone nationalized the diamond mines—again nominally. Since DeBeers controls the world diamond market, the national diamond industry of Sierra Leone still had to sell its diamonds through DeBeers.

Since the 1970’s rebel armies, most of them backed by the U.S. or other European powers, have fought for control of Sierra Leone. Since the 1990s the rebel armies have inflicted terroristic violence against the people of Sierra Leone, cutting off limbs, raping women, killing and displacing thousands and forcing tens of thousands of young children to fight as soldiers.

During this period the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) took over some of the diamond mines and used smuggled diamonds to fund their violence. Although the actions of the RUF are no different than the hundred year legacy of DeBeers’ violence against African people, DeBeers calls these the “blood” diamonds—i.e., diamonds they can’t control.

The U.S. benefitted from purchasing smuggled diamonds from the RUF. It enabled them to flood the diamond market and to poke holes in the long-standing diamond monopoly held by DeBeers, which even the U.S. had never successfully controlled. Fooding the diamond market destabilized the entire West Africa region, making it difficult for any genuinely progressive force to rise up in the interest of the people. The diamond wars left West Africa wide open for another long orgy of Western expropriation of all of Africa’s vast resources.

India - The former British colony of India, on the other hand, has more than a half million diamond workers, but the working people do not profit from it. Seventy percent of the world’s diamonds set in jewellery are cut and polished in India, a $3.3 billion industry.

Most of the Indian workforce is comprised of farm boys who earn tiny wages at small diamond-cutting sweatshops in the most impoverished sections of Mumbai, Surat and Ahmadabad. Almost 30 percent of this jewellery is imported to the U.S., which then turns them over for $11 billion annual profit.

De Beers sub-firms

The Oppenheimers are a Jewish family and most of the worldwide tentacles of the DeBeers cartel, including the cutting, polishing and retail fronts of the diamond industry are controlled by Jewish sub-firms of DeBeers. In Europe everything pertaining to gems and diamonds has been in the hands of Jews since the middle ages. Diamond dealers the world over, regardless of religion, are called by the Hebrew term Yahalom Manin (Yahalom means diamond in Hebrew).

Antwerp and Israel - Rough diamonds are shipped from the mines to the Jewish areas of Antwerp or to Israel to be cut and polished.

New York - n New York the billion dollar diamond trade is centred around 47^thStreet where 25,000 mostly Hasidic Jews are selling, cutting, polishing and marketing diamonds—from the most expensive to the cheapest mail order jewellery. Many of these diamond workers live in the Hasidic community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where they work with the police to gentrify the area at the expense of the African community.

Despite the fact that the diamond trade is supposedly based on Jewish brotherhood, it remains a cutthroat process with no loyalty to other Jewish people when it comes to making money. During the Second World War the Oppenheimers sold industrial diamonds, needed for planes and armaments, to both sides—Nazi Germany and the U.S. government.

Israel - Today, the Israeli diamond industry, built after Israel seized Palestine as a colonial power, is doing everything it can to put the Jewish diamond traders in Belgium out of business.

Israel’s bloody West African diamond trade

Diamonds are Israel’s second largest industry bringing in at least $13 billion. Israel buys half of the world’s rough diamonds, two-thirds of which then go to the U.S.

Control of the trade in African diamonds may have played an underlying role in the recent deadly Israeli war against the people of Lebanon as well.

Israel deals in the Congo

Before the 2001 assassination of Congolese neocolonial leader Laurent Kabila, Israeli diamond traders had brokered an exclusive deal with Congo for their diamonds. It was similar to the deal Tempelsman had made with Mobutu 40 years earlier.

The deal was worth $600 million worth of diamonds for the Israelis in return for arming and military training for Kabila’s troops. Even without this monopoly, certain firms in Israel still control 50 percent of Congo’s diamonds exports, or a billion dollars worth.

Lebanon deals in the Congo, Sierra Leone

Lebanon also is said to have its fingers in the diamond trade, importing rough diamonds from Congo. More than 100,000 Lebanese live in Sierra Leone, and according to reports, are the “market dominant minority” in the alluvial diamond trade of that country.

In Sierra Leone, Lebanese traders control the majority of diamond buying shops, allegedly also smuggling diamonds out of the country off the books.

According to an article by J. Peter Pham of World Defense Review, profits from some of these smuggled diamonds go to the Hezbollah resistance forces. We don’t know if that is true or simply allegations of U.S. and Israeli backed journalists to justify Israel’s deadly attacks.

Africans want to uplift their lives

Africans are calling for their land and culture, and their sovereignty to determine their own lives and destinies back. They are also calling for reparations for centuries of stolen labour and for the crimes of genocide and terrorism against them. They want U.S. and Western imperialism out. They want the U.S. military, the CIA, proxy armies and neocolonial puppets out of their land and out of their lives. They want peace without the interference of any thieving, ravaging force. This has become a matter of life and death. There will be no peace ever on this planet until the oppressed peoples win their liberation from the grip of imperialist power.

The resistance in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq represent the future.

The longevity of Fidel and the Cuban revolution despite ongoing U.S. attacks represent the future. The swagger and confidence of Hugo Chavez who identifies himself as African and indigenous in Venezuela represents the future. The power and determination of Omali Yeshitela as he organizes African people around the world to unite their homeland and come back for what is theirs represents the future.

C. BRICS

Along with South Africa’s entry into BRICS - an alternative banking system to the International Monetary Fund - comes a more intense relationship between South Africa and non-African countries which have a deep interest in the minerals of Africa.

The combined interest of China, Russia, India and Brazil for inviting and allowing a comparatively new economic country such as South Africa into their private circle of game players in forming an alternative to the International Monetary Fund by creating BRICS is strategic as South Africa has an established economic and political set up to influence other countries in Africa.

The origin of BRICS

Back at the beginning, Brics was just a Bric – and rather than originally being an initiative of any of its eventual member nations, it was actually the inspired marketing ploy of someone in the investment banking firm, Goldman Sachs. This acronym was first imagined by Jim O’Neill in his 2001 paper, “Building Better Global Economic Brics”, as a way of describing a historic shift in global economic power – but also as a way of focusing attention on one of Goldman Sachs’s key businesses – selling investment opportunities in a collection of quickly growing emerging market economies. His clever acronym stuck and that, in turn, gave an impetus to some thinking among the national political leadership of those four countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – as they sensed a geopolitical opening to help drive more global attention – and respect – towards their growing international impact.
Then, several years later, after some serious lobbying and importuning by South Africa to be allowed to play with the big boys, and with strategic support inside the grouping from China, South Africa was invited to join the party, and the letter “S” was added to BRIC to represent South Africa. This was despite the lack of parity in population terms on the part of South Africa, as well as a major imbalance in the size of its economy, relative to that of the other players.

The official purpose for BRICS

Officially, the purpose of BRICS is for leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to find ways to counterbalance Western influence in the global economy, in part by swapping their currencies more efficiently and establishing a development bank to extend their influence in emerging markets... But these countries are still trading far more with developed nations and with their neighbours than with each other, according to Unctad’s report. ‘For the time being these countries are not major investors in each other’s economies,’ said James Zhan, director of Unctad’s investment and enterprise division and an author of the report.”

Thus, what pressures would lead China to reverse course in a major way? In fact, in Xi Jinping’s first Africa stop on the way to Durban, the newly confirmed president of China promised to invest more heavily in Africa’s development, although some complain China is just trying to exploit the region’s oil and coal to strengthen further its industrial might.

BRICS and Africa

Following their acceptance to BRICS, South Africa had a turn to host the meeting of the heads of government from the group’s member states in early 2013. Taking the initiative that comes with being host and chair, South Africa decided it would also invite the various multilateral economic clubs in Africa like The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as over a dozen presidents from Africa. This is in order to provide a way of helping convince the other nations on the continent that South Africa is in Brics on behalf of the whole continent – not just for its own benefit.

The finance theme was a kind of code for how best to gain a larger share of the global financial services sector, improve financing for SMEs, and, concurrently, channel more investment flows into Africa through South Africa, under the summit’s theme, “Brics and Africa: Partnership for Development, Integration and Industrialisation”. In support of that theme, South Africa exercised the prerogative of the chair and invited representatives of the various regional economic groupings on the continent such as Ecowas and SADC, as well as some 15 African heads of state, including leaders like Egypt’s Mohamamed Morsi.

Financing BRICS is still calculated in US Dollars

Although one of the ostensible purposes of the BRICS bank is to facilitate the use of other currencies from BRICS nations in place of the dollar, it is interesting to note that all calculations for the bank have still been made in that same dollar. Apparently, the marketing strategy of the investment banking firm, Goldman Sachs, was very successful.

There is concern that even raising the initial start-up capital to invest in an alternative banking system such as BRICS, would be a huge strain on a small nation like South Africa and it could well divert scarce state funds from other more urgent national priorities. ³

While no one expects its initial capitalisation to be $50 billion/nation any more, even the more modest target of $10 billion could be a bridge too far for Pretoria.

D. War in Central African Republic.

Ongoing strife has prevailed in the politically unstable country of Central African Republic (CAR) which is rich in minerals.

In 2003, Francois Bozize led a successful coup against President Patasse of CAR. This led to a civilian uprising, which culminated in coalition of several groups such as the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity (UFDR), the Convention of Patriots for Justice and Peace (CPJP) and the Wa Kodro Salute Patriotic Convention (CPSK), which has joined fighters coming from Chad and Darfur. This coalition, called the Seleka, which means alliance in the national language Sango, came from the northeast of the Central African Republic and reached the doorstep of the capital city, Bangui, at the end of December 2012.

On Friday, 22 March 2013, heavy battle broke out between the Seleka rebel alliance and South African paratroopers in Bangui, who were said to have been sent there to train CAR soldiers and protect President Bozizé, but had still been stationed in Bangui even after Bozizé had fled to Cameroon. Many CAR soldiers joined the rebel forces, and turned against the South African soldiers. During battle, it was discovered that many of the rebels were children as young as 14, and not trained as soldiers, storming the South African troops in groups rather than fighting in formation. South African troops ran out of ammunition and had no back-up from any country, including South Africa. 13 troopers were killed in battle and a further 27 were heavily injured.

On Sunday, 24 March 2013, the Seleka rebel alliance in Central African Republic took the capital, Bangui. South African soldiers were allowed to leave the area in peace and critically injured soldiers were airlifted. President Zuma prepared to send re-enforcement soldiers to Bangui, but came under heavy criticism, and reluctantly withdrew the South African army.

The heterogeneous structure of the rebellion made it very fragile and the Seleka leadership had difficulty controlling all its troops, as demonstrated by the looting that happened in Bangui. At the request of the Seleka, the French army and the MICOPAX were already patrolling the streets of the capital, which illustrates that the first challenge was to enforce law and order.

On Monday, 25 March 2013, Seleka leader Michel Djotodia suspended the constitution, announced the dissolution of the National Assembly and said he intends to rule by decree.

Djotodia announced that presidential elections would be held in 2016 in accord with the Libreville agreement. In order to avoid a dangerous power vacuum, Djotodia had no choice but to quickly form a government. The composition of the government will be a first indicator of the Seleka governance.

The Seleka leadership maintained Nicolas Tiangaye as a Prime Minister, and mentioned the possibility to include dignitaries of the previous regime in the new government.

(Di) What led to the rebellion was the failure of the Bozizé regime to carry out the agreements it had reached with the Seleka leaders in the peace agreement signed on 11 January 2013 in Libreville.

This peace agreement was in consideration that tolerance and dialogue constitute the underpinning of national peace and unity, and was in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, of the African Union, of the CEN-SAD (the Community of Sahel-Saharan States), of the CEMAC (the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa), and of the national Resolutions in relation to the peaceful settlement of conflicts, in particular the Strong Recommendations from the National Dialogue and the Code of Good Conduct; In view of the Constitution of the Central African Republic from 27 December, 2004.

According to the peace agreement, a political transition process would be started by the creation of a transitional government on 3 February 2013, which included the Seleka leaders. The rebels’ takeover of the capital city and this reversal of situation are due to four factors:

· The common feeling in the Central African political class that President Bozizé would not respect the Libreville commitments and that he would block the transition. For instance, he celebrated the tenth anniversary of his own putsch on 15 March 2013 by organizing a public meeting in Bangui and urging young people to “resist Seleka”. In addition, he had imposed some of his relatives in the transitional government, rearmed (buying helicopters) and delayed releasing political prisoners.

· The discontent of the military commanders of the Seleka towards the Libreville agreement. Some Seleka military commanders blamed Michel Djotodia for signing the agreement too fast and for taking into consideration his own interest and not that of the fighters. This generated serious tensions within Seleka.

· The end of Bozizé’s regional support. At the meeting in Libreville, former President Bozize’s regional peers forced him to accept several concessions and blamed him for closing down political space and dialogue with the opposition. The fact that the MICOPAX (the Economic Community of Central African States’ peacekeeping mission in CAR) did not intervene when the rebels moved towards Bangui can be interpreted as the end of Bozizé’s regional support.

· The unavoidable collapse of the Central African army. It had already been unable to stop the Seleka fighters in December 2012 and former President Bozizé had dismissed his son, who was Minister of Defence at the time and the army chief of staff. Under-equipped and unmotivated, the army was no longer able to fight and the rebels quickly realised it.

(Dii) Reaction from the international community on the rebellion against Bozizé

Although former President Bozizé had gained his position as president through an illegal coup in the first place, and stood in breach of the Libreville peace agreement, which was drawn up was in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Charter of the United Nations, the African Union, the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, and the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa, they did not criticize Bozizé. The seizure of the power by the rebels led to a robust reaction from the African Union which condemned what they referred to, as the “unconstitutional” change of regime. The African Union also decided to suspend the participation of the Central African Republic in the activities of the African Union, and to impose focused sanctions, such as travel bans and asset freezes, against the main leaders of the Seleka, including Michel Djotodia. The African Union called on other international organizations to adopt the same approach.

The United States strongly condemned “the illegitimate seizure of power by the Seleka rebel alliance” and said it would review its roughly $2 million in non-humanitarian aid to the Central African Republic.

(Diii) Reaction of South Africa on the rebellion against Bozizé

Several foreign forces are deployed in Central African Republic but they are not all involved in this crisis and above all they position themselves differently when it comes to the recent events. After stopping the Seleka in December 2012, the leaders of the region seem to have accepted the fall of Bozize. MICOPAX did not try to block the rebels when they moved to Bangui and was implicitly supported by the leaders of the region, including Chad.

The French military deployed in CAR is mandated to support MICOPAX; it is following the policy of armed neutrality and is presently securing the airport and the French nationals.

Ugandan troops and their American military advisors are located in the southeast of the Central African Republic in order to fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army. The Chadian and Sudanese troops are based in Birao in order to secure the Vakaga region, in the northeast of the Central African Republic.

South African troops were the only soldiers deployed to maintain possession of the presidential offices in Bangui. Foreign political leaders clearly did not share the same perspective on the manner in which to handle the CAR crisis with President Zuma.⁴

During this crisis, South Africa sided with former president Bozize.

President Zuma took a harsh stand against those who rebelled against Bozizé, to the extent that he engaged the South African National Defence Force in the civil war of another country, despite advice from the South African Minister of Defence, and without following the correct protocol procedures.

(Diiia) President Zuma uses the South African National Defence Force without following the correct procedure, and is in breach of the Constitution

The Constitution of South Africa requires from the president to advise parliament as soon as possible when the army is deployed. Even in an emergency, the president is required to advise the defence committee and parliament within seven days that he has deployed the army.
On the 23^rd of January 2012, Beeld newspaper reported in an article titled “JZ swyg oor weermag” (JZ remains silent about army) of three times in December 2012, that President Zuma ignored the correct procedure in his deployment of the South African National Defence Force. On each of these three occasions, Zuma advised parliament by letter three to six weeks after the deployments, which included twice to the Durban area during festive season and during the COP17 meeting, to assist the police, and a two week deployment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Zuma’s actions are also not in accord with the Defense Act of 2002. According to Art. 18 (4) of this law, any expenses for the deployment of the South African Army has to be declared to the United Nations up front. In the case of the deployment to

in opposition to the DRC, this was not met.

Mr. David Maynier, DA parliamentarian, told Beeld that parliament has to approve the deployment of the South African Army. He stated that, “This rule is there for a good reason, it is there to prevent wars in the exterior, whereby the South African Army may only be deployed with the approval of a small handful of officials with authority from the department of the exterior. A person does not want to wake up suddenly and hear that the army are standing in from of the Luanda gates and that no one knew thereof.”

In his commentary with regards to the deployments, Prof. Pierre de Vos, from the university of Cape Town and expert advisor on the Constitution, said that it was dangerous to “deploy heavily armed soldiers who are not trained (for crowd control) into areas where members of the public are present.” He further asked:
“What would happen if soldiers shot at the public and many people died? Because if the practice of using soldiers to prevent crime to intimidate protestors, continues, such a shooting will happen at one time or another.”

During 2012, Zuma’s actions were also questioned when he only advised the United Nations nine months after a deployment to the Golf of Gunea.

(Diiib) President Zuma used the South African National Defence Force to protect business interests in the Central African Republic

South African troops were engaged in armed combat in the Central African Republic (CAR), without international mandate, and with deadly consequences. Dishonesty in this deployment is grounds for impeaching the president.

(Diiic) Zuma did not want to withdraw the South African troops from CAR

South African soldiers that were deployed in Bangui in December 2012 came under fire on Friday, 23 March 2013, in which at least 13 were shot to death, and a further 27 were injured. By Monday, 26 March 2013, calls mounted for South Africa to pull its forces out of the Central African Republic (CAR).

However, the defence force said that the decision to withdraw troops was with the politicians.

President Jacob Zuma told reporters at his Pretoria residence the government had no reason to order a withdrawal, stating that, “There has been no reason for us to leave. What we’ve been looking at is how do we reinforce our forces, how do we ensure that there are no further casualties,” adding that, “There is no reason for us to issue a command for withdrawal.”⁵Furthermore, it was reported that South Africa was co-operating with the African Union on the matter.

The deployment of South African soldiers in CAR was against the advice of Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and the military command.

Congress of SA Trade Unions general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the South African troops had not been deployed in terms of an AU mandate as reported earlier, but under a bilateral agreement. Had they been deployed under an AU mandate, there would have been a deployment of 3/8 by the AU along with a 1/8 deployment of South African troops. He added that, “We see no reason for them to stay there. They were sent there to protect a president who has fled.”⁶

FFPlus spokesman Pieter Groenewald stated that the South African government needed to take full responsibility for the deaths of these soldiers n Car, stating that, “It appears as if President Jacob Zuma had, without careful consideration, decided to deploy defence force members in the CAR without proper logistical and air support for such operations.” He added that without this kind of support, South African troops could not take on peace operations, stating that, “It is therefore not surprising that the tragedy took place and it could be repeated if the government does not drastically intervene.”⁶

The SA National Defence Union (Sandu) also called for the government to make a decision to bring the troops home.⁶

(Diiid) South African troops engaged in battle in two different areas, Checkpoint PK12, 2km from Bangui, as well as Boali, 70km from the city

The SANDF indicates that most of its casualties occurred at Checkpoint PK12, 12 km from Bangui and 2 km from its barracks. It does not explain what it was doing at Boali 70 km from the city.

Defence reporter Helmoed-Romer Heitman for South Africa, stated "That series of running battles claimed 13 soldiers and 27 others were wounded, but the force retained its cohesion and was able to fall back from two separate engagement areas to its base and to hold it until their attackers gave up trying to overrun them and proposed a ceasefire and disengagement."

The deeply embedded Helmoed-Romer Heitman further reported that the 200 Parabats expended 12 000 rounds of 12,7 mm machinegun ammunition, 288 rockets from 107 mm rocket launchers, 800 bombs from 81 mm mortars and thousands of rounds from 7, 62 mm machineguns and 5,56 mm rifles.

What has not been said is that the 180 man force was split into two and that the battle started far (70 km) from the point that needed protection.

Seleka's General Arda Hakouma reported that, “"It was at Boali, about 70 km from Bangui, that the fighting was hardest against the South Africans. I lost six men, the South Africans 35".

General Hakouma maybe wrong that all 35 SANDF casualties were fatalities, but his figure of 35 tallies very closely with the SANDF's casualty figure of 40, especially when it seems that the SANDF split its force into two, the Damara and Bossombélé contingents, as well as that it conducted some anti-looting tasks in Bangui itself.

(Diiie) Mercenaries amongst the South African troops

In January 2013, the very week Zuma announced he was sending 200 soldiers to beef up President François Bozizé’s forces, reports quoted the Seleka rebel alliance referring to the South African troops as “mercenaries”.

Clearly the rebels were hostile to the SANDF presence in their country and the president must have been aware that the soldiers’ lives were therefore in danger. But this seemed not to trouble him as he disregarded the recommendation of Defence and Military Veterans Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula that the troops in the CAR be withdrawn as well as a warning by senior army officers that the mission was “suicidal”.

Times Live reported on Friday, 30 March 2013, that General Hassan Ahmat, commander of the 558-strong Brigade Rouge claimed that he and his men had killed at least 36 South African soldiers and captured 46, releasing them soon afterwards.

"We were coming down from Bossangoa in 19 vehicles and we found the South African troops at PK12," he said. "Afterwards, I saw 36 bodies of South African soldiers myself lying near here," he said, pointing to the road into Bangui. "More could have died afterwards from their wounds."

The general also claimed he had received reports that ousted president Francois Bozize who at the time was guarded by SA troops was “doling out cash to South African soldiers”, although this could not be verified independently. "That's why I have no respect for them," he said. "Bozize lied that South Africa was here to train Central African Republic's troops. But they were mercenaries; that is why he gave them money."⁷

a) EliteSaSecurity

On the 7^th of April 2013, it was reported⁸that the last SANDF commander of the CAR program, General Johan Hougaard, is now in private contract with the former president, Boussie, as special advisor. Taken from his own website,⁹ we read as follows:
General Johan Hougaard (Ret) is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Elite SA Security Solutions. He served the South African Defence Force for 36 years and concluded his service at the end of 2010 as Chief of Staff of Joint Military Operations. Aside from extensive military operational experience he also planned and executed peacekeeping operations during the past 10 years in Ivory Coast, Comoros, DRC, Burundi and the Central African Republic. During his military career, he received the Honoris Crux Medal for bravery, whilst serving as an officer in 32 Battalion. He did various senior operational and management courses such as the Army Staff Course, the Joint Staff qualification, United Nations Senior Mission Commander Course and Counter Terrorism course at the US Naval Post Graduate School in California. He also received his Senior Management Certificate from the Stellenbosch Management School. At present, he is still acting as the military advisor for the President of the Central African Republic and is also a co-director of other various companies.

South Africa has not been told if ‘defence contractors’ or real mercenaries, were deployed in CAR, not part of the official SANDF contingent. If the SANDF associated itself with a mercenary force such as EliteSaSecurity, it is possible that observers could not tell the difference.

ai) General Johan Hougaard

General Johan Hougaard has been involved with corruption scandals. He also works under pseudonyms, including Matthew Peter John Wilke, Hugh O'l Phart, et al.

Johan Hougaard has worked as a consultant for the Department of Defence, signing a 3 year contract at the end of 2011, in which he duties included to assist in writing the next Defence Review, and assist in charting what new weapons the SANDF will need in the coming decades.

Johan Hougaard is said to have taken money from the German arms consortium ‘Thyssen Rheinstall Technik’, which was connected with the 'ARMS DEAL' scandal.
Hougaard also did consulting work for the late Joe Modise; one of the key architects of the 'ARMS DEAL'.

(Diiif) President Zuma led South Africa into a war which it had nothing to do with

On 27 March 2013, the Daily Maverick ran a report titled “SAS role in the battle of Bangui – the blood in Zuma’s hands”.¹⁰ This report laid the facts clear that President Zuma led South Africa into a war in which she had no place. We quote the following from this report:

After the weekend’s slaughter, Zuma did not bother explaining his reasons for ordering the deployment without United Nations or African Union approval. He also did not bother to explain the precise role of South Africa’s troops in the CAR, why rebel fighters were attacking a South African military base or why he ignored the warnings to withdraw the soldiers.

Zuma simply paid his respects and left it to the chief of the army to deal with “operational matters”. But it was Zuma who authorised the mission, against the advice of the minister and the military command, and therefore only he can provide answers as to why he did so.

This situation is extremely serious: if our army has been a player in a civil war in another country, in violation of international law, Zuma could be impeached.

Constitutional law expert Pierre de Vos spells out the constitutional and legal procedures required to authorise the deployment of the military and render foreign interventions legitimate. It is clear now that Parliament was used to rubber-stamp this mission and did not have the opportunity to interrogate it.

Zuma’s explanation to Parliament was that the troops were there to assist with “capacity building of the CAR defence force” and to assist with the “implementation of the disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration process”.

But Bozizé was in South Africa last week to meet with Zuma and would have surely told him that he was under siege. Assuming the reasons given to Parliament were true, Zuma would have realised then that there was no point to continuing the South African mission as there would definitely not be any “capacity building”, “demobilisation” and “disarmament” going on when a coup was on the cards.

He would also have realised that the troops were ill-equipped to protect themselves in armed combat between that country’s military and the rebels and should have taken extraordinary precautions to make sure the soldiers were safe. And if they were to remain there in a combat situation, surely this changed their mandate, a change which placed Zuma under obligation to inform Parliament that the SANDF was now involved in a war.

But let us consider an alternative explanation: that Zuma had some deal with Bozizé that entailed providing him with back-up protection from the rebels in exchange for something else. Why else would Zuma go out on such a limb and Bozizé run here on the eve of being deposed? And what else could have provoked the rebels to the kind of hostility that resulted in a nine-hour battle?

This would mean that Zuma misled Parliament and also interfered in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. If this is what happened, the president obviously did not gamble on the rebels defeating the CAR military and SANDF troops, and he clearly did not think his friend Bozizé would get toppled.

If the alternative explanation is proven accurate, Zuma would be open to impeachment by Parliament at least two grounds: violation of the Constitution or law; and/or misconduct.

But Zuma is bound to adopt his usual methods of fending off interrogation: dodging questions, hiding behind the ANC’s parliamentary majority to avoid scrutiny and pretending all is well and his intentions noble.

This situation, however, goes beyond the pale and has the potential to bring the South African government into serious international disrepute. It is not just another case of blowing taxpayers’ money, ridiculous behaviour by a member of Cabinet, barely believable incompetence or corruption.

The president’s actions, for whatever reason – noble or illicit – led to South Africa becoming involved in a war it should have had nothing to do with. It is not in our region, there are no economic interests (for the state, at least) that we know of and there is no international mandate for us to participate in this war. What’s more is that the president’s actions led to soldiers, South African citizens, dying in combat. The matter cannot be dismissed, like every other crisis plaguing the Zuma administration. The president needs to account to the nation for the deaths in the CAR.

And, most urgently, Zuma needs to explain why South African troops are still in Bangui, the capital, which is now under the control of the rebels. Why are they not being withdrawn? Clearly the people who killed 13 South African soldiers also see the remaining troops as the enemy. If they are to remain there, their role would obviously not be “capacity building” for the illegitimate new rulers but to intervene, somehow, to defeat the rebels.

So, what is it now?

Is South Africa prepared to continue participating in this war in the CAR it did not know it was in? If not, then stop it. Hold the president to account, bring the troops home and protect South Africa’s Constitution and the rule of law.

The blood of the 13 SANDF soldiers and that of the CAR citizens who died in the fire fight is on Zuma’s hands. The blood of any more people who die as a result of South Africa’s presence in the CAR is on ours.

Whatever the outcome of this debacle, it is clear that South Africa’s role in the Battle of Bangui, has left blood on President Zuma’s hands, which, constitutionally, should lead to his impeachment. The reasons are further detailed in Footnote 1 - SA’s role in the Battle of Bangui: The blood on Zuma’s hands.

(Diiig) Deployment of additional troops to CAR by Zuma cost SA more than R370 million

On the 5^th of April 2013, News24 reported that the additional flights of the South African National Defence Force ordered by President Zuma to bolster troops stationed in CAR after the battle in Bangui on the weekend of 24 March 2013, cost in excess of R370 million.¹¹

(Diiih) Motive for South African troops in CAR was not for peace keeping

A Daily Maverick source, who was able to breach security, heard from wounded South African soldiers, who were being treated at the 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria, that they believed South African troops were being used to further ulterior motives in the Central African Republic (CAR).

Soldiers say that since January 2013, South African troops were not involved in any military training – the original aim of the South African military presence in the country. Soldiers were clearly instructed that they were there to protect other South Africans, their assets and equipment, as well as the SANDF equipment deployed in the CAR.¹²

a) Business interests of President Zuma in CAR

Sources in the Central African Republic government and security sector told RFI's Cyril Ben Simon that the South African Soldiers are fighting to protect mining and oil contracts signed by South African companies with CAR president François Bozize.

Several sources said the South African soldiers fought so hard because they were being paid extra by François Bozize.

b) Dig Oil

A CAR minister told RFI that a South African company called Dig Oil, which is prospecting for oil in the area, is "a cashcow for the ANC, and President Zuma's nephew is a shareholder."
Khulubuse Zuma bought oil blocks in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo under the company names Foxwhelp and Capricat. News articles linked Caprikat and Foxwhelp to a nephew of President Jacob Zuma, as in a Bloomberg article of 25 June 2010 (“Oil Firms of South Africa Leader Nephew to Start Congo Exploration in 2012”), which said the companies were owned by Khulubuse Zuma, who made extensive use of his address book to cut the deal.

E. Links between agents representing the Crown in Africa and warfare in Africa

The LaRouche mining consortium in Africa, along with the Mormon mafia, is tasked to buy up South Africa and take over the rest of Southern Africa through running terrorist groups out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On their list is Kenya and other nations.

Their method of operation is to finance themselves with blood diamonds, sent through agents to Tel Aviv, money to be handled by Bain Capital/Romney, then to China where arms are purchased and shipped to terrorists in Africa, Al Qaeda, Boko Harum and UNITA. The details of the deal were set up in October 2012. See Footnote 2 - BAIN and AFRICAN TERROR - Blood Diamonds

1. The LaRouche mining consortium

The Tiny Rowland factor in politics for a neo-imperialist Africa

Roland Walter Fuhrhop, the British business man also known as Tiny Rowland, was born on the 27^th of November 1917 in India. He was not a prominent factor in the business sector of Africa until 1961, when he became involved with the London and Rhodesia Mining and Land Corporation Ltd. (Lonrho).

The Lonrho group, based in London, indentified Rowland as the man who would be instrumental in developing their business interests throughout Africa and the Middle East according to a neo-imperialist system.

Rowland built the multi-national Lonrho Company to ‘rule’ all the mineral land of Africa. Within three decades, it gained a hold on most economies in Africa and through this process became one of the largest companies in Britain.

Through the years, Lonrho worked in alliance with the British Intelligence Service Mi6, which at times was the channel used to provide secret funding to terrorist organizations such as Frelimo, Swapo and the ANC. At times Lonrho served as an extension for the British Crown to promote friendly relations with Black leaders from Africa.

Such a neo-imperialist development was also instrumental on the policies the Afro-Asia Block, the United Kingdom and some other countries took against the policy of the South African government for separate development. The bridge between the two systems of development was seen to be the détente system.

The association between Tiny Rowland and the South African Cabinet is notable since 1973. At that time, the South African government had opened a criminal case of fraud against Rowland.

Dr. Hendrik Lutting, Ambassador to South Africa in London, convinced the South African Minister of the Exterior, Dr. Hilgard Muller, to have the charges dropped. Thereafter, the Attorney-General of South Africa ruled that there was ‘insufficient evidence’ to continue the matter against Rowland. It was against this background that Rowland made the assurance of a détente in 1973 between the South African government and other African statesmen.

The relationship of Rowland with the South African government before 1994, is discussed further in Attachment 10 - South Africa is bound as a possession by the Crown, Sub-section f. The Crown destroyed the governments of South Africa’s neighbouring countries to keep possession of South Africa, through which they planned to bring the rest of Southern Africa into alignment of their goal towards a United Africa

2. The George Soros factor in politics for a neo-imperialist Africa

George Soros got into the business of manipulating African governments in the 1990’s, when he was already heavily invested in British imperial African plantations and mining.

Soros invests in competitor to Lonmin before strike violence on Lonmin breaks out

George Soros is very active in South Africa via the Soros Open Society, and prior to the Marikana strikes at the Lonmin mine of South Africa on the 16^th of August 2012, purchased 15.5 million shares in Platinum Group Metals Ltd. - competitors to Lonmin.

Soros Open Society Institute

The Soros Open Society Institute's southern Africa operations are, in effect, directly co-owned by the U.S. government-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the NED's London partner organization, the U.K. government-funded Westminster Foundation.

The director of Soros's Open Society Initiative on Southern Africa (OSISA) is Godfrey Kanyanze. Kanyanze has long served as the director of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which is funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. George Soros is discussed further in See Attachment 10 – Attachment 10 South Africa is bound as a possession by the Crown, Section B) The Crown kept possession of South Africa within the economic structures of the country when the African National Congress came into power through illegal smuggling, Sub-section (v) Manipulation of the Stock exchange and Employment Market

Soros's Johannesburg-based Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa operates in ten countries. Throughout the recent agitation against the Zimbabwe regime, Reginald Matchaba-Hove has been the chairman of that Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa; he was, simultaneously, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN)--an anti-government "non-partisan, independent group of 38 non-governmental organisations.^''13

3. Romney relationships which affect Africa

(i) Russian and Cuban intelligence set Romney up with a mistress who is also his handler.

Romney’s relationship with Cuba extends to repeat personal audiences with Castro during his constant trips in and out of Cuba.

In Cuba, Russian and Cuban intelligence set Romney up with a mistress, “Maria,” who was also his “handler.” For more information on “Maria”, see Footnote 2a - Romney’s handler shared the same name as the member of the American government who was not in public office, but was on the highest decision making levels of the GOP.

Cuban mafia support for Mitt Romney can be seen on the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fxNFK-cwJU

(ii) Romney is a compulsive gambler

From his profile with CIA and FBI agents, “Romney is a compulsive gambler…”

(iii) Romney helped run narcotics trafficking

According to the FBI, top level counter-narcotics, Romney helped run narcotics trafficking through Mexico into the United States. He also continued to work directly with Cuban and Russian intelligence, a relationship they say is “ongoing.”

(iv) Bain Capital

Bain Capital was established to protect the former front company, Bain & Company.

Operations would be managed from Panama, banking from Switzerland and the Caymans but client meetings would be held in Cuba, wherein Romney is a key role player.

George Romney, the “poor kid” who claims to have nearly starved during the depression, went from “rags to riches” in months during the 1930’s, from grocery clerk to running an auto company to eventually, during World War II, managing the entire auto industry.

Along with drug dealers, gangsters, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, and Columbia, George Romney funded Bain. He became the President of American Motors, Governor of Michigan, and Secretary of Health and Human Services while running a vast multi-national criminal empire.

The investigator on the influence of the Romney family on the world who put together the information of this article wrote that, “When we tried to explain this, the web of hedge funds, of ‘limited partnerships,’ of railroads, shipping companies, even the largest retail chain in the world, how they were involved, how Mitt Romney is the largest casino operator in the world, all done through layers of partnerships, no one wanted to take on anything this powerful.”

The list of major American corporations, many “giants” was endless. He added that,

“One of the keys is the Texas Pacific Group, funding 254 companies. Another is GE Capital, originating as a Mexican bank that laundered drug profits, grown into one of the largest companies in America by ‘Jack Welch’ and then destroyed through a ‘pump and dump’ costing American investors billions, crushing many pension funds and impoverishing tens of thousands or more.”

Those listed as representing organized crime make up groups responsible for 50% of political donations in the United States and this doesn’t count the estimated $4 billion in drug profits brought in through phony front corporations or the money collected during overseas campaign funding drives, trips to Israel and Britain. The drug industry connected with the American government is further discussed in Footnote 3 – NAFTA was a Romney document negotiated by President Bush

(v) George Romney represents the Crown

Romney represents organized crime and the European banking consortium which belongs to members of the Crown. His purpose is to unravel the roadblocks put in place by Obama, few and weak as they are due to the flawed system of “bought” government adopted by America. This means a world war, more prisons, looted banks, all wealth shipped overseas and the eventual descent of America into third world status, depopulated, de-industrialized and enslaved to the masters of the New World Order, as discussed in Attachment 3 – The Crown, Footnote 3, sub-section The Bilderberg Group: Planning on a New World Order.

On the Israeli end, Romney, while travelling there with Las Vegas casino boss, Sheldon Adelson, met with diamond traders at what was supposed to be a fundraiser. However, it turned out to be a conspiracy of linking together diamonds, terrorism, money, and the narcotics trade which, working through Bain, the Bush family, Mormon groups in the CIA and the Mossad, meant to take over all of Africa.

(vi) The Romney family history is tied to the Mormon history in America

The Romney family history, and their rise in the financial world, is tied to the Mormon history in America.

Mormon history is largely secret, two wars against the United States, wars over polygamy, over the “Kingdom of Deseret” and its withdrawal from the United States.

The Romney family were citizens of that “kingdom” and had their US citizenship formally withdrawn in 1872 by the Edmunds Act.

They became federal fugitives, fled America and stayed out of the country for 26 years, citizens of Mexico. No “returning” Romney family member was repatriated as an American citizen, all remained Mexican citizens, some returning to Mexico.

During their time there, they formed alliances with ruling families, with bandits, with forces opposed to the United States and its seizure of American land. Mormons who fled to Mexico had become a “5th column” when they returned and remained tied to Mexico.

Carlos Salinas, the former Mexican President, who attended Harvard with Mitt Romney and became his lifelong companion, ran their drug cartels. Briefing didn’t run immediately to Carlos Salinas, but to the father of Mitt Romney, George Romney.

(vii) The Mormon mafia

The direct link between the Mormon mafia in South Africa and the American government is anchored by the Romney family.

The interest in the mineral wealth of Africa, which extends to blood diamonds, by American presidential candidates who are Russian agents has been exposed in 2010 to news and government agencies. On the 1^st of November 2012, an article called “Romney Leaks: Drugs, Blood Diamonds and a Cuban Mistress” with the sub-heading “FBI, CIA and Foreign Intelligence Agencies “Leak” Romney Files” reveals information gathered from years of investigation, including two years undercover, inside of one of Mexico’s biggest drug cartels. Files include wire taps, documents, photographs, including documents from Cuban intelligence which include photos and recordings, secured at extreme risk.

“George Romney, ¹⁴ spying for Cuba and Russia’, “Romney running terrorism in Africa”, this is what the FBI, CIA and the files state. Documents outline several meetings between Romney and Castro.

FBI officials indicate that Romney’s travels were done under diplomatic passport supplied by the KGB.

Notes in the “Romney File” indicate the following:

Based on the number of trips to Cuba and reports from our intelligence sources there, Romney was considered a top intelligence asset for Cuban and Soviet/Russian intelligence.

His psychopathic and narcissistic personality disorders tied to gambling addiction and obsession with physical security (physical cowardice) made him, not only easy to manage but highly motivated to use his strong ties in Washington to access whatever intelligence his handlers desired. Romney’s “world view” is that he sees himself as a molder of world history, above “ordinary people” and obsessed with power and personal safety.

There is a systematic effort to destabilize all of Africa and return it to colonialism by big role players such as America – also working for Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel and North Korea.

George Romney is the second consecutive GOP candidate with a dossier that accuses them of working for Russia.

a) The Mormon mafia connection with the American government

Presently, terrorism is spreading across the African continent, while Mormon Mafia run the CIA and FBI.

Intelligence services in South Africa said that those financing terrorism with blood diamonds, those buying everything in sight, are all Mormon, with support of the Heritage Foundation and key Washington law firms.

b) Mormon mafia purchase mining properties in South Africa

A CIA agent named “Tony,” working South Africa, part of a team of agents there, all Mormons, contacted an intelligence agency director.

“Tony” as he called himself was working with a US law firm and was tasked with investing $120 billion in drug profits, maybe from Afghanistan, in South Africa. He told our representatives he was looking for mining properties worth more than $200 million each.

c) UNITA is hired by the Mormon mafia to supply blood diamonds which are sold for weapons to take over southern Africa by running terrorist groups from the Democratic Republic of the Congo

“Tony” the CIA agent, met with dozens of other groups in South Africa. Tony’s group works with UNITA, a terrorist organization, sometimes supported by North Korea, Israel, the US and China. The former Angolan revolutionary organization is now “for hire,” and “terrorism on demand” with a reach that covers a dozen nations.

Their task, as South African intelligence indicates, is to buy up South Africa and take over the rest of Southern Africa through running terrorist groups out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On their list is Kenya and other nations.

The details of the deal were set up in October 2012. UNITA had difficulty coming up with their end, the $1.2 billion a year in diamonds they promised.

4. Interference by members of the United Nations in African wars

(i) RWANDA

In 1990, the Rwandan Civil War began. It was fought between the Rwandan Patriotic Front - a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, with support from Uganda (in an attempt to defeat the Hutu-led government); and the Hutu regime, which was supported by the Francophone Africa and France.

a) South African interest in Francophone Africa

The interest in the mineral rich area of Africa commonly known as Francophone, which includes the DRC and CAR, by the African National Congress in government of South Africa, can be associated with the involvement of African National Congress presidents with the French government. Both the previous South African president, Thabo Mbeki, and the present president Jacob Zuma, come from the South African Communist Party alliance with the African National Congress. Both presidents played an integral part in transferring governance of South Africa from the previous National Party regime, to the African National Congress, as discussed in Attachment 10 - South Africa is bound as a possession by the Crown, with Mbeki leading the negotiations on behalf of the African National Congress, and Zuma being in control of the military intelligence services for the African national Congress. Both were spies for the National Party during the Apartheid struggle. Pik Botha, who led the delegation on behalf of the National Party, was in control of the military intelligence of South Africa at the time of these negotiations. Pik Botha was also a double agent, providing France, Britain and American members of the Crown with information regarding intelligence matters of South Africa.

During negotiations, the demands of the Crown, represented mainly by the Oppenheimer syndicate, was met by all leaders of the National Party and the African National Congress.

Thabo Mbeki supplied the French government with full access to all intelligence services of South Africa during his position as President of South Africa, as discussed in Attachment 10, wherein mention is also made of state secret information with regard to investigating economic ventures being made available to the MI6 of Britain, through CIEX, of which the managing director was Michael Oatley, who was second in charge of the MI6 in Britain.¹⁵

(ii) Standard Bank in the South African political arena

In May 1980, Pik Botha in his capacity as Minister of Defence recruited thirteen members from the most important business sectors as military advisors for the State Security Council. They were Gavin Relly from Anglo American; Mike Rosholt from Barlows; Basil Hersov from Anglo-Vaal; Wim De Villiers from General Mining; Frans Cronje from SAB-Nedsual; Richard Goss from SAB; Chris Sauders from Tongaat; Ian MacKenzie from Standard Bank; Richard Lurie from JSE; Johannes Van Den Horst from Old Mutual; Fredi Du Plessis from Sanlam; Johannes Hurter from Volkskas and Jaap Wilkens from SALU.

These businessmen were tasked to advise P.W.Botha and General Magnus Malan (head of the Defence Force), as well as serve as guard dogs among the money powers and weapon industries.¹⁶

(iii) Standard Bank interests in Francophone Africa

On the 3^rd of April 2013, immediately before the media announced that President Zuma was sending South African soldiers into the DRC to declare war on the ‘rebels’ who are mostly members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Ebenezer Essoka, General Manager of Standard Chartered bank in Southern Africa, said that local partnerships are important in Francophone Africa.¹⁷Francophone Africa is discussed further in Footnote 4 - Francophone Africa.

Today, it is no secret that the South African National Defence Force is interfering in the domestic politics of Francophone Africa, and acts in accordance to the desires of the United Nations as watchdog in CAR and the DRC.

b) The United Nations destabilized peace in Rwanda which led to the genocide of the Tutsies

In 1993, the Hutu-led government of Juvénal Habyarimana called for a cease-fire and anchored peace in the region by the proposed Arusha Accords, which afforded power sharing between the various political and ethical groups prevalent in his country.¹⁸ The United States enlisted prominent role players to assassinate Habyarimana, knowing full well that this would destabilize all peace negotiations. Not only did members of the United Nations fund radio and press releases to increase hatred towards the Tutsies, but they also supplied the Hutus with machetes to slaughter the Tutsies, and also pro-peace Hutus, who were portrayed as "traitors" and "collaborators".

(bi) Key Role Players in the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana were placed in position by the United Nations

When investigating who was behind the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, two key role players - President Paul Kagame and Colonel Rose Kabuye – who orchestrated his murder, were directly linked to the United Nations. See Footnote 5 - Colonel Rose Kabuye and President Paul Kagame

It is important to note that the United Nations used Tutsi member Rose Kabuye to infiltrate the Rwandan Patriotic Front to destabilize the Hutu government in Francophone Africa, while at the same time, the United Nations incited and armed the Hutus to murder Tutsies.

Today, the United States based Rwanda Global Education Fund describes the role of Rose Kabuye in the Rwandan massacre as a hero, stating that, “Rose Kabuye became part of the Tutsi-led liberation army that ousted the Hutu militia and ended the genocide...”

(bii) United Nations surveillance in Rwanda before the genocide

United Nations peacekeepers were deployed to “patrol ceasefire and assist in demilitarization and demobilization”. A March 1993 report found that 10,000 Tutsi had been detained and 2,000 murdered since the Rwandan Patriotic Front's 1990 invasion. In August 1993, Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations forces, made a reconnaissance trip to evaluate the situation and requested 5,000 troops; he was given 2,548 military personnel and 60 civilian police.¹⁹He at first saw the situation as a standard peacekeeping mission.

(biii) Preparations for the genocide

Even after the 1993 peace agreement signed in Arusha, businessmen close to General Habyarimana imported 581,000 machetes from China²⁰ for Hutu use in killing Tutsi, because machetes were obviously cheaper than guns. ²¹

In a 2000 news story, The Guardian reported, "The former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, played a leading role in supplying weapons to the Hutu regime which carried out a campaign of genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. As Minister of Foreign Affairs in Egypt, Boutros-Ghali facilitated an arms deal in 1990, which was to result in $26 million (£18m) of mortar bombs, rocket launchers, grenades and ammunition being flown from Cairo to Rwanda. The arms were used by Hutus in attacks which led to up to a million deaths."²²

Further conspirators to the genocide of the Tutsies were drawn from members of the Hutu power group known as the Akazu, many of whom occupied positions at top levels of (the United Nations approved) national government. The genocide was supported and coordinated by the national government as well as by local military and civil officials and mass media. Alongside the military, primary responsibility for the killings themselves, rests with two Hutu militias that had been organized for this purpose by political parties: the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, although once the genocide was underway a great number of Hutu civilians took part in the murders. This genocide marked the end of the peace agreement on which President Juvénal Habyarimana had set out on in 1993. The Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front restarted their offensive, defeating the army and seizing control of the country.

c) The Rwandan Genocide

The message to the world, as also depicted by Wikipaedia, describes the Rwandan Genocide as follows:

A mass slaughter of the Tutsis by the Hutus that took place in 1994 in the East African state of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days (from the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6 through mid-July) over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate. Estimates of the death toll have ranged from 500,000–1,000,000, or as much as 20% of the country's total population.

The Rwandan military (known as the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF)), Hutu rebel groups such as the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda, and Hutu militia groups, notably the Interahamwe, systematically set out to murder all the Tutsis they could reach, regardless of age or sex, as well as the political moderates among the Hutu.²³

They incited Hutu civilians to participate in the killings or be shot in turn, using radio broadcasts to tell them to kill their Tutsi neighbours. See Footnote 6 – Radio messages used as a tool to incite genocide in Rwanda.

(ci) Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines

Audio-visual media of Tutsi hate speech was led by Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines, Societe Anonyme (RTLM SA) takes the lead. It was established as a joint-founded company with 50 shareholders, and officially registered on 8^th July 1993. The official contract between the government and the radio station was later signed on 30^th September by the minister of information Faustin Rucogoza and Felicien Kabuga - financial adviser to President Habyarimana, served from the very beginning as president of the Board of Directors.

Felicien Kabuga was an in-law to the president - his daughter Bernadet was married to Jean Pierre Habyarimana, the president’s son.

Jean Pierre Habyarimana, a civil engineer, was the president of MRND for the city of Kigali.²⁴

Funding of Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines should be investigated, as the radio reports incited hatred towards the Tutsis which led to genocide.

(cii) France was the instigator of the Rwanda genocide

The role France played in controlling Francophone Africa before and after the Rwanda genocide is once again prominent now that South Africa is entering the war in CAR and DRC. In Footnote 7 - The role France played in the Rwandan genocide, greater detail is provided for the role of the French government in Francophone Africa, from which we take the following pointers:

· A military assistance agreement was signed in 1975 between President Juvénal Habyarimana (Rwanda) and President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (France) in what France calls the “pré-carré” (her reserved corner or backyard in Africa).

· In 1983, Jean Pierre Habyarimana (one of the sons of the late President of Rwanda) agreed to allow President Jean Christophe Mitterrand (son of late President François Mitterrand) to head the African Cell in the Elysée (the Office of the President of the French Republic) - the most powerful institution as far as the French African policy is concerned.

In her African foreign policy, France cannot accept a change of power in her backyard (“pré-carré”) without her active involvement or blessing. France, foreign affairs and defense matters are the undisputed constitutional preserve of the President of the Republic.

· The propaganda war which France launched against the Tutsis led to their genocide.

· From 1990 to 1994, the military situation in Rwanda became a personal affair of President Mitterrand who appointed General Jean Pierre Huchon to closely follow the matter, and report directly to him.

· France maintained her troops in Rwanda, which actively fought alongside the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) against the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the armed wing of the RPF. The French troops were especially in command responsibilities, and they manned heavy artillery and helicopters gunship.

France’s involvement in the Rwandan civil strife was not a secret as evidenced by the appointment, in 1992, by late President Habyarimana, of French Lieutenant-Colonel Chollet as the overall planner and commander of all military operations of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR). Apart from this military engagement on frontlines, French soldiers manned roadblocks at which Rwandans carrying identity cards marked “Tutsis” were either arrested and made to disappear, or else simply killed on the spot.

During the whole period from 1990 to 1994, French troops participated in the training not only of the regular armed forces of Rwanda, but also the Interahamwe militia, which later spearheaded the execution of genocide of Tutsis and the massacre of dissident Hutus. This training was not only military but also political and ideological. During all this period the Armed Forces of Rwanda (FAR) and the Interahamwe militia which were trained and equipped by France committed numerous genocidal massacres against Tutsis in different parts of Rwanda, such as in Mutara (1990), in Ruhengeri-Gisenyi (the massacres of Bagogwe-Tutsis in 1991, 1992,1993), in Bugesera (1992), without any reaction from France.

· The international community missed an opportunity to prevent genocide because of the complicity of France.

· France encouraged the creation of an extremist party called ‘’CDR’’ (“Coalition for the Defense of the Republic”), which later on spearheaded the execution of genocide.

· The French government refused to save Tutsis who had been looking after their pets in Rwanda, during which French troops airlifted the pets in evacuation missions.

· France delivered huge quantities of arms to be used to commit genocide during evacuation missions and via the D.R.Congo, then Zaïre.

· Using her prominent position in the UN Security Council, France was able to hoodwink 10 out of the 15 members of the UN Security Council into believing that she was sending a bona fide “Humanitarian mission”, and they voted for UNSC Resolution nº 929 authorizing French troops to be deployed in Rwanda under the code name of ‘Operation Turquoise’’.

· The French troops of the “Operation Turquoise’’ finally resolved to organize the evacuation of the defeated genocidal forces into Zaire were they attempted to re-organize, re-train and re-arm them with the hope that they could re-capture power in Rwanda.

· French authorities refused to acknowledge the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis.

French intelligence services have sponsored books by Péan, Onana, Ruzibiza, Debre, etc., which are now being used by Judge Bruguière, as main sources of information for their so-called investigation of genocide.

· France has turned into a safe haven for the 1994 genocide suspects, where they are shielded against judicial prosecution.

· The Embassy of France in Rwanda has been solely devoted to the mobilization of internal opposition, to the extent of encouraging government officials to flee the country, so as to weaken the Rwandan government of National Unity until the time it was ordered to be closed down.

· France has been boycotting the Rwandan government economically

· France has used its position of trust within the UN Security Council to baselessly accused Rwanda of committing human rights violations in DRC, looting DRC resources, violating UN arms embargo in DRC, and fueling conflict in that country, etc.

· France has used her privileged position in the UN Security Council to prevent the use of forceful means to disarm and demobilize the forces which committed genocide in Rwanda, while at the same time pleading with the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo against Rwanda. The objective pursued by France is therefore glaring: to weaken the Rwandan government so as to facilitate its overthrow by these genocidal forces.

· France was allowed the position to investigate the Rwandan genocide. However it uses a French Judge who only bases his investigation on testimonies from enemies of the genocide victims.

5. African France colonies

Just before France conceded to African demands for independence in the 1960’s, it carefully organised its 14 former colonies (CFA countries) into a system of "compulsory solidarity". This system included the following:

· The African states had to put 65% of their foreign currency reserves into the French Treasury, plus another 20% for financial liabilities. This means these 14 African countries only ever have access to 15% of their own money. If they need more they have to borrow their own money from the French at commercial rates;

· France has the first right to buy or reject any natural resources found in the land of the Francophone countries. So even if the African countries can get better prices elsewhere, they can't sell to anybody until France says it doesn't need the resources;

· In the award of government contracts, French companies must be considered first; only after that can these countries look elsewhere. It doesn’t matter if the CFA countries can obtain better value for money elsewhere;

CFA zones are solicited to provide private funding to French politicians during elections in France.

Thus, these African states are French taxpayers - taxed at a staggering rate - yet the citizens of these countries aren't French and don't have access to the public goods and services their money helps pay for.
Presidents of CFA countries that have tried to leave the CFA zone have had political and financial pressure put on them by successive French presidents. See Footnote 8 - THE COLONIAL PACT

6. Loans to African governments

The Guardian report dated 22 July 2012 titled ‘Africa wealth devoured by tyrants and vultures’²⁵ explains the channelling of wealth from African nations to the international bankers of the Crown and their money lending syndicate, from which we take the following information:

‘Repayment' of loans made to corrupt leaders in Africa has proved an important means of draining the continent’s wealth.

Successive governments have used foreign loans as a means of financing their activities – including building palaces in the jungle and stealing from state coffers. Repayment of such loans falls on the shoulders of the citizens of countries where corrupt governments have indebted those to loans for things the citizens will never reap the benefits of. When repayments of such loans are not forthcoming, stringent action is taken against the nation of the erring government, creating a potential income stream to the lender reaching into the far future.

F. The Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has vast mineral wealth including diamonds, copper, oil and gas; one estimate puts the value of these resources at $24 trillion. However, it is pretty much the poorest country in the world. The reason is centuries of plunder and corruption, at its worst involving the buying, selling and brutalisation of millions of people.

DR Congo's east, which borders Rwanda and Uganda, was the cradle of back-to-back wars that drew in much of the region from 1996 to 2003. They were fought largely over its vast wealth of gold, coltan and cassiterite, key components in electronic goods.

In 2008, the vulture fund, FG Hemisphere, bought "secondhand" debt made by Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko for $3m, on which it hoped to claim back $100m.

The debt bought up by FG Hemisphere was part of a vast pile that fuelled the rule of Mobutu, who pillaged his country for more than 30 years. Mobutu's lenders knew he was as corrupt; a report by an IMF mission in 1982 reported there was "no, I repeat no, chance on the horizon for Zaire's [DRC's] numerous creditors to get their money back". Yet, money lending to Mobutu continued to rise sharply.

In 2012, FG Hemisphere tried to grab the assets of Congo's state-owned mining company, Gécamines, through a joint venture in which it is invested on Jersey. However, the privy council - the final court of appeal for Jersey, overturned previous judgments, saying Gécamines assets could not be taken as state assets.

This raises the question of why wealth derived from mining in the DRC was being fought over in faraway Jersey in the first place.

"Repayment" of this money, long after Mobutu was ousted, has proved the first important means of draining the DRC of wealth. The country was judged eligible for debt cancellation on the basis of its poverty, but this involved jumping through so many hoops it took eight years to complete. By then, more than $2bn had left the country repaying Mobutu's debts and numerous new loans were needed.

Although the DRC has been a poor reporter of data, it has been estimated that, between 1970 and 2008, more than $6bn left the country illicitly. This is equivalent to about 1% of the economy every year – more than enough to cover its total outstanding debts. The figures suggest that an average of $170m has left the DRC every year, almost two-thirds of the average $300m it has to make in debt service payments. DRC debt is expected to reach $7.5bn by 2015.

7. The South African government interest beyond her borders in Africa

a) The Grand Inga hydroelectric project

The Eskom Corporation of South Africa supplies its nation with 95% of its electricity, and supplies 65% of electricity consumed in the rest of Africa.

The South African government has recently entered an agreement to invest at least R200 billion – at the expense of the South African tax payer – in the war torn Congo, a country with a very bad credit history, in the hope of receiving 6% of the electricity required by South Africans by the year 2030. This makes no sense, because the South African infrastructure is collapsing, where an amount of R200 billion could be far better spent on job creation by increasing the output of electricity in South Africa itself.

On 24 March 2013, bdlive reported in an article titled ‘Concern over SA’s billions in DRC Inga project’²⁶that the South African government is entering a joint venture with the World Bank to rehabilitate the two Inga hydroelectric plants on the Congo River, about 300km from Kinshasa. In February 2013, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan set aside R200bn for the 40,000MW Grand Inga hydroelectric project, and both the South African and government of the Congo entered into a written agreement. Once complete, Grand Inga will generate almost double the power coming from the Three Gorges Dam in China, which now holds bragging rights as the world’s largest hydropower complex with 22,500MW capacity. This is only a fraction of the DRC’s total hydropower resources, which the World Bank estimates at 100,000MW.

“Those are the riches of the DRC,” said Ms Peters. “They can help extend the tentacles of energy access in Africa.”

She said Grand Inga would satisfy the African Union’s search for catalytic projects, as it had benefits for agriculture, mining and other sectors in the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region. Five other African countries outside the region will be connected to the grid.

World Bank estimates suggest the complex could supply energy to as many as 500-million households across the continent.

b) War

On the 7^th of April 2013, New war looms for SA troops, City Press reported that ‘New war looms for SA troops’. This article reported on the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo to which President Zuma is sending the South African National Defence Force. The rebel group which President Zuma is calling upon South Africans to make war, accuses Zuma of sending South African troops to the DRC to protect his nephew Khulubuse’s oil interests. The article reads as follows:

Johannesburg - On Saturday, SA buried 12 of the 13 soldiers killed in battle with rebels in Central Africa. On Sunday, the country was preparing to send more than 1 000 troops to a perilous new war in the DRC.

“We don’t want to kill our brothers from South Africa,” was the thinly veiled threat by Congolese rebel leader Bertrand Bisimwa as the bruised SA National Defence Force (SANDF) prepares to do battle again.

This time, the front is the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the new enemy is Bisimwa and his M23 rebel group.

The SANDF is part of a multilateral regional force, which includes the armies of Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania, and has the blessing of the UN Security Council.

Tons of weaponry were this week being flown in huge Russian cargo planes from Bloemfontein, Pretoria and Makhado airports to Entebbe in Uganda, close to the Congolese border, where South African forces are expected to be based.

Bisimwa and M23 have warned South Africa that they are in a different league to the Seleka rebels in the Central African Republic (CAR) who killed 13 South African soldiers.

Grave mistake

“We say welcome (President Jacob) Zuma. M23 is not Seleka,” the group wrote on their official Twitter account on Thursday. On Friday, M23 tweeted: “If SA special Force attacks us; it will be catastrophic & apocalyptic.”

The rebel group accuses Zuma of sending South African troops to the DRC to protect his nephew Khulubuse’s oil interests.

Bisimwa spoke to City Press’ sister newspaper, Rapport, from the DRC on Saturday. He said it would be a grave mistake for the SANDF to attack them.

“My message is we are fighting for peace and for good governance in our country. There is a letter I wrote to Parliament and the people of South Africa to ask them not to come and kill their brothers here because we are all fighting for good governance in Africa.

“We don’t want to kill our brothers from South Africa. We are asking them to support peace in Congo, not to come to fight,” said Bisimwa.

Asked how he would react if South African troops were to attack M23, he said: “We will defend ourselves and our positions.

But we will not attack them if they don’t attack us.

Negotiate

“We have time to negotiate in Kampala (negotiations started in January)?.?.?.?We understand the DRC will also be there.

“Our people in Congo don’t like war in their country, just like in South Africa.”

M23 are regarded as new-generation rebels and are active on social media platforms.

They are the region’s most feared group and, according to experts, have rocket launchers, 37mm anti-aircraft weapons and other “dangerous armoury”.

They top the list of rebel groups being targeted by the UN Security Council, which authorised an “intervention brigade” on 28 March to “neutralise” armed forces in the eastern DRC.

This was a dramatic change from the UN’s peace mandate in the past, which only allowed soldiers to shoot back when they were being shot at.

End of April

In expectation of South Africa’s deployment to the DRC, which could happen as soon as the end of April, masses of military equipment, including helicopters, were transported to Entebbe this week.

One defence source said “special forces” were taken to Uganda, but this was disputed by other reports.

A Congo expert with close ties to the rebel leaders told City Press that South Africa underestimated M23.

“If they (the South Africans) think they will go out into the hills and annihilate these guys, they’re fucking crazy.

“If an army goes in, which does not know the terrain or the politics, is overconfident and is itself not combat equipped for these kind of operations, they’re going to be kicked. If South African special forces could not keep Seleka at bay – not nearly as coherent a target as M23 – how are they going to defeat M23, which are in their own back yard?”

Doomed to fail

With the absence of a plan for what will happen after the attack, the mission is doomed to fail, “just like many similarly structured American missions in Iraq and Afghanistan”.

Sultani Makenga, M23’s commander, is well-trained and has helped to overthrow two governments in the area – the Rwandan government in 1994 and the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, in the then Zaire, in 1996.

Defence analyst Helmut Heitman added: “What worries me is that M23 have some rocket launchers and they captured twin-barrel 37mm anti-aircraft weapons from the Congolese army. They have dangerous weapons.

But if we have a good commander, we will do a good job.

“We need to make sure we have good intelligence before we go somewhere. Our troops should be better armed and equipped. After that (CAR fight), no rebel troops will want to fight South Africa.” ²⁷

bi) Khulubuse Zuma

Khulubuse Zuma is the nephew of President Jacob Zuma. He is also the director of Aurora Empowerment Systems (AES). The managing director of AES is Zondwa Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela; and the director is President Zuma’s legal adviser, Michael Hulley.

AES acquired mining rights through fraud and corruption, drained working mines of their wealth and assets, and refused to pay the miners, some of whom have since committed suicide.

Liquidation of the South African company Pamodzi Gold

The liquidation of the South African company Pamodzi Gold Limited led to the awarding of rights to the Orkney and Grootvlei gold mines to Aurora Empowerment Systems (AES) in 2009.

Multi-million bid to acquire mining rights

AES acquired the rights to operate Pamodzi’s Grootvlei and Orkney gold mines after putting in a bid of R215 million (US$26.8 million) in October 2009. At the time, AES promised a R600 million (US$75 million) investment in the mine, job security for the workers, and bursaries for the miners’ children.²⁸

AES committed fraud to appear financially stable

In its bid to take over two mines of the liquidated Pamodzi group, Aurora Empowerment Systems falsely claimed to have acquired a controlling interest of 71 percent share in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed investment holding company Cenmag Limited, and to have purchased the largest wood mill in the southern hemisphere, Zambia’s Redwood Timber Merchants, which propelled Aurora to the forefront of global timber supplies with the core focus being the Gulf and Far Eastern markets.”²⁹

The affidavit of joint liquidator, Johan Engelbrecht, states that Aurora director Khulubuse Zuma confirmed in evidence that Solly and Fazel Bhana had become involved in Aurora as consultants and “were in that capacity directly involved in negotiating what he referred to as the deal with Senmag and Redwood Timber”.

The Bhanas and the three directors lied in their 2009 bid by saying that Aurora had secured R690-million in funding needed to buy the mines from a Malaysian consortium acting through AM-Equity Limited.

Miners not paid for years

AES took over the Grootvlei and Orkney mines in August 2009. Six months later, EAS stopped paying workers’ wages, plunging more than 5,000 workers and 40,000 dependents into abysmal poverty.

As of the end of August 2012, all the miners had not been paid since February 2010. Some miners had not been paid for four years. The unpaid mineworkers - who are owed approximately R20 million (US$2.5 million) in unpaid wages - were relying on emergency food aid provided by an Islamic charity organisation, Gift of the Givers.

The affected miners are from South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho and Swaziland. According to newspaper reports, five miners are known to have committed suicide since the mines stopped operating. “Children have stopped going to school, women are leaving their husbands, people have nothing to eat,” stated a mineworker.

Zuma donated R1 million to the ANC while refusing to pay his workers

In April 2011, Zuma donated R1 million (US$125,000) to the ANC, which the ANC accepted without flinching. In March 2012, Aurora flouted a court order to pay out R4.3 million (US$537,500) to workers at the mines.

Mine assets plundered

Zuma and Mandela, with the connivance of Aurora’s financial advisors Faizal and Suleman Bhana, plundered the mining operations they acquired.

Between 2009 and 2012, AES stripped the mines’ assets and effectively destroyed their productive capacity. Hundreds of millions of rand obtained from the theft of assets and gold were funnelled to Zuma, Mandela and several others

AES was placed in liquidation in October 2011. As of March 2012, the company only had R2,000 (US$250) left in its bank account. However, during its period of tenure, Aurora paid out R260 million (US$32.5 million) to itself and its creditors from 10 bank accounts.

The liquidators stated that there is no evidence that the company ever paid the required percentage of the workers’ wages to the Unemployment Insurance Fund, or that it ever paid any Value Added Tax on its gold transactions.

Evidence of the large-scale stripping of the assets of the mines continues to come to light. Liquidators reported that several shafts had been reduced to skeletons, with all the headgear, winding machinery, pipes and water pumps removed by management. It is estimated that R1.8 billion (US$225 million) worth of the mines’ assets has been looted, effectively destroying them. The asset stripping continued up until at least March 2012, some six months after AES had been liquidated.

The liquidators reported that approximately R240 million (US$30 million) in gold earnings was unaccounted for. They stated that AES directors and managers sold R122 million (US$15.3 million) worth of gold from the mines and paid themselves and their families instead of paying workers, operational costs and creditors, and that AES concealed gold and failed to properly record gold transactions.

While the assets of the mines were being looted and workers were going without wages, Khulubuse Zuma and Zondwa Mandela enjoyed the lifestyle of the fantastically wealthy. Zuma, it is reported, owns 19 vehicles, including a R2.5 million (US$312,500) gull-wing Mercedes and is known to spend between R3,000 (US$375) and R15,000 (US$1,875) at a time on his twice-weekly visits to an upmarket Durban restaurant. When asked about his lavish lifestyle, he responded, “I don’t know about lavish. The only thing I know is that I’m living my life to the fullest every day, because I worked for it.”

Cheques for Labat shares by AES were stopped

The attorney for AES claimed that the Labat shares had been acquired, informing the JSE Securities Regulation Panel that Aurora had paid R5.3 million (US$662,500) into Labat’s trust account. Two years later, he admitted that the cheques signed by Mandela had been stopped and that the shares in question had never been acquired.

AES destroyed the ecosystem

Recent investigations have shown that AES failed to pump acid mine water from mine shafts, causing the destruction of sensitive wetland ecosystems in the area.

AM-Equity Limited.

AM-Equity Limited was an empty shell created for AES to defraud the Pamodzi’s liquidators

Motala lied to the Pamodzi liquidators on behalf of AES

In November 2011, Motala was charged with perjury for lying under oath.

Motala was party to the fraudulent letter that enabled AES to present itself as having the financial backing to purchase the shares necessary to obtain ownership of the Orkney and Grootvlei mines.

Callie Smit, a former legal adviser to Aurora, testified that Faizal Bhana, one of Aurora’s financial advisers, called him to Motala’s Johannesburg offices in February 2010. He was instructed to write a letter to Pamodzi’s liquidators on behalf of the Malaysian company, AM Equity, stating that the company had deposited R20 million into a trust account to enable Aurora to purchase the rights to the Pamodzi mines.

She continued, “It appears that what commended Aurora to Motala was the fact that a nephew of President Zuma and a grandson of President Mandela were among its directors and that it was effectively run by two friends of Motala, Messrs Faizel and Solly Bhana”....

8. Standard Bank was asked to verify the credentials of AM Equity in Kuala Lumpur

In 2010, Motala, in a presentation to parliament’s minerals and energy committee, maintained that Standard Bank had verified the credentials of AM Equity. Later on, this was denied by the director of Standard Bank’s mergers and acquisitions division. The director further noted that during the closed May 2011 liquidation inquiry, the bank visited the listed address of AM Equity in Kuala Lumpur and was unable to determine whether the offices were indeed those of AM Equity, as they were vacant and used as general rental offices. Standard Bank was thus unable to verify the AM Equity credentials. AM Equity was an empty shell created for the purpose of defrauding the Pamodzi liquidators.

In 2010, Motala lent Aurora R3 million through his company, SBT Trust, which was repaid with 100% interest

It has also been revealed that in 2010, Motala, through his company, SBT Trust, lent Aurora R3 million. The Bhanas raised money from family members when it became clear that Aurora was in dire financial straits. The loans were promptly repaid with 100 percent interest.

Motala was supported by prominent ANC ministers in government

In January 2012, Motala submitted an application for a presidential pardon for fraud and theft. He has sought the support of prominent African National Congress (ANC) members—Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, party security boss Tito Maleka and Philip Masekwa, the private secretary to Minister Jeff Radebe.

His application has various letters of endorsement attached to it, including that of Tito Maleka. The letter from Maleka is on an ANC head of security letterhead, directly addressing, “Dear Comrade President.”

It commends Motala’s integrity and concludes, “The application for pardon by Comrade Motala is supported by this office.”

Criminal charges are pending against the Aurora management team

The Pamodzi joint provisional liquidators cancelled the deal with Aurora in May 2011. In October 2011, Aurora was finally liquidated when the North Gauteng High Court ratified the liquidation application of Copper Eagle, one of the company’s creditors. The liquidators of Pamodzi Gold mines will submit a claim against Aurora’s four directors—Zondwa Mandela, Khulubuse Zuma, Thulani Ngubane (its commercial director) and Michael Hulley (President Zuma’s attorney)—once the liquidation inquiry is complete. Hulley has since then been appointed as President Zuma’s legal advisor on a part-time basis.

The joint provisional liquidators have laid criminal charges against Mandela and Ahmed Amod, the company’s attorney. This will be followed by an application to the court that will allow them to sue Mandela, Zuma, Ngubane and the Bhanas in their personal capacity in an attempt to recover the stolen billions. Paperwork is being prepared for Michael Hulley (President Zuma’s advisor) who was responsible for overseeing corporate governance at the time that he was employed by Aurora.

The destruction of the Orkney and Grootvlei mines along with 5,300 jobs is a reflection of the criminal character and mode of accumulation of South Africa’s new financial elite. Pitted against workers and flanked by the official trade unions, this elite enjoys not only the support but also a symbiotic relationship with the upper echelons of the South African state.

Zuma connections with the new owners of the Orkney mine

South African’s Mail & Guardian has revealed that close associates of Jacob Zuma are involved as the new owners of the Orkney mine. In addition, the Orkney managing contractors have expressed grave concerns that Khulubuse Zuma and Michael Hulley might be involved in the deal.

SSC Mandarin, a Chinese partner in the consortium bidding for the Orkney mine, met with President Zuma in the same week that it submitted its proposal for the Orkney mine.

The consortium Chinese African Precious Metals (CAPM)—comprising Elias Khumalo’s BEK Resources, former PetroSA boss Sipho Mkize (who was fired from PetroSA for mismanagement and corruption), Free State businesswoman Hettie Fourie and SSC Mandarin—was approved by the liquidators, subject to conditions.

Elias Khumalo, a former trade union bureaucrat, ³⁰has been a close confidante of President Zuma since the 1990’s. In 2007, the Star described him as a “person with a direct line to Zuma, consulting and advising him on issues of a personal nature.”

Zuma connections with state industries

Since Zuma’s ascent to the presidency, his family and associates have amassed fantastic levels of wealth. A Mail & Guardian report in 2010 revealed that the combined business interests of Zuma and 15 adult members of his family accounted for 134 company directorships or members of closed corporations. Of these, 83 were registered after Zuma’s election to head of the ANC, and are linked to industries in which the state plays a central role, such as telecommunications and mining.

G. Jacob Zuma, the Billion Rand President

Exactly how much Jacob Zuma costs the taxpayer, is impossible to calculate, as the Presidency has done everything in its power to shield the information. Working on conservative figures, the following has been calculated: Zuma's package from the South African tax payer is just under R103 million per year, laid out as follows:

The Zuma Balance Sheet
1. Annual Salary: [R2 275 802.00 to R2 753 689.00]
2. Medical Aid: [At least R1 300 000 per year]
3. Pension Payout on Retirement: [Approximately R2 753 689.00]
4. Spousal Support: [At least R15 517 500.00 per year]
5. Private Vehicle: [70% of salary - R1 835 792.00, for two vehicles]
6. Flights – VIP Squadron: [An approximate average of: R46 838 476.00 per year]
7. Flights – Additional: [R6 331 174.67 plus additional cost of two planes]
8. Flights – VIP Protection Services: [Unknown]
9. Flights – Helicopters: [At least R14 400 000.00 per year]
10. Overseas Allowances – President: [An average of R25 400.00 per year]
11. Accommodation – Hotels: [An average of R420 000.00 per year]
12. Accommodation – Official Residences: [An average of R5 300 000.00 per year]
13. Accommodation – Private Residences: [R6 400 000.00]
14.VIP Protection [An average of at least R12 000 000.00 per year]
AVERAGE ANNUAL TOTAL: R102 829 072.00

President Jacob Zuma defrauds South Africa, and will defraud other countries as well

As we investigate the donors to his trusts and foundations, we find corruption which exceeds billions of rands.

South Africa has become The Zuma kingdom.

The auditor-general has just reported that only 22% of all government institutions achieved clean audits in the past financial year — that is 117 out of 536 state institutions.

The amounts involved are staggering. Unauthorised expenditure amounted to R2.97bn, irregular expenditure to R1.79bn, and fruitless and wasteful expenditure to a whopping R28.38bn. That amounts to R33.16bn down the drain.
Zuma himself seems to know nothing about what happened to this money — nor about the R250m spent on his private residence at Nkandla. But as former US president Harry Truman once famously observed, when things go wrong in a democracy, "the buck stops here". On the president’s desk.
The buck stops there in cases of poor service delivery, too, because that is caused by poor cadre deployment — the placing of buddies and loyalists in key public service jobs regardless of whether they have the right capabilities and experience.

1. The Zuma family are linked to labour broking

Links to the Zuma family provides contract labour to the platinum sector and other mines.

JIC Mining Services lists President Jacob Zuma’s son Duduzane, along with RK (Rajesh) Gupta as non-executive directors.
The JIC Mining Services is majority-owned by Oakbay Investments, the family investment vehicle of the Guptas.

a) JIC Mining Services provides contract workers to Impala Platinum

According to the company website, the JIC Mining Service provides contract workers to major industry players, including Impala Platinum where, earlier this year, four miners were killed. To note, JIC is in competition with Lonmin.

Several trade journals also describe JIC as one of the biggest suppliers of contract labour.
Independent labour analyst Terry Bell said 30 to 40 percent of mining sector workers were hired through labour brokers.
“This is happening even as Cosatu is organising against labour brokers,” Bell said.
NUM general-secretary Frans Baleni, who acknowledged labour broking was rife in the mining sector, also confirmed that the union had a full agreement with JIC.

b) George Soros bought shares in Platinum Group Metals Ltd

Prior to the Marikana strikes, George Soros purchased 15.5 million shares in the competition company to the Marikana Lonmin group, namely the Platinum Group Metals Ltd.³¹

c) The Guptas are linked to the JIC Mining Services

Duduzane Zuma, who is linked to the Guptas through directorships in various companies, confirmed he was a non-executive director at JIC, but said he would not comment. ³²

Sahara Computers and The New Age newspaper

Amongst other business concerns, the Gupta family own Sahara Computers and the New Age newspaper.

The Gupta house

Numerous reports have emerged over the past four years of high-ranking government individuals being invited to the Gupta house to be offered money and paraded before others to demonstrate the Guptas' influence.

The Guptas influence the South African government

The Guptas are extremely close to President Jacob Zuma. A number of his children and one of his wives are closely linked to the Guptas. If it is a national or parastatal matter, the Guptas can get one of Zuma's children, or one of his wives, to contact the president on their behalf.

Appointments to boards and executive positions in our parastatals - even cabinet positions - are made with the Guptas' full participation.

Report s abound of cabinet ministers being summoned to speak at the Gupta New Age breakfasts. Ministers are supposedly contacted, in the presence of sponsors and the lackeys of sponsors, and told that they must attend a breakfast.

One minister discharged himself from a hospital, in a sweaty and feverish state, to avoid letting the Guptas down. This man is an ANC veteran.

a) Minister of Sports, Fikile Mbalula

In 2011, the then deputy minister of police, Fikile Mbalula, broke down in an ANC national executive committee meeting, and recounted that he first heard of his promotion to sports minister from the Gupta family.

b) South African Airways chief executive, Vuyisile Kona

The Sunday Times reported on 17 March 2013 that one member of the Gupta family invited the South African Airways chief executive officer and chairman, Vuyisile Kona, - soon after his appointment last year - to their home in Saxonwold, Johannesburg, and offered him R500000.

President Jacob Zuma's son, Duduzane, and the son of Free State Premier Ace Magashule, Tshepiso, were said to be present.

To note, Kona has since been fired as chairman, and his position of chief executive officer has been suspended.

c) The DA leader, Helen Zille

The Democratic Alliance (DA) as official opposition to the African national Congress, has Helen Zille as their party leader. Zille visited the Gupta family compound and left with a cheque for R400 000.

The Guptas benefit from the South African government

a) Transnet funds the Gupta’s New Age breakfasts

Both the chairman and the chief executive of Transnet, a major funder of the Guptas' infamous New Age breakfasts, have visited the Gupta house and admit to their links to the family.

b) The Free State government sponsors the Guptas' media business

One of the main sponsors of the Guptas' media business is the Free State government. In a Timeslive article dated 18 March 2013, titled “Has ANC been stolen?” it is noted that the Guptas have young Magashule in their compound.

2. The Zuma family do not declare their money operations

a) Masibambisane

The Government Communication and Information System describes Jacob Zuma as chairperson of Masibambisane, despite the fact that all these structures are wholly independent of the state.

In 2011, the Mail & Guardian revealed that Masibambisane is driving a R2-billion initiative to build South Africa's newest town just 2km from the president's personal compound in Nkandla.

The M&G also revealed that the department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries allocated a staggering R800-million to support Masibambisane. Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson announced the donation at a government function in Qumanco in the Eastern Cape in 2011.

A department official told the M&G that the minister had in effect diverted the R100-million budget for the department's Zero Hunger programme to Zuma's project. The programme is a government initiative set up to buttress smallholder farmers and food security in rural areas.

Masibambisane Rural Development Initiative

Launched in 2010 in Nkandla and registered as a non-profit organisation in December, Masibambisane has rolled out agricultural projects in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga, and North West is likely to be next in line.

Deebo Mzobe oversees the day-to-day running of the initiative.

Mzobe said it was resurrected after Zuma became president with the close co-operation of traditional leaders in a number of provinces. So far, 175 amakhosi had bought into the concept – 120 from Zuma's home province of KwaZulu-Natal, more than 15 in the Eastern Cape and more than 40 in Mpumalanga.
Mzobe said the initiative "doesn't have the capacity to roll out projects", but facilitates public-private partnerships, for example in the Umlalazi-Nkandla Smart Growth Centre.

Mzobe said that 10 of the tractors handed over in the Eastern Cape in May this year came from the private sector and 14 from the government. However, according to Eastern Cape agriculture department spokesperson Ayabulela Ngoqo, all the tractors belonged to his department and ultimately came from the national department of agriculture.
Last year the national department and the Agricultural Research Council awarded nine tenders worth R360-million for nearly 700 tractors for all the provinces. It appears that the ones handed out by Masibambisane were among them.

Masibambisane is also the driving force behind development in Zuma's hometown of Nkandla. It has not yet produced an annual report.

Mzobe is from near Eshowe and is reportedly a distant relative of Zuma and a business partner of Durban businessperson Thoshan Panday, who is facing fraud and corruption charges in connection with an alleged R60-million police accommodation tender scam during the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Mzobe denied in The Times that he was in business with Panday, despite company records indicating otherwise. The companies in which they share directorships include Dynamo-Duck Trading and Projects, Shining Future Trading and Projects, and White All Trading and Projects.

In November 2011, the Mpumalanga human settlement department awarded Mzobe a R33-million tender to build 599 houses, part of a R331-million housing initiative in Nelspruit. Zuma, according to City Press, attended the handover ceremony.

The tender process was deemed irregular by the Mpumalanga human settlement department's chief financial officer, Cyril Dlamini, and supply chain manager Lucky Monareng. The two officials were subsequently fired or suspended by the head of department, David Dube, an ANC provincial executive committee member.

i) Nkandla

It is estimated that R250million will be used to upgrade the home of President Zuma, known as the Nkandla Compound, to which he is said to be paying R10 million towards. The funding of the freeway set to run through Nkandla following the development of the president's luxury compound, amounts to an estimated R1.5 billion. Mybroadband's amateur, volunteer, investigative journalists discovered the following corruption with regard to the Nkandla freeway:

Korong Capital Partners

Korong Capital Partners, whose only director is Moeti Mpuru, is a private company used for constructing the freeway.

Korong Capital Partners appears to have been a dormant shell company since 1999, and have no history of this sort of work, or any other work whatsoever, which means they certainly couldn't have secured revenue of around R37bn to place them in a position to fund this internally. They couldn't have raised this finance in the capital markets either, because no financial institution would originate and secure a bond for a company with zero balance sheet strength and zero cash flow.

An angel investor is funding the entire project at no cost to government whatsoever.

The claim is that the cash originated from the USA, through an attorney who is set to make $100,000.00 for simply arranging the transfer of the cash.

Apparently Mpuru, after being turned down for a R1m loan to fund a small portion of the project, managed in just a few months to secure R1.5bn in funding for a project that will see absolutely no return on investment. It is a straight R1.5bn loss to whoever funds this project.

Korong Capital Partners has its registered offices at the following address:

UNIT 2 CHIANTI ESTATE

39 LEEUWKOP ROAD

SUNNINGHILL

2196

This company that apparently has R1.5bn spare, or will be managing R1.5bn worth of angel investor cash, is situated at unit 2, Chianti Estate in Sunninghill, a residential complex that does not have business rights for its units. This is a tiny, 60sqm residential complex - not an office park, or the premises you'd expect for a company with R1.5bn to spend and manage. Yet Public Works feel happy for this company to complete this project on their behalf.

Chianti Estates

Unit #2 at Chianti Estates is owned by Mbanjwa Nqobile Zinhle (Zinhle Mbanjwa).

Zinhle Mbanjwa

Zinhle Mbanjwa is the manager of the Housing Development Agency of South Africa. This is the governmental department that oversees investments in housing related infrastructure on behalf of the Human Settlements Department.

They also manage inter-departmental projects.

Korong Capital Partners' premises is at the HDA manager's personal premises because he owned the shelf CC from the outset. This means that the CC used to move the money around to pay for the Zuma freeway is in fact located at the HDA manager's house, and directed by the man who supposedly secured the funding.

This makes no sense in terms of the government's official statements that this is a private entity funding the project through angel investment.

What this actually means is that the HDA used the CC owned by their manager to move Human Settlements money to Korong Capital Partners to fund the Zuma Freeway.

If this was angel investment, the investor would ensure that he had board representation to ensure he had oversight over the use of his funds.

HDA, Public Works and Human Settlements are funding the Nkandla compound freeway

The real corruption is worth in the region of about R1.5bn, as it indicates that the HDA facilitated government cash to be moved to Korong Capital Partners to fund the Zuma Freeway, and the government knowingly lied to the public about how the project was being funded.

It indicates that behind the scenes, HDA, Public Works and Human Settlements arranged a secretive transaction to spoof legitimate business operations, when in fact they were simply trying to hide their money-trail of corruption, knowing that using public money would cause outrage among South African citizens.

Public Works and Human Settlements found cash to fund this project. In order to hide this from the public, they engaged with the manager of the Housing Development Agency, who is the middle-man for inter-governmental transactions. Together with a lawyer in the US, they siphoned cash out of the country to make it appear as if the cash was from an angel investor, and would not be subject to disclosure to the public.

They then moved the money to a CC owned by the HDA manager called Korong Capital Partners who are now officially funding the Zuma Freeway.

Public Works is currently involved in hundreds of projects around the country, with their mandate being to spend on infrastructure and social development. With this in mind, their average allocation for each project will be somewhere between 0.1% and 0.2% of budget (this is a very high estimate in my opinion - they're probably spending less across more projects).

Zuma's non-revenue-generating, unnecessary development that has nothing to do with infrastructure, nor social development, equates to a 0.32% allocation of the national public works budget. This means that they've spent up to 224% more on Zuma's compound than on their average spend on actual deliverable projects that meet their mandate.

If we include the freeway project, which I'm quite sure is just a dodgy vehicle to protect Zuma from recourse, the figure jumps to 2172% more than their average national infrastructure spend. So instead of money going to the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project, to mitigate the impact on the country, Public Works chose instead to over-spend on Zuma's home by up to 2000-odd percent. What is clear is that Public Works consider Zuma's house to be at least 224% more important than investment in infrastructure, which is their actual mandate.

b) The Jacob Zuma RDP Education Trust

The RDP Education Trust is Zuma's oldest established funding vehicle, conceived in 1995 when he was the KwaZulu-Natal minister for economics and tourism.

Each provincial minister was given a discretionary fund of R500 000 and, according to the trust's website, Zuma immediately funnelled this into education.
However, it only became a registered trust in 2000-2001 when Absa Bank was brought on board.
Shortly after the formation of the trust it absorbed another post-democracy NPO with political aims, the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation. According to one former member, it was used to reward communities that abstained from factional conflict, particularly between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.
The Peace and Reconciliation Foundation's chairperson, Frank Mdlalose, a former IFP strongman and KwaZulu-Natal's first premier, then became the chairperson of the Jacob Zuma Trust in 2002-2003. Since then Zuma has taken over Mdlalose’s position of chairman.

Until the 2009 election, the trust had raised about R11-million, according to its annual report. But the same report said it almost doubled that in the 2009-2010 financial year – the first year of Zuma's presidency – raising a further R10-million.

The website of Texas Southern University, where Zuma received an honorary doctorate in September 2011, stated that the trust had budgeted R25-million for tuition and accommodation for the beneficiaries of the trust for that year.
The article, which marked the conferring of the honorary doctorate on Zuma, said the trust had raised a total of R45-million for the education of disadvantaged youth and supported 1200 beneficiaries.

c) The Jacob Zuma Trust

The Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust was registered with the master of the Supreme Court on 13 July 2005. The members of the board of trustees are Don Mkhwanazi, a businessperson and founder of the Black Management Forum, unionist Fikile "Slovo" Majola and Sizwe Shezi, former president of the National Youth Council.

How much money it contains, how much it has spent on what and the identity of its funders cannot be established.

‘The Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust’ was initially set up to cover his legal fees when he was facing fraud and corruption charges relating to the arms deal before Zuma became president. This Trust fund still remains active, and even though he is now president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma remains the beneficiary of this trust.

The trust raised funds to defend Zuma both in his rape case, in which he was acquitted, and when he was charged with fraud and corruption in relation to the arms deal. The latter charges were controversially dropped.

The Jacob Zuma Foundation is chaired by Dudu Myeni, who is said to be close to Zuma and, according to the foundation's memorandum of association, runs the foundation from her private house in Richard's Bay. It also has an office in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

The M&G reported in May this year that Myeni was removed as chairperson of one of KwaZulu-Natal's biggest water providers, the Mhlathuze Water Board, after failing a probity test – but was allegedly reinstated to the position after making direct re-presentations to the president.

The foundation is a more opaque organisation than the education trust. It has not released an annual report since its launch in 2008 and its mandate is somewhat vague.

According to its website, it builds houses, hosts the annual Msholozi Soccer Tournament and makes donations to the Jacob Zuma RDP Education Trust.

d) President Zuma’s family have become involved in business deals run through foundations.

Zuma's wives, Bongi Ngema-Zuma, Thobeka Madiba-Zuma and Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, and his lover, Sonolo Khoza, daughter of soccer boss Irvin Khoza, have all set up their own foundations since Zuma rose to power.

i) The Thobeka Madiba-Zuma Foundation

This foundation's founder is Zuma's fifth wife, Thobeka Madiba-Zuma. Its board includes John Volmink, a former education department official and founder of the company that evolved into EduSolutions, as well as health professionals and academics.

The foundation was registered as a section 21 company on the 2^nd of February 2 2010.

ii) The MaNtuli Foundation

The patron of this foundation is Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma, Zuma's fourth wife. It was officially registered with the department of social development on the 19^th of January 2010, despite media reports that it was launched in 2008.

MaNtuli has been embroiled in controversy in connection with another NPO. In April this year, Sunday World claimed that MaNtuli, as treasurer of Intsika Yembokodo Development, whose board members include Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi's wife, Noluthando, had drained the organisation's finances. She was alleged to have kept its bank card.

The presidential spousal office denied the allegation, saying: "MaNtuli did claim some amount of money from the NGO to recover her money that she had used to fund the NGO's function, which was held in Durban. That this could be labelled embezzlement is rather unfortunate."

iii) The Bongi Ngema-Zuma Foundation

Ngema-Zuma is Zuma's sixth wife and the website describes her foundation as "the living embodiment of First Lady of the Republic of South Africa".

Established in August 2010, it was registered with the Gauteng department of social development in November 2010. No annual report has been filed with the department.

In November 2011, it hosted a 5km fun walk in Sasolburg in the Free State to mark World Diabetes Day. The foundation has also partnered with the Thebe Investment Corporation in a water and sanitation project in northern KwaZulu-Natal.

(iv) The Zodwa Khoza Foundation

This foundation was founded by Sonono Khoza, daughter of Orlando Pirates chairperson Irvin Khoza and mother of a child by Zuma. On its LinkedIn page, it says that it was formed in January 2010. However, it has not been formally registered with the social development department.

e) Zuma foundations do not disclose their business deals

None of the Zuma foundations or trusts, with the exception of the Jacob Zuma Education RDP Trust, has lodged an annual report with the department of social development, which means the sources of their funding and the way they use their money are hidden. To note, when non-profit organisations (NPOs) are registered, they are required by the Nonprofit Organisations Act to submit annual reports to the social development department within nine months of the end of the financial year.

Little is known about how the Zuma family NPOs operate: their websites typically offer superficial information and they seldom open up to the media.

f) Companies enter business with Zuma and his family by donating to their foundations and trusts

Known donors to this expanding Zuma-linked network include such major companies as Patrice Motsepe's African Rainbow Minerals, De Beers and Harmony Gold.
Other known donors include major beneficiaries of government business such as EduSolutions, the company at the heart of the Limpopo textbooks row, and major antiretroviral drugs supplier Cipla.

(i) The Motsepe Foundation, African Rainbow Minerals, Harmony Gold

Patrice Motsepe is among the largest backers of Zuma Inc's non-profit endeavours. He reportedly made a R10-million donation to the Jacob Zuma Foundation in October 2010, and was present at the launch of Masibambisane in early 2011 in Nkandla.
Motsepe donates either through the Motsepe Foundation, African Rainbow Minerals or companies in which it has a stake, such as Harmony Gold.³³

In May 2012, African Rainbow Minerals financed the construction of a Salvation Army church in Nkandla at the request of Zuma's oldest wife, Sizakele Khumalo, better known as MaKhumalo.

(ii) EduSolutions

EduSolutions also procures and distributes textbooks in Mpumalanga, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng at an estimated cost to the state of R1-billion a year.

Coetzee worked for EduSolutions as a security consultant and has made a host of revelations.

According to him:
» He saw books being hidden instead of sent to schools;
» He personally introduced EduSolutions founder Shaun Battlemann to President Jacob Zuma;
» Battlemann’s business relationship with a former education department director guaranteed lucrative government contracts; and
» EduSolutions had powerful influence over education officials in various provinces.

EduSolutions has contracts to purchase and deliver textbooks to schools in Limpopo, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga.

Anis Karodia, the former Limpopo education department administrator, claimed he was pressured by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga to keep using this company despite serious contractual irregularities.

Coetzee’s key claims have been independently confirmed by five other sources, including business associates, former employees and others with direct knowledge of EduSolutions’ affairs.

Coetzee was exposed in 1989 as the commander of a security police unit.
He left the country and joined the ANC in exile, returning in 1993 to work for the National Intelligence Service.
Convicted of murder, he received amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission.

This week Coetzee recalled finding “tens of thousands” of textbooks hidden in a Gauteng warehouse four years ago.
He said he was tipped off by an EduSolutions employee. The warehouse was close to the company’s official warehouse in Northriding, Johannesburg.
“Twelve truck and trailer loads of undelivered books were dumped in this warehouse. And when I talk about trucks, I mean 30-ton vehicles.”

Three other EduSolutions sources confirm that the delivery systems were a mess and that government was routinely provided with false reports of 100% delivery.

Coetzee said he introduced Battlemann to Zuma.
Zuma “handled” Coetzee after he left the country and changed sides. Coetzee said Battlemann flew him and other EduSolutions officials to France’s 2007 Rugby World Cup.
“We were standing outside the stadium drinking beer before one of the first matches when someone shouted my name. It was Zuma. I introduced him to Battlemann.”
Coetzee said Battlemann got to know Zuma “much better” and flew in his helicopter to the president’s rural estate at Nkandla.

Battlemann “champions” the Jacob Zuma Education RDP Trust.
Coetzee met Battlemann through the education department’s Salama Hendricks, who had worked with him.
Hendricks is linked to another big education controversy, as co-founder of Lebone Group Holdings.

Last year, reports said Lebone’s sister firm, Lebone Litho Printers, won school workbook tenders worth R250 million.
The printers claimed to have no link with Hendricks.
National Education Department director-general Bobby Soobrayan was at the time engaged to be married to Hendricks’ daughter.
Coetzee said he met Hendricks while she was director of Early Childhood Development and Schools.
She left to work with Battlemann and was a director of Edu-Logistical Solutions.
Coetzee said: “She was central in helping Battlemann to get textbook contracts. She has very high contacts in government.

http://www.citypress.co.za/SouthAfrica/News/Textbooks-Vlakplaas-man-speaks-20120707

(iii) Telkom

On July 2011, at a Women's Day celebration at the upmarket Westcliff Hotel in Johannesburg, Telkom handed over a R1-million cheque to the Jacob Zuma foundation for what its spokesperson, Pynee Chetty, said was part of a "branding exercise" for the group because the donation would be televised on the SABC2 show Motswako.

(iv) Sekunjalo Holdings and its subsidiary Premier Fishing

Another super-rich donor with an interest in large state contracts is Iqbal Survé, chief executive of Sekunjalo Holdings.
In January 2012, Sekunjalo subsidiary Premier Fishing won an R800-million tender from the department of agriculture fisheries and forestry for the policing of South Africa's coastal waters. It later backed out of the deal after hitting major flak over a perceived conflict of interests.
"We withdrew because we believed the tender benefited or was tailor-made for another bidder even though we won," Survé told the Mail &Guardian³³at the time.

In November 2011, Sekunjalo Holdings reportedly paid for 24-hour armed security for the private household of International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane for 12 months at a cost of R100 000. To note, this minister failed to declare the benefit to Parliament.³³

(v) The South African government department of public service and administration

One of the current fundraising initiatives of President Zuma’s trust foundations is the annual Presidential Address Golf Challenge, organised by the South African government department of public service and administration. This initiative offers a breakfast or dinner "opportunity" with the president, auctioned for at least R1.2-million if one makes a contribution to the trust.
The golf day traditionally coincides with the State of the Nation address and the "partner package" is offered on its website. The "partner" is expected to "commit a minimum of R1.2-million from its annual corporate social investment budget over three years with an annual escalation of 10%".
The partnership includes the adoption of a school, whose representatives are invited to the meal with Zuma. The partner is also required to mentor the top pupils and provide an opportunity for internships and possible employment.

Combined donations to the trust from the 2011 and 2012 golf days amounted to about R10-million. This excluded the sponsorship packages taken up in both tournaments.

(vi) Timothy Tebeila Foundation

One of the donors at the golf challenge in 2011 - held at the De Zalze Golf Estate in Stellenbosch - was mining baron Timothy Tebeila, whose Timothy Tebeila Foundation donated R4-million to secure a four-hour lunch with Zuma. Tebeila said he would bring 16 other people to the lunch, each of whom was expected to donate R500 000 to Jacob Zuma’s TrustFoundations.³³

(vii) Edison Power

Durban billionaire Vivian Reddy publicly donated R1-million at the foundation's launch when he bought a shirt belonging to the president. Reddy has made further donations through his Edison Power Group.
According to an M&G report in February 2009, Reddy has won massive KwaZulu-Natal government contracts, including ones related to the R7-billion Dube Trade Port, uShaka Marine World and Durban's Moses Mabhida Stadium.

(viii) Cipla

South African pharmaceutical giant Cipla Medpro South Africa Limited announced in September 2010 that it had donated R1.5-million to the Zuma RDP Education Trust over a three-year period, primarily to assist post-matric studies in engineering, medicine and pharmaceutical fields.
The donation was made a month before the official unveiling of a R329-million upgrade of the company's manufacturing plant in October 2010, which Zuma opened.
According to a newsletter released in November 2010, the Durban facility's annual capacity is two billion tablets and capsules, 19.4-million blister strips, 20.7-million foil strips, 200 000kg of powered medications and 15-million sachets.
The same circular said that, should Cipla "secure a good portion of the tender for antiretroviral [ARV] production, the cost implications would be hugely beneficial in increasing access to the drugs".

Cipla is one South Africa's largest suppliers of ARV drugs and a major beneficiary of state tenders. In December 2010 it was awarded a health department contract valued at R633-million, 15% of the overall national tender, to provide ARVs between January 2011 and December this year.
It also contributed to the 2011 RDP Education Trust Christmas party, held annually in Nkandla, and handed out bicycles, backpacks and soccer balls.

(ix) De Beers and Harmony Gold

De Beers confirmed that it had donated R400 000 in 2010 to the Zuma RDP Education Trust, and Harmony Gold is understood to have made a similar donation

(x) Camac International, with reference to a Congolese warlord

A foreign donor to Zuma's RDP Education Trust is Nigerian-American businessperson Kase Lawal, chief executive of Camac International, an energy company involved in the exploration, development and operation of oil properties in Africa and South America.

Lawal's Camac International has also signed a partnership with the trust to provide for a R1-million donation every year for five years, to cover the costs of three students to attend university from 2012 to study international business and petroleum engineering.

Lawal has been linked to at least two controversial business deals in Africa. In 2003, the Mail & Guardian revealed that he allegedly benefited from an oil deal that appeared to defraud the South African and Nigerian public with the backing of former president Thabo Mbeki.

In 2012, the United Nations pointed a finger at an allegedly illegal gold transaction between him and a wanted Congolese warlord.³³

3. Whistle blowers of corrupt transactions by Zuma family members are victimized.

Political figures such as the strongest contestants to the ANC presidential seat within their party, as well as prominent government officials, including Mr Vavi, who leads the Cosatu Workers Union, are removed from their positions by the Jacob Zuma team.

a) Assasination attempt made on Adv. Breytenbach who investigated SA president Jacob Zuma's son Duduzane and the brothers Gupta.

In a news article by the Beeld on 30 April 2012, titled “Skote op aanklaer geskiet” (shots were fired at prosecutor), it was revealed that Advocate Glynnis Breytenbach, the head of the National Prosecution Authority in Gauteng, showed up at her office and found she'd been suspended.
Advocate Breytenbach was suspended after she had refused to drop the corruption case against SAPS crime-intelligence chief Lt Gen Richard Mdluli. Her refusal to drop the investigation was seen as an abuse of power by the acting head of the NPA adv Nomgcobo Jiba.

Amongst other high-profile cases, she was investigating fraud and corruption charges cases against Jacob Zuma's son; and against fired ANC youth league president Julius Malema.
She was also investigating fraud allegations surrounding Cricket South Africa.

In 2011, Breytenbach led the fraud investigation submitted by Kumba against ICT company into the way that Kumba managed to get ownership rights of South Africa's largest iron-ore company, Sishen.
The court had ruled last December that ICT did not have any ownership rights, and the fraud investigation concentrated on falsification of title-acts.
SA president Jacob Zuma's son Duduzane and the brothers Gupta, owners of massive steel-mill holdings worldwide, were also being investigated.

References:

¹Another BRICS in the wall: Interview with Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, reported by Ryland Fisher on 26 March 20130

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-03-26-another-brics-in-the-wall-interview-with-maite-nkoana-mashabane/#.UVNPyReG390

²http://www.globalwitness.org/library/guardian-zimbabwe-diamond-auction-go-ahead-despite-human-rights-fears

^2a www.apscuhuru.org

³http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-03-27-brics-without-straw-or-the-building-blocks-of-a-new-world-order/

⁴http://reliefweb.int/report/central-african-republic/failure-has-many-fathers-coup-central-african-republic;

⁵ http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/zuma-no-need-to-bring-troops-home-1.1491726;

http://www.citypress.co.za/politics/we-ran-out-of-ammo/

⁶ http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/calls-to-bring-home-sa-troops-in-car-1.1491577.

⁷ http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/We-killed-36-SA-troops-CAR-rebels-say-20130405

⁸ http://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/how-deadly-car-battle-unfolded-1.1493841#.UV7JxbJlQrw

⁹http://www.elitesasecurity.co.za/about-us/leadership.html

¹⁰ http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-03-27-sas-role-in-the-battle-of-bangui-the-blood-on-zumas-hands/#.UVNO1heG391

¹¹ Extra CAR flights cost SANDF R370m

¹² http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-03-27-car-south-african-soldiers-speak-of-bravery-and-uncertainty/#.UVNPZBeG390

¹³“The Dirty Operation Against Zimbabwe: Soros, Abramoff, and British Africa”
by Anton Chaitkin. This article appeared in the July 11^th edition of Executive Intelligence Review.
http://maravi.blogspot.com/2010/02/sticky-larouchepac-dirty-operation.html

¹⁴Based on Interview with FBI sources, November 2, 2012:

George Romney – 1968 Republican Convention

Subject: George W. Romney, former Governor of Michigan, Secretary of Health and Human Services, candidate for President of the United States.

FBI sources indicate that an investigation of the background of the Romney family indicates they maintained relationships with criminal elements within Mexico after the family returned just prior to World War I.

FBI records indicate that Bain and Company and later Bain Capital received the bulk of its money from inside the Romney family, from George Romney in particular who had direct ties to organized crime.

The Romney family fortune and the career of George W. Romney was financed with funds from Mexico involving criminal enterprises including drug smuggling and human trafficking dating to the 1930s when the official family history lists George Romney as “poverty stricken.”

In fact, George Romney, flush with Mexican cash, went from “jobless” to a top executive position in the auto industry to their chief spokesman during World War II, an amazing turn around.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/11/01/romney-leaks-drugs-blood-diamonds-and-a-cuban-mistress/

¹⁵Attachment 10, see sub-section (vi) CIEX, a) CIEX was used to smuggle State secret information out of South Africa, CIEX was used by the South African Intelligence services for investigating economic ventures.

¹⁶ See Sub-section k), titled “Business leaders who were connected to the Crown were recruited as military advisors for the government of South Africa” of Attachment 10

¹⁷ See Footnote 4 - Francophone Africa.

¹⁸ Tanzania (with the support of the West) brokered peace talks for the Arusha Accords. In August 1993, the rebels and Government of Rwanda signed the Arusha Accords peace treaty to end the civil war. The accords rolled back the authoritarian power of President Juvénal Habyarimana, vesting authority in the Transitional Broad Based Government. The TBBG would include the RPF as well as the six political parties that had formed the coalition government, in place since April 1992, to govern until proper elections could be held. The Transitional National Assembly, the legislative branch of the transitional government, was open to all parties, including the RPF.

The extremist Hutu Coalition for the Defence of the Republic, nominally controlled by President Habyarimana, was strongly opposed to sharing power with the RPF and refused to sign the accords. When at last it agreed to the terms, the RPF opposed the accords in turn.

¹⁹ Neuffer, Elizabeth. The Key to My Neighbor's House, 2002, p. 102

²⁰ "Ex-Rwandan PM reveals genocide planning". BBC News. March 26, 2004

²¹ Diamond, Jared. "Collapse", Penguin Books, New York, NY, 2005, pp. 316

²² "UN chief helped Rwanda killers arm themselves," The Guardian, September 3, 2000.

²³"Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda." Human Rights Watch. Report (Updated April 1, 2003)

²⁴Media Network Hate Radio Dossier: Rwanda;

http://blogs.rnw.nl/medianetwork/rwanda-article-views-radio-tv-libre-des-mille-collines-hate-media

²⁵ https://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/world/2012/jul/22/africa-wealth-devoured-tyrants-vultures

²⁶http://www.bdlive.co.za/business/energy/2013/03/24/concern-over-sas-billions-in-drc-inga-project

²⁷ http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/New-war-looms-for-SA-troops-20130407

²⁸ http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/safr-s10.shtml

²⁹ http://mg.co.za/article/2012-05-04-pamodzi-gold-trail-leads-to-bhanas

³⁰ The COSATU-affiliated National Union of Mineworkers and the Solidarity trade unions have endorsed CAPM’s acquisition of the Orkney mine.

³¹ The director of Soros's Open Society Initiative on Southern Africa (OSISA) is Godfrey Kanyanze. Kanyanze has long served as the director of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which is funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy.
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=977
http://maravi.blogspot.com/2010/02/sticky-larouchepac-dirty-operation.html

³²http://www.iol.co.za/business/business-news/zuma-link-to-labour-broking-1.1369721?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Zuma+link+to+labour+broking+-+26+Aug+2012+-+14%3A02&utm_source=IOL&utm_term=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iol.co.za%2Fzuma-link-to-labour-broking-1.1369721

³³ Mail & Guardian article dated 10 August 2012, titled ‘The foundations on which Jacob Zuma’s empire is built’

NOTES:

Footnote 1: SA’s role in the Battle of Bangui: The blood on Zuma’s hands

To explain the onus President Zuma took on himself by ordering the South African Defence Force to enter war inside the Central African Republic, a country which held no threat to South Africa, we refer to a media article by Ranjeni Munusamy dated 27 March 2013, entitled “SA’s role in the Battle of Bangui: The blood on Zuma’s hands” as follows:

In the midst of the excitement of the Brics summit and the presence of some of the world’s most powerful leaders on our soil, serious issues around the SANDF deployment in the Central African Republic are conveniently being downplayed. However important the Brics summit might turn out to be, it does not take precedence over the fact that South African troops were engaged in armed combat in another country, without international mandate, and with deadly consequences. If there was any dishonesty in this deployment, there would be grounds for impeaching the president.

At a media briefing on Monday, President Jacob Zuma informed the nation that members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) had been killed in the Central African Republic (CAR) over the weekend. Zuma reeled out a few nice words about the bravery of the soldiers “who were committed to fighting for peace and stability in Africa” [hopefully that was their understanding of what they were doing], and conveyed his condolences to the bereaved families.

“We are truly proud of our soldiers. Just over 200 of them fought bandits numbering more than a 1,000 people. They fought a high-tempo battle for nine hours, defending the South African military base, until the bandits raised a white flag and asked for a ceasefire.

“Our soldiers inflicted heavy casualties among the attacking bandit forces. They paid the ultimate price in the service of their country and Africa. We honour them for their bravery and commitment to peace,” Zuma said.

So, our president has admitted that our soldiers have killed citizens of the CAR, in their country.

Let’s for a minute imagine a reversal of this situation. Our country has been through situations of strife in the past, for example, between the ANC and Inkatha Freedom Party. Imagine a foreign army in our country, engaged in armed combat which resulted in deaths of our citizens. Whatever our problems, would we want another country’s army here, on an unspecified mission, fighting alongside one or other group, killing our people?

South Africans do not have a clear explanation of what our troops were doing in the CAR; it is equally doubtful that the citizens of that country do. But there were media reports already in January, in the very week Zuma announced he was sending 200 soldiers to beef up President François Bozizé’s forces, that the Seleka rebel alliance was unhappy with the South African military’s presence in their country. Some of the reports quoted the rebels referring to the South African troops as “mercenaries”.

This situation is extremely serious: if our army has been a player in a civil war in another country, in violation of international law, Zuma could be impeached.

Even if you give Zuma the benefit of the doubt and believe his explanation to Parliament, he still falls short in his subsequent reaction.

If the alternative explanation is proven accurate, Zuma would be open to impeachment by Parliament at least two grounds: violation of the Constitution or law; and/or misconduct.

So, what is it now?

The blood of the 13SANDF soldiers and that of the CAR citizens who died in the fire fight is on Zuma’s hands. The blood of any more people who die as a result of South Africa’s presence in the CAR is on ours. DM

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-03-27-sas-role-in-the-battle-of-bangui-the-blood-on-zumas-hands/#.UVNO1heG391

Footnote 2: BAIN and AFRICAN TERROR - Blood Diamonds

BAIN and AFRICAN TERROR - Blood Diamonds -There is an African end of this story. A CIA agent named “Tony,” working South Africa, part of a team of agents there, all Mormons, contacted professional associates of mine. South Africa is my “turf” also.

“Tony” as he called himself was working with a US law firm and was tasked with investing $120 billion in drug profits, maybe from Afghanistan, in South Africa. He told our representatives he was looking for mining properties worth more than $200 million each.

“Tony” met, not just with us, but with dozens of other groups in South Africa. Tony is, what we call in the spy business, “burned.” Tony’s group work with UNITA, a terrorist organization, sometimes supported by North Korea, Israel, the US and China.

Their task, as South African intelligence indicates, is to buy up South Africa and take over the rest of Southern Africa through running terrorist groups out of the DRC or Democratic Republic of the Congo. On their list is Kenya and other nations.

Their method of operation is to finance themselves with blood diamonds, sent through agents to Tel Aviv, money to be handled by Bain Capital/Romney, then to China where arms are purchased and shipped to terrorists in Africa, “Al Qaeda, Boko Harum and UNITA.

The details of the deal were set up a month ago. Currently, UNITA is having difficulty coming up with their end, the $1.2 billion a year in diamonds they promised.

On the Israeli end, Romney, while traveling there with Las Vegas casino boss, Sheldon Adelson, met with diamond traders at what was supposed to be a/an (illegal) fundraiser.

It was something else, putting together one link in the diamonds, terrorism, money, narcotics trade which, working with Bain, the Bush family, Mormon groups in the CIA and the Mossad, is meant to take over all of Africa.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/11/01/romney-leaks-drugs-blood-diamonds-and-a-cuban-mistress/

Footnote 2a: Romney’s handler shared the same name as the member of the American government who was not in public office, but was on the highest decision making levels of the GOP.

Intelligence has revealed that, “We don’t know when Romney began visiting Cuba but our first encounter with him there was 1999, one of two trips that year, one through Vera Cruz, the second through Toronto. There he met with Maria Perez/Andropov, a Cuban intelligence officer who is his mistress. We know Romney used diplomatic passports for travel and that Perez has travelled in the US under a very unique identity.”

Intercepts of highly classified intelligence from Cuba, confirmed at the highest sources, indicate that Cuban intelligence agent, Maria Perez Andropov, while in the US, used the name of former Massachusetts governor Jane Marie Swift. The terms “cloned” and “stolen identity” were used.

The same intelligence sources confirm that Perez/Andropov, travelling as Jane Marie Smith, accompanied Mitt Romney on more than one occasion, a Cuban intelligence agent, inside the US under false identity.

The other “Swift” became governor when Bush appointed Paul Celluci, then governor, as Ambassador to Canada, April 10, 2001, in an unusual political move to which we choose to attribute no significance.

Swift though not serving in public office, is at the highest decision making levels of the GOP.

Footnote 3: NAFTA was a Romney document negotiated by President Bush

The July 30, 1995 New York Times declared that “Mexican traffickers seem to have embraced a vision of North American integration not unlike that with which NAFTA … was sold to skeptics in Washington.” A former U.S. official explained to the Times that “once Bush and Salinas decided to go with NAFTA as the No. 1 goal, then everything else had to be manageable.”

John P. Walters, who inherited the post of “Drug Czar” from William Bennett, made the point even more clearly in a subsequent interview with the Times. “People desperately wanted drugs not to become a complicating factor for NAFTA,” explained Walters. “There was a degree of illicit activity that was just accepted.”

This trade-off has not met with the approval of U.S. law enforcement personnel. Writing in the July/August 1996 issue of Freedom Review, Douglas Payne observed that “U.S. Customs and DEA personnel now openly refer to NAFTA as the ‘North American Drug Trade Agreement,’ while Texas law enforcement officials prefer, ‘North American Free Trafficking Agreement.’”

Fifteen years later, drug enforcement officials, fearful of having their names in print, fearful of not only the cartel but of their own employers, the US government, not only back up Grigg but indicate how much further things have gone:

“NAFTA wasn’t just negotiated by Bush (41) and Salinas and had nothing to do with trade. It was a Romney/Salinas document that was intended only to support drug and human trafficking, money laundering and the deindustrialization of the United States.”

Footnote 4: Francophone Africa

To understand what Francophone Africa is, we refer to an article date 3 April 2013, called “Demystifying doing business in Francophone Africa” by Jaco Maritz, the full text given at the end. Form this we point to the following information:

Ebenezer Essoka, GM of Standard Chartered bank in Southern Africa, says local partnerships are important in Francophone Africa.

No longer France’s exclusive backyard: Foreign investment into Francophone Africa was historically dominated by French companies. This trend is, however, changing. Australian companies are investing in the mining sector, while companies from the Middle East and Asia are putting money into the agricultural sector. Investors from North Africa and English-speaking countries on the continent are also eyeing the region.

Nigeria’s Dangote Group entered the Senegalese market and has also expanded into Gabon and the Republic of the Congo. Indian mobile telecommunications company Bharti Airtel also became a major player in Francophone Africa in 2010, when it bought the African assets of Zain Group. Bharti expanded its presence to include Burkina Faso, the Republic of the Congo, the DRC, Gabon, Madagascar, Niger and Chad.

Business culture: Like anywhere else in the world, Francophone African countries have their own unique business cultures. Gilles Atayi, managing partner at the Johannesburg-based G&A Group of Companies, said that a recent survey revealed some specific qualities Francophone CEOs and executives appreciate in their business partners.

The survey showed that “Francophone people are happy to deal with people who can teach and coach them in a civil manner, without arrogance, down to earth, and who are genuinely interested in other people’s development”.

Atayi noted that there is a “chief culture” in the region, where people expect the head of the organisation to have solutions for every problem. This is in contrast to countries such as South Africa, where there is a greater emphasis on team work.

He added that it is also critical for foreign companies to have a positive impact on the communities where they operate. “Make your deal, make your money, but give back to the community.”

Importance of local partnerships: Ebenezer Essoka, general manager of Standard Chartered bank for Southern Africa, said that it is important to have local partnerships on the ground. “In Francophone Africa it is definitely something that will motivate people to look at you more seriously… The partner does not necessarily have to put money [into the venture]… A partner can have on the ground experience or knowledge you don’t have.”

He, however, warned against associating with politically exposed individuals.

“Doing business in a foreign country comes with a host of risks that can be avoided if the local environment is better understood. Local partners can provide support and guidance in this regard and will be able to assist with strategic execution, risk management, relationship building and opportunity identification,” says Ernst & Young.

Footnote 5: Colonel Rose Kabuye and President Paul Kagame

Retired Colonel Rose Kabuye was arrested in Germany, and extradited to France, where she was charged with for complicity in murder in relation to a terrorist enterprise, for her alleged participation in the 1994 shooting down of Juvénal Habyarimana’s presidential plane, and released on bail. She is the first member of Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s inner circle to be charged in connection to what is arguably history’s least-investigated political assassination and terrorist attack.

Colonel Rose Kabuye was born in Uganda, the child of Rwandan expatriates, many of which left the country after it obtained independence, and following a UN-sponsored referendum abolishing the (Tutsi) monarchy in Rwanda. She attended primary school with many of the current regime’s hard-liners, and like numerous other Rwandan Tutsi exiles living in Uganda, Kabuye joined the Ugandan Army, where she held the rank of Lieutenant, and became the personal attaché of the Chief of Staff. During the same period, Paul Kagame, who attended the U.S. Army Command and Staff College (CGSC) in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, was Chief of Military Intelligence in the Ugandan Army.

On October 1st, 1990, an armed group called the Rwandan Patriotic Front, composed of many Ugandan officers, including Rose Kabuye and Paul Kagame, invaded Rwanda from Uganda, with Ugandan military material, and Ugandan soldiers.

It is said that Rose Kabuye—who charmed foreign journalists by holding her baby on her knee in press conferences held after the RPF invasion of Rwanda– was imprisoned for several months by Kagame in 1993, for undisclosed reasons.

In April 1994, she was back in Kigali, Rwanda, working in an administrative capacity at the RPF headquarters. French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière accuses her of having abetted the SAM 16 missile attack on the plane carrying Presidents Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda, and Cyprien Ntaryamira, of Burundi. The indictment states that it was in her office that the members of the “Network Commando”, the RPF cell alleged to have shot down the presidential plane, waited for their orders, on April 6th, 1994.

Rose Kabuye was named “Prefet” (or governor) of Kigali after the tragic event of 1994.

She was later designated to participate in the National Transitional Assembly by Kagame, but was later removed. Colonel Kabuye was subsequently named Chief of Protocol of President Kagame. She is the highest-ranking woman in the Rwandan Patriotic Army.

Kabuye’s arrest and extradition to France arrest comes at a curious time and is accompanied by circumstances that deserve closer scrutiny.

It appears that, according to both French and German government sources, Rose Kabuye had been warned that if she travelled to Germany, she would be arrested pursuant to a warrant launched by French anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguière; a claim she now denies, expressing instead “surprise” at her arrest.

Much has been said of Colonel Kabuye’s willingness to face justice in France so that “the truth be known”; President Paul Kagame has ever referred to “lancing the boil”.

It has been speculated that General Kagame has sent his Chief of Protocol—a Lieutenant herself—to attempt, first, to obtain a copy of judge Bruguière’s file, and secondly, to “reveal the weakness” of the case against himself, and inner circle. Indeed, Kabuye is, among those charged, the individual against whom the charges are least severe, and whose implication may seem to be less instrumental than others. This theory is revealing to some extent, but fails to take into account what are high-level diplomatic and political attempts to paradoxically, move away from, and not towards, the truth.

The shooting down of the plane carrying Presidents Habyarimana of Rwanda and Ntaryamira of Burundi triggered the large-scale massacres that followed. The role of this attack on the nightmare that unfolded is obvious, yet over the years, and with the exception of judge Bruguière’s investigation, efforts to elucidate this crime have been frustrated almost every step of the way. An investigation was requested on numerous occasions, by numerous parties; significantly, by the Security Council, almost immediately, whose reminders to the Secretary-General to investigate the circumstances of the attack were not followed; by the Rwandan Government, after the plane was shot down; by the African Union; and following the UN resolution establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Subcommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities adopted resolution 1994/1 entitled “Situation in Rwanda”, calling the attention of the Commission of Experts, established by the Security Council, to the need to inquire into the circumstances of the shooting down of the plane.

In 1997, as defense counsel for Georges Rutaganda before the ICTR, I argued a motion requesting the Prosecutor disclose results of investigations into the shooting down of the Presidential plane, or be directed to undertake investigations, if none had been carried out. The Prosecutor’s representative responded:

“Our responsibility and mandate is not to investigate plane crashes. That’s not really our function. Therefore, I would categorically answer this question by saying that, first, we don’t have any such investigation. We have not made any such investigation and we don’t have any reports. And, secondly, it is not our function, it is not our mandate, to investigate plane crashes or presidents, vice-presidents, or whoever it is. And, therefore, this is really a matter not within our province.”

We have since learned from Michael Hourigan, Australian lawyer and one of former Prosecutor Louise Arbour’s lead investigators, that investigations had in fact been carried out (and at the material period when this fact had been denied), but had been shut down by Prosecutor Arbour personally once Hourigan informed her that he had credible evidence that a “network commando” of the RPF had shot down the plane.

The efforts to undermine this investigation over the years are significant, and the testimony of Abdul Ruzibiza, a former RPF officer who testified before the ICTR, sheds substantial light on why that may be. Ruzibiza, one of judge Bruguière’s witnesses, claims to have recanted the totality of his testimony in several telephone interviews given last week. Yet Ruzibiza wrote a book setting out in detail the fact that Kagame’s RPF shot down the plane with the knowledge that armed hostilities would resume in Rwanda, as he was dissatisfied with the political process undertaken after belligerent parties had signed the Arusha Peace Accords. In other words, knowing full well that chaos would descend upon Rwanda (or with incomprehensible recklessness), Kagame’s strategy was to seize power through the force of arms, and it was guaranteed that war would resume after the assassination of the Rwandan President—and as it happened, the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces, as well as the President of Burundi.

Ruzibiza testified publicly at the ICTR as a defense witness. The Prosecutor’s cross-examination covers 65 pages of transcripts, yet Ruzibiza’s version was unshaken, much less did he change his version, or recant then, when testifying under oath.

But Rose Kabuye’s arrest and transfer to France appears to have suddenly triggered Ruzibiza’s change of heart and complete recantation of his testimony. He now claims that Bruguière’s investigation was a French political machination (which does not explain his UN testimony).

Diplomacy’s Pale Underbelly

Perhaps key in understanding what has happened is the policy adopted by France’s Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. In January 2008, and apparently desperate to normalize relations with Rwanda (which were suspended by Rwanda after Bruguière launched arrest warrants in 2006), he signed an op ed in Figaro, in which he wrote (my translation):

“I do not know who ordered the April 6th, 1994 attack against President Habyarimana’s plane. But I do not believe, as does the excellent judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, that Paul Kagame knowingly decided to spark the fire that roared over his country. I cannot accept this simplistic and slanderous vision that would have Tutsis be responsible for what happened to them, no more than I can stand to hear certain people claim that there was a double genocide, against both Hutus and Tutsis.”

Asked last week [mid-November 2008] whether Kabuye’s indictment in France would present an obstacle to the normalization of relations with Rwanda, he responded: “I believe the contrary.”

One can only hope that geo-political concerns will not yet again stand in the way of learning the truth about the circumstances in which President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down by two surface to air missiles in 1994, even if the truth to be discovered, and justice to be done as a result, leads us to indict those who’ve become some of the West’s strongest allies, and who continue, it seems, to wage a path of destruction through Eastern Congo, with complete immunity.

Indeed, if the RPF shot down President Habyarimana’s plane, Kagame can no longer be deemed a heroic military genius who stopped a genocide and should be forever protected and flattered no matter how many crimes he commits. He becomes one of the (main) reasons the massacres unfolded: he could not have failed to know that the assassination of two Hutu presidents, and the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces, during a volatile political transition and in the course of a fragile ceasefire (violated on several occasions by the RPF, as it happens), would unleash violence. If the RPF shot down the plane, they are co-responsible, and this substantially changes the cartoonishly uni-dimensional narrative necessary to provide Kagame with total impunity, and buttress a Western foreign policy on intervention that helped make the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia possible politically.

While Bernard Kouchner may not want to believe the results of a careful investigation carried out by France’s most celebrated anti-terrorism judge, and while Judge Bruguière’s witness, Mr. Ruzibiza, may suddenly see fit to recant a testimony given under oath before a UN institution, the fact remains that there are many other witnesses relied upon in the French investigation. And this most under-investigated of political assassinations, one which sparked a hundred-day massacre, the latter justifying continued war and misery in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and authoritarian rule in Rwanda, must be elucidated, and not quashed yet again, for the sake of geopolitical interests that would impede discovery of truth, and delay justice beyond what can decently be tolerated.

Tiphaine Dickson was lead counsel for Georges Rutaganda before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1997 to 2001. She was the first defense lawyer to present a motion requesting disclosure of the Prosecution’s investigations into the shooting down of President Habyarimana’s plane.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/rwanda-s-deadliest-secret-who-shot-down-president-habyarimana-s-plane/11133

Footnote 6: Radio messages used as a tool to incite genocide in Rwanda

Due to high rates of illiteracy at the time of the genocide, radio was an important way for the government to deliver messages to the public. Two radio stations key to inciting violence before and during the genocide were Radio Rwanda and Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines(RTLM).

In March 1992, Radio Rwanda was first used in directly promoting the killing of Tutsi in Bugesera, south of the national capital Kigali. Radio Rwanda repeatedly broadcast a communiqué warning that Hutu in Bugesera would be attacked by Tutsi, a message used by local officials to convince Hutu that they needed to attack first. Led by soldiers, Hutu civilians and the Interahamwe attacked and killed hundreds of Tutsi.

At the end of 1993, the RTLM's highly sensationalized reporting on the assassination of the Burundian president, a Hutu, was used to underline supposed Tutsi brutality. The RTLM falsely reported that the president had been tortured, including castration (in pre-colonial times, some Tutsi kings castrated defeated enemy rulers). There were 50,000 civilian deaths in Burundi in 1993.

From late October 1993, the RTLM repeatedly broadcast themes developed by the extremist written press, underlining the inherent differences between Hutu and Tutsi, the foreign origin of Tutsi, the disproportionate share of Tutsi wealth and power, and the horrors of past Tutsi rule. The RTLM also repeatedly stressed the need to be alert to Tutsi plots and possible attacks. It warned Hutu to prepare to "defend" themselves against the Tutsi. After April 6, 1994, authorities used RTLM and Radio Rwanda to spur and direct killings, specifically in areas where the killings were initially resisted. Both radio stations were used to incite and mobilize populations, followed by specific directions for carrying out the killings.

The RTLM had used terms such as inyenzi (cockroach in Kinyarwandan) and Tutsi interchangeably with others referring to the RPF combatants. It warned that RPF combatants dressed in civilian clothes were mingling among the displaced people fleeing combat zones. These broadcasts gave the impression that all Tutsi were supporters of the RPF force fighting against the elected government. Women were targets of the anti-Tutsi propaganda prior to the 1994 genocide; for example, the "Hutu Ten Commandments" (1990) included four commandments that portrayed Tutsi women as tools of the Tutsi people, and as sexual weapons to weaken and ultimately destroy the Hutu men. Gender-based propaganda also included cartoons printed in newspapers depicting Tutsi women as sex objects. Examples of gender-based hate propaganda used to incite war rape included statements by perpetrators, such as "You Tutsi women think that you are too good for us", and "Let us see what a Tutsi woman tastes like."

Footnote 7: The role France played in the Rwandan genocide

This footnote consists of two sections:

Article 1 THE FRANCO-RWANDAN BONE OF CONTENTION AND ITS IMPACT ON THE BILATERAL RELATIONS BETWEEN RWANDA AND FRANCE, AND ON THE GREAT LAKES REGION OF AFRICA and

Article 2 RWANDA FRENCH CONNECTION,

which reads as follows:

Article 1. THE FRANCO-RWANDAN BONE OF CONTENTION AND ITS IMPACT ON THE BILATERAL RELATIONS BETWEEN RWANDA AND FRANCE, AND ON THE GREAT LAKES REGION OF AFRICA

This document presents the origin of the Franco-Rwandan bone of contention, which is the role of France in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda coupled with France’s refusal to acknowledge it and apologize for it. The document also exposes the negative attitude of the French Government towards the post-genocide Government of Rwanda, and the Judge Bruguière’s affair which is the latest front opened by France in the relentless war she has been waging against the Government of Rwanda in the course of the last 12 years.

The document further reviews the actions which were undertaken by the Government of Rwanda in order to normalize its relations with France, all to no avail unfortunately.

1. A historical background to the Franco-Rwandese bone of contention

Although Rwanda was not a French colony, Rwanda as a French-speaking country has enjoyed a privileged relationship with France. Rwanda was indeed a founding member of such France-led groupings as the “Francophonie” and the “France-Africa Summit”.

The relationship between France and Rwanda later on became even more special, and Rwanda really entered in what France calls the “pré-carré” (her reserved corner or backyard in Africa) in 1975, with the signing of a military assistance agreement between President Juvénal HABYARIMANA and President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

In 1983, the relations between France and Rwanda entered a new phase with the appointment of Jean Christophe Mitterrand, son of late President François Mitterrand, to head the African Cell in the Elysée (the Office of the President of the French Republic), which is in fact the most powerful institution as far as the French African policy is concerned. Jean Christophe Mitterrand quickly developed close friendship with Jean Pierre Habyarimana, one of the sons of the late President of Rwanda.

Unlike other colonial powers, France never indeed allowed full independence to its former colonies. Late Sékou Touré’s Guinea paid a heavy price for asserting her right to full independence from France in 1958. France maintained a strong military presence in almost all her former colonies, engineering most “coups d’état” either directly through her military bases, or the national armies she was training, or else via sponsored mercenaries like Bob Denard.

In her African foreign policy, France could never imagine, let alone accept a change of power in her backyard (“pré-carré”) without her active involvement, or at the very least her blessing. Interventionism in the France’s backyard or “pré-carré” in Africa has been part and parcel of the French African foreign policy. It is worth recalling here that in France, foreign affairs and defense matters are the undisputed constitutional preserve of the President of the Republic.

When in 1990 the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) launched its armed struggle against the regime of late Habyarimana in Rwanda to address all its evils, France reckoned that the RPF had committed several “lese-majesty” crimes:

· By launching its armed struggle from an English speaking country, i.e. Uganda, RPF re-ignited the Fashoda syndrome for France. France responded by launching a propaganda war that presented the RPF struggle as a plot by the Anglo-Saxon world, whose objective was to reduce France’s influence in Africa.

· How could the RPF dare attempt a change of power in France’s “pré-carré” without France’s involvement or blessing;

It was therefore not surprising that France, arguing the defense of the Francophone world, and refusing to admit a change of power in her backyard (“pré-carré”) which was not authorized by her, came to the rescue of late Habyarimana’s regime through a military intervention in Rwanda code-named “NOROIT”.

In this military intervention, France brought along Belgium and Zaïre with her by misleading them into believing that Rwanda had been attacked by Uganda. However, Belgium and Zaïre quickly withdrew their troops when they realized that:

· The conflict was a civil one and had its root in the bad governance which had relegated hundreds of thousands of Rwandans into exile for decades, and transformed millions inside Rwanda into second class citizens;

· It was not at all an international conflict between Rwanda and Uganda.

From 1990 to 1994, the military situation in Rwanda became a personal affair of President Mitterrand who appointed General Jean Pierre Huchon to closely follow the matter, and report directly to him.

France maintained her troops in Rwanda, which actively fought alongside the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) against the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), the armed wing of the RPF. The French troops were especially in command responsibilities, and they manned heavy artillery and helicopters gunship. France’s involvement in the Rwandan civil strife was not a secret as evidenced by the appointment, in 1992, by late President Habyarimana, of French Lieutenant-Colonel Chollet as the overall planner and commander of all military operations of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR). Apart from this military engagement on frontlines, French soldiers manned roadblocks at which Rwandans carrying identity cards marked “Tutsis” were either arrested and made to disappear, or else simply killed on the spot.

In January 1993, an International commission comprising several Human rights organizations including FIDH (“Fédération International des Droits de l’Homme”), Human Rights Watch, etc., documented these massacres against Tutsis and qualified them as acts of genocide, but France maintained the same policy of support to a Government that was committing genocide against its people. In June 1993, Mr. Adama DIENG, then UN Special Rapporteur on torture and extra-judicial killings visited Rwanda, and wrote a report in which he alarmingly drew the attention of the world on the preparations of genocide against Tutsis. The alarm went unheeded. Neither this UN Rapporteur nor the Human rights organizations were listened to, because the accomplice voice of France was much louder and quite efficient in covering up the crimes of the Rwandan regime. The international community missed an opportunity to prevent genocide because of the complicity of France.

France encouraged the creation of an extremist party called ‘’CDR’’ (“Coalition for the Defense of the Republic”),which later on spearheaded the execution of genocide, as evidenced by the exchange of letters between President Mitterrand and the CDR leadership. The picture of President Mitterrand was frequently displayed on CDR’s heinous publication, the infamous “KANGURA”, portraying him as the friend of their “Hutu cause”. Although this extremist party openly advocated the extermination of Tutsis, it received the backing, the attention and advice from French diplomats in Kigali. Moreover CDR leaders such as Jean Bosco BARAYAGWIZA were officially hosted in Paris, even when the execution of genocide was in full swing.

The former French Minister of Cooperation Marcel Debarge did not hesitate to openly encourage all Hutus to unite against Tutsis and the RPF. It is this encouragement that led to the creation of the so-called Hutu-power, a political coalition that was at the forefront of the perpetration of genocide.

In accordance with the Arusha Peace Agreement signed between the Government of Rwanda and the RPF, the NOROIT operation ended at the end of December 1993, but France officially maintained 40 military instructors (unofficially they were actually more than 40). It is worth noting that during the lengthy negotiations between RPF and the Government of Rwanda, France maliciously supported the intransigence of the genocidal government of Rwanda, as they were both trying to simply obtain the capitulation of RPF through these negotiations, and nothing else. The appearance of seeking peace in Arusha, and elsewhere, was for both of them a mere hoax luring the attention of the international community, which knew little or nothing about their real agenda.

Unsurprisingly therefore, late President Habyarimana grew unhappy with the outcome of the negotiations, and at the peak of his dissatisfaction, he referred to the Arusha Peace Agreement as just another nondescript mere heap of sheets of paper which shall never have a chance of implementation! He was at the time addressing Rwandan citizenry in the northern part of the country, where he was born; he spoke in the national language, Kinyarwanda, and he was obviously arousing the basest instincts of his countrymen and women, bracing them for the “final hour” of those long meant to be doomed, for the final round, still looming ahead then, of the topmost genocide of the Tutsi. That final round, which was most certainly and documentedly in the offing, did eventually come about as no surprise in April - July 1994.

Despite the committed regional leadership’s peace-seeking efforts, the genocidal government of Rwanda stalled the implementation of the Arusha Peace Agreement, while it pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing , mass murders of Tutsi folks, and political assassination of Hutu opponents.

On April 6, 1994 the plane carrying late President Habyarimana from Dar Es Salaam, where he had just attended a Regional Summit that sought to convince him to allow the long overdue implementation of the Arusha Peace Agreement, was shot down as it was landing at the Kigali Airport. Planners of the Tutsi genocide quickly seized this moment to theatrically exploit the nightly plane crash, to enter the full gear as it were, the final full swing of the final round of the Tutsi genocide.

It is worth mentioning here that the Kigali international airport lies about 3 kilometers away from the official residence of late President Habyarimana, and the area was heavily guarded by the Presidential guard assisted by French troops. These forces prevented the UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda) from getting to the crash site, to carry out an investigation.

What these combined forces, the FAR and the French soldiers, were hiding from this UN Mission has so far remained a pregnant mystery of sorts!

Following death of Habyarimana’s plane, France sent troops to Rwanda code-named ‘’Amaryllis’’, officially purported to evacuate their nationals, including the HABYARIMANA family and their relatives, leaving behind them extremist Hutus to perpetrate a genocide that had been planned long before. These French troops did not care in the least for the Tutsis operatives that worked for the Kigali French Embassy and the French Cultural Centre, while they did very lovingly care for the evacuation of the dogs and cats belonging to French expatriates!! Those French Embassy and Cultural Centre Tutsi staffers were unappealingly left behind to meet their certain doom at the Kigali airport. Understandably, this must certainly weigh pretty heavy on the conscience of quite a number of the French government officials, civilian and military, who were involved in deciding and executing the early and final rounds of the Tutsi genocide.

Under the cover of this operation France delivered huge quantities of arms to EX-FAR and Interahamwe as attested by some MINUAR and FAR officers. France continued to deliver weapons to these forces that were committing genocide throughout the execution of the celebrated horrendous tragedy, and later on via the D.R.Congo, then Zaïre.

When France realized eventually that despite her supplies of weapons, the genocidal forces were unable to stop the RPF forces but were rather loosing the war, she decided to send her troops through yet another military operation code-named “Turquoise”, to the rescue the genocidal government and military, and save them from total defeat and discomfiture. Using her prominent position in the UN Security Council, France was able to hoodwink 10 out of the 15 members of the UN Security Council into believing that she was sending a bona fide “Humanitarian mission”, a dangerous hoax in actuality as it later turned out. The hoodwinked United Nations Security Council members therefore candidly voted for UNSC Resolution nº 929 authorizing French troops to be deployed in Rwanda under the code name of ‘Operation Turquoise’’.

The fact that a so-called humanitarian operation was only for by 10 out the 15 members of the UN Security Council proves that most members of the UN Security Council questioned the Humanitarian character of the French mission, and had good cause to suspect that France was intervening, to indeed rescue their friendly genocidal government and military forces that were showing unmistakable signs of exhaustion and distress bordering on defeat.

The deployment of the French troops did not succeed to boost the combat morale of the genocidal forces, which were eventually defeated by RPF forces in July 1994. The French troops of the “Operation Turquoise’’ finally resolved to organize the evacuation of the defeated genocidal forces into Zaire were they attempted to re-organize, re-train and re-arm them with the hope that they could re-capture power in Rwanda.

It is quite worth noting at this juncture that the French troops of the so-called Turquoise forced the Rwandan populations to massively flee into Zaïre, in order to lend credence to the French government’s anti-RPF propaganda vociferously claiming that the RPF lacked popular support and legitimacy, since “the people had so to speak voted with their feet by following the authors of genocide, their would-be true leaders, into exile”!

Given France’s military, political, diplomatic and financial involvement on the side of the forces which committed genocide in Rwanda, the defeat of these forces was excruciatingly felt by the French government as France’s own defeat in the heartland of African. Defeating France constituted a third “lese-majesty crime” or a sacrilege committed by RPF.

2. The French Government’s attitude vis-à-vis the Government of National Unity installed after the 1994 genocide.

The defeat of the genocidal forces that France had supported militarily, politically, diplomatically and financially was perceived by France as a bitter pill to swallow, especially as she tried to figure out how this defeat would be perceived in France’s African backyard, in their cherished so called “pré-carré”. It was therefore not surprising that France attempted by all means to re-instate the genocidal regime into power, so as to reverse the defeat and thus reassure other friendly regimes in her African backyard. Since 1994, France adopted an anti-Rwanda government attitude, with the evident objective of weakening it, and eventually creating conditions for its envisaged overthrow. This can be illustrated by the following few examples:

· French authorities refused to acknowledge the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis. When this capital crime was clearly acknowledged by the international community through the creation of an International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to punish it, France developed the ‘’thesis of a double genocide’’ and used all means to substantiate it. Through this maneuvering, France was pursuing two objectives: The first objective is to show that there are no good nor bad guys in Rwanda, they are all the same, thus appearing to justify that she had to side with the genocidal regime, which was at least friendly to France. The second objective was that of criminalizing the government of Rwanda with the hope of transforming it into a pariah government. To this end French intelligence services have sponsored books by Péan, Onana, Ruzibiza, Debre, etc., which are now being used by Judge Bruguière, as main sources of information for their so-called investigation.

· France dragged her feet in recognizing the government of National Unity put in place in July 1994. France only appointed her Ambassador to Rwanda in March 1995, because she all along hoped that the newly installed Government would collapse within 6 months.

· This non-recognition of post genocide Rwandan Government was evidenced by the fact the Government of France refused to invite Rwanda to the France-Africa Summit of Biarritz in November 1994, even though Rwanda is a founder member of the France-Africa Summit.

· The French authorities have given asylum and protection to major planners of genocide including close relatives of HABYARIMANA like Madame Agathe Habyarimana, and many personalities of the Hutu Power, who freely carry out their political activities aimed at destabilizing Rwanda. France has turned into a safe haven for the 1994 genocide suspects, where they are shielded against judicial prosecution.

· Since her re-opening, the Embassy of France in Rwanda has been solely devoted to the mobilization of internal opposition. She even went to the extent of encouraging government officials to flee the country, so as to weaken the Rwandan government of National Unity.

· French government has consistently opposed Rwanda’s development programs presented to international organizations such as World Bank, the IMF and the European Union, even though she has never used her veto against Rwanda within EU. France became a champion of imposing non realistic conditions for foreign aid to the Government of Rwanda.

· Although France was the biggest bilateral donor to the Government of Rwanda before 1994, she became the least of donors after the genocide.

· At the 2 Geneva Round Tables of Donors (1995, 1996) organized for the mobilization of funds for the recovery and rehabilitation of Rwanda, France did not contribute a penny, even though Rwanda was emergig from the worst tragedy ever in her history. Indeed, true friends reveal themselves in times of need!

· At the United Nations, France strongly argued to limit the competence of the United Nations Tribunal for Rwanda to the period between 1st of January 1994 and 31st of December 1994 so as to exclude the period between 1990 -1993 which would have allowed the ICTR to lay bare France’s notorious role in the preparation of genocide. This was not fortuitous!

· There exist a tacit and unwritten rule at the UN Security Council which gives to France the sole responsibility of drafting UNSC resolutions and Presidential statements concerning the region of Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. France has exploited this prerogative to make sure that all these UNSC resolutions and Presidential statements contain baseless accusations against, and condemnations of, Rwanda. Indeed, UN Security Council Draft resolutions and Presidential statements presented by France have more often than not baselessly accused Rwanda of committing human rights violations in DRC, looting DRC resources, violating UN arms embargo in DRC, and fueling conflict in that country, etc.

3. Judge Bruguière’s affair and his international arrest warrants

Judge Bruguiere’s affair and his international arrest warrants is a continuation of this overt and covert war that France has been waging against the Government of Rwanda for the last 12 years. The argument of independence of justice behind which the government of France is hiding can hardly resist the analysis of the case. A quick look at what the Judge and the Paris Prosecutor’s office have done reveals clearly that the issuance of these international arrest warrants is not only politically motivated, but also a political attack against the Rwandan government, all wrapped up in a judicial cloth:

· Indeed in France as elsewhere, it is a sacred principle that a judicial investigator would have to consider all evidence against and in favor of the suspect. However this French Judge has only based his investigation and built his case on the basis of testimonies from witnesses who are known either to have played a role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (French military, intelligence and political officers who were in involved in Rwanda before, during and after the 1994 genocide and sided with the genocidal forces, suspects of genocide incarcerated in ICTR prison in Arusha or still at large, etc.), or else those known to be political opponents of the government of Rwanda. Who is this so-called “independent” judge who would only seek testimonies from enemies of those he wants to incriminate!

· This judge never came to Rwanda to visit the scene of the crime he claims to have investigated, to interview people leaving in the vicinity of the scene of the crime and may have witnessed the crime, or at least to appreciate if it was materially possible for his suspects to be at the scene of the crime, given the prevailing conditions at the time of the commission of the crime. No rogatory commission sent from France in the framework of this investigation.

· There are no eye witnesses of the crime among the witnesses cited by Justice Bruguière. They are “hearsay” witnesses! What’s the value of “hearsays” in criminal law? Furthermore, some of the witnesses cited by the judge have denounced him as being just a manipulator and a liar.

· Judge Bruguière never tried to interview the people he accuses.

· Judge Bruguière violated the secret of investigation by allowing Mr. Stephen Smith, a journalist of Le Monde, to publish his so-called “findings” during the investigation. Knowing the close relations of these two gentlemen with the French intelligence servicse, it is easy to see that Bruguiere’s so called investigation is indeed not a judicial investigation, but rather a political maneuvering endeavor to destabilize the Rwandan government.

· The material evidence used by the judge, notably the 2 pictures of supposed missiles launchers used to shoot down Habyarimana’s plane that were snapped by an officer of the genocidal army, had been rejected by the French Parliament mission of information as a manipulation attempt by the genocidal Rwandan army and the French intelligence services. Indeed an analysis of the pictures shows that the missiles had not been fired, which meant that these missiles were in the hand of the genocidal army before they were fired, if they ever were. This excludes the hypothesis of RPF using the pictured missiles to commit the crime it is accused of.

If the Paris prosecutor’s office were really independent, it could never have authorized Judge Bruguière to issue international arrest warrants on the basis of such a hollow and vitiated case.

Of course what mattered to Judge Bruguière and the Paris prosecutor’s office, alongside and those who gave orders, was rather to destroy the image of Rwandan leaders and not the judicial end of these international arrest warrants. Whether the accused are one day brought to justice or not is immaterial for them, in any case the harm they sought to cause is already done, as far as they are concerned!

4. Efforts of the Government of Rwanda to normalize relations with France.

Despite France’s role in the planning and execution of genocide, as substantiated above, and her consistent negative attitude towards the government of Rwanda, the RPF and the Government of Rwanda did all they could to normalize relations with France, but to no avail. The following are some of the actions attempted:

· Following the military intervention of France, Belgium and Zaire in Rwanda on the side of Habyarimana, RPF approached the governments of these countries and explained to them the root causes of its armed struggle. Belgium and Zaire did understand and withdrew their troops, but France maintained hers in Rwanda.

· RPF continued its attempts to explain to French authorities the motivation of its struggle. RPF’s efforts to approach the French authorities went to the extent of sending H.E Paul KAGAME to Paris in 1992, on the invitation of French authorities. Despite having officially invited him, they put him in detention for a whole day!

· Despite knowing France’s involvement in the planning and execution of genocide, and her continued support to genocidal forces, the Government of National Unity decided to invest her efforts in mending relations with France. A kind of extension of the internal reconciliation policy at the international level, as it were.

· France was the first country to receive an Ambassador of the Government of National Unity after the 1994 genocide. Unfortunately France managed to convince this Ambassador to quit the government of Rwanda.

· Despite the fact that in 1994 France had declined to invite Rwanda to the Franco-African Summit in Biarritz, Rwanda did attend the France-Africa Summit organized in Paris in 1998, with a delegation headed by the President of the Republic of Rwanda; and in February 2003, H.E Paul KAGAME attended personally the France-Africa Summit of Heads of State and government organized in Paris.

· Leaders of Rwanda requested friends of France on the African continent and elsewhere to help the two countries to mend the relations. In July 2004, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the two countries met in South Africa under the mediation of the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs.

All these contacts at the highest level (Heads of State, Prime Minister’s, Ministers) didn’t succeed in achieving any significant changes in the relations between Rwanda and France. France maintained its negative attitude against Rwanda. Rwandan authorities have done whatever they believed could contribute to the normalization of relations between the two countries, but nothing ever seemed to change on the part of France.

The Bruguière’s affair is only the latest front line opened by the French Government in its long war against the Government of Rwanda. After failing to re-organize the defeated genocidal forces (EX-FAR and Interahamwe) into a politico-military force capable of overthrowing the Government of Rwanda; noting that despite France’s opposition in international finance institutions, Rwanda continues to enjoy the support deservedly earned by her good governance and development policies, France has decided to try a judicial fight, and has to that effect concocted allegations against the Rwandan leadership and abusively used the legal system to try to discredit the Rwandan government.

The Government of Rwanda has analyzed these turbulent relations and came to the conclusion that it serves no useful purpose to maintain diplomatic relations with the Government of France, considering that it continues to relentlessly pursue the objective of destroying it, and Rwanda as a whole. The Government of Rwanda has therefore decided to order the closing of the Embassy of France in Rwanda, as well as other French official government entities in Rwanda, which could still be used to further destabilize Rwanda. The Government of Rwanda has correspondingly closed its Paris Embassy. French nationals residing in Rwanda do however have all the guaranties that their stay in Rwanda willl never be disturbed, unless they get mixed up in the politics of their country’s government antagonizing Rwanda.

However the Government of Rwanda shall happily resume normal and diplomatic relations, when France will have put an end to her belligerent attitude against Rwanda.

We think that it is better to have this problem clearly exposed to the world, so as to allow all and sundry, across the global human community, to help find a solution to it. We believe that this will require addressing, frankly and openly, the issue of France’s involvement in the 1994 genocide, which continues to pollute relations between the two countries. This continues to haunt the conscience of those in France’s leadership who played a role in it. They have tried to silence this conscience by waging a merciless war on the government of Rwanda, with the hope that this government will some day disappear from the face of the Earth, and, along with it, the accusations whose painful exhibits keep on crushing consciences of several persons among the French government leadership!

http://www.orwelltoday.com/rwandafrancecontention.shtml

Article 2. RWANDA FRENCH CONNECTION

Shortly after President Habyarimana was killed in his plane
as it approached Kigali airport April 6, 1994,
Little House officials declared themselves in charge.

While some of them have said that Tutsi RPF guerrillas shot down the president's plane,
the RTLM radio station, which the Little House controls,
said Belgian peacekeepers fired a rocket that brought the plane down.

This article offers a rare insight into the Rwandan Genocide from the perspective of a journalist who was there, on the ground, a month after it commenced and while it was still in progress. His observations are important because they are made BEFORE the process of the falsification of the present began. ~ Jackie Jura

Rwanda's French Connection
by Frank Smyth, May 1994

"We have 8 million people here," an aid worker told me last June in Rwanda, "and all you Americans care about are those damn gorillas."

I was in Rwanda investigating weapons trafficking for the Human Rights Watch/Arms Project, but I couldn't argue with the man, a Tutsi. Almost the only news reaching the West last year from this small, landlocked Central Africa republic was the death of Mrithi, a male silverback gorilla shot by a frightened soldier. One of 325 mountain gorillas in Rwanda, Mrithi was mourned in a New York Times op-ed by Rutgers University anthropologist Dr. H. Dieter Steklis. He succeeded Dian Fossey, the champion of the apes portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist. Apart from his brave Rwandan staff, Steklis made no mention of the country's people. At the time, 1 million of them were displaced from Northern Rwanda by the same fighting that killed Mrithi.

Last month, Rwanda's people finally got the world's attention, though accomplishing this took the fastest slaughter in memory, as many as 200,000 slain in a month. On April 27, Pope John Paul protested the killing as genocide. Most of the dead are Tutsi, a minority in a nation run by a small group of Hutu men. Government forces loyal to these Hutu men have also targeted and killed their Hutu political opponents, including spouses and children.

Since 1975, Rwanda's Hutu regime has been a formal military ally of France, a relationship that has continued despite the April 6 apparent assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana. On April 27, the same day the Vatican issued its moral plea, two top officials from Rwanda's newly declared government were received by the French foreign ministry. The next day, they were received at the Elysee, the presidential palace.

Rwanda's dictators have long been welcome in Paris. One of President Habyarimana's closest friends abroad was French president Francois Mitterrand, an interventionist throughout Francophone Africa. It has been reported from Kigali that their sons, Christophe Mitterrand and Jean-Pierre Habyarimana, have caroused together in discos on the Left Bank and in Rwanda at the Kigali Nightclub. At the Elysee, Christophe had been his father's special assistant on African affairs.

While it is unknown if President Mitterrand actually met with Rwanda's new leaders in the palace, he did receive a January 25 letter from the Human Rights Watch/Arms Project that identified France "as the major military supporter of the government of Rwanda.... providing combat assistance to a Rwandan army guilty of widespread human rights abuses, and failing to pressure the Rwandan government to curb human rights violations." Mitterrand has yet to respond.

The letter details Rwanda's purchase of $6 million in arms from Egypt, with the bill still unpaid. France guaranteed the payment for this March 1992 contract, which included 70 mortars, 16,200 mortar bombs, 2000 land mines, 2000 rocket-propelled grenades, plastic explosives, 450 automatic rifles, and more than 1 million rounds of ammunition. That's merely a single transaction. In addition, France has provided troops, advisers, and other weapons.

Rwanda is one of 14 Francophone African nations, almost all of which have military pacts with France. With few resources and less industry, the country's direct foreign investment is near zero. But like the United States allying with anticommunist states during the Cold War, France has allied with Francophone nations. Some, like Zaire, with 60 per cent of the world's cobalt, are of economic value. But all of them, as a bloc, give France command of enough votes in the United Nations to enjoy the pretense of being a world power.

Like neighboring Burundi to the south, Rwanda was a Belgian protectorate until independence in 1962. Before then, the Tutsi dominated Rwanda from the 17th century until 1960. The king, nobles, military commanders, and, especially, cattle herders were predominantly Tutsi. Most people among the remainder were Hutu subsistence farmers. Although they have distinct characteristics, Tutsi and Hutu are about as hard to tell apart as northern and southern Italians. Similar to northerners there, Tutsi have generally considered themselves superior.

In 1990, Tutsi guerrillas of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), many of them English-speaking, invaded Rwanda from English-speaking Uganda to the north. Belgium stayed relatively neutral, providing only nonlethal military aid to Rwanda. But France rushed in to defend the French-speaking Hutu regime, led by President Habyarimana and a group of men known as the Akazu or "Little House." Over the next three years, militant Hutu forces loyal to them murdered up to 2000 Tutsi civilians. Although these abuses were documented by an international commission composed of Human Rights Watch/Africa and three Francophone monitoring organizations, France continued to defend Rwanda's regime.

"Are you saying that the providing of military assistance is a human rights violation?" asked Colonel Cussac, his palm slamming his desk for emphasis. (The colonel, interviewed last June, wouldn't provide his first name.) Noting that I am an American, the Colonel added, "France and the United States have a common history, for example, in Vietnam."

More recent cases of intervention are also similar. France formally supported negotiations between Rwanda's Hutu government and Tutsi guerrillas in the 1990s, much as the United States allegedly backed negotiations in the 1980s between El Salvador's government and the guerrillas. But representatives of all the non-French Western diplomatic missions in Kigali said that France sought a clear victory for President Habyarimana and the Little House. "Cussac is a man in favor of a military solution," said one European chief-of-mission. "They continue to defend and sustain the regime."

But on April 12, France closed its embassy in Kigali and its military assistance mission. Having armed the government and the party-led militias, who are most responsible for the massacres, France fled (as did most of the 2500 United Nations troops), leaving behind a bloodbath, which also renewed the war between the Hutu government and Tutsi rebels. Even more astonishing, the French government has hardly said a word about a country whose fate it largely shaped. While the U.S. State Department studies the historic outbreak of "savagery" in Rwanda and the Vatican charges genocide, France keeps silent.

Last year, French soldiers manned check-points around Kigali. While some were armed with WASP 58 shoulder-fired rocket launchers, others demanded passing Rwandans to present their apartheid-like identification cards. The lDs were stamped Hutu (85 per cent of the population), Tutsi, or Twa (hunters and potters, about 1 per cent of the population).

Inside Kigali checkpoints were manned by Rwandan army soldiers. Aside from the capital's few taxis, most vehicles on the streets were army jeeps, French armored vehicles, and Land Cruisers belonging to foreign relief organizations. Getting a job with one of them, becoming a military officer, or being a friend or collaborator of President Habyarimana or the Little House were the main paths of advancement.

Photos of Habyarimana, by law, had been posted everywhere, even in the relief organizations. But when I arrived last summer, many portraits had been taken down. Rwanda's political space was finally opening to Hutu opposition parties, and the Tutsi guerrillas were respecting the cease-fire. Yet Hutu opposition leaders were also being assassinated. While French and Rwandan officials alike blamed the RPF for these political killings, and other diplomats and surviving Hutu opposition leaders suspected the Little House.

"Shadow groups are behind the violence," said Dr. Dismas Nsengiyaremye, one of several opposition party leaders. "Take the example of the mafia. Their chief may recruit from churches, the government, or private companies which allow him to conduct criminal activities without being seen. Here, the shadow groups are able to build connections to carry out criminal activities with impunity."

Last June. Charles Nzabagerageza, a government minister who admitted to being a member of the Little House, denied any government responsibility for the Escadrons de la Mort (death squads), as they became known: "[The accusations are] the result of whimsical minds, fabricated by a newspaper, and inspired by certain political groups for purposes which are political."

My month-long visit to Rwanda left me with images that recur in dreams. On a Sunday visit to a military hospital, for example, I saw two soldiers who had been wounded the week before. One suffered an open femur fracture and gangrene. The other's blood was soaking through old gauze wrapped around his stomach. I asked a recovering one-legged soldier, "Why aren't these men being treated?"

"Oh." he said. "The doctors don't work weekends."

On another day, Colonel Deogratias Nsabimana, who died with President Habyarimana in the April 6 plane crash, waved a stack of letters from Amnesty International activists at me. He wanted to know why he kept getting all these letters, worrying about prisoners of conscience in Rwanda's jails. Despite his bewilderment, Colonel Nsabimana struck me as a serious military professional. There were some moderate officers in the Rwandan army. Regardless, soldiers under them have long been notorious for their banditry. An American relief organization director told me that he was uncomfortable placing Western staff women near bases. Consisting of 5000 soldiers in 1990, before France financed its expansion, the Rwandan army had grown to more than 30,000 men. While weakly trained, some troops were armed with Egyptian-made Kalashnikov AKM automatic rifles and superior South African R-4 automatic rifles.

Over the same period, the RPF grew from 7000 to perhaps 15,000 guerrillas. Many carry Romanian Kalashnikovs and wear East German rain-pattern-camouflage uniforms. While many weapons were bought on the open market, Uganda donated to the RPF most of its other arms, including Soviet-made Katyusha multiple rocket launchers; landing in succession about 10 yards apart in fewer than five seconds per volley, their rockets spread shrapnel over an area wider and longer than a football field.

At their base camp near Mulindi in northern Rwanda during last year's cease-fire, I saw RPF guerrillas marching shirtless and singing Tutsi folk and war songs. They appeared to be a well-trained and highly motivated resistance movement. Some of their fighters and most of their leaders spoke English. Most came from refugee families who had fled Rwanda before its independence in 1962, when an earlier wave of Hutu attacks had killed 20,000 Tutsi and driven at least 150,000 to neighboring countries. Today, about 200,000 of them and their descendants live in Uganda. They have competed -- sometimes violently -- with its citizens, and suffered under both dictators Idi Amin and A. Milton Obote.

But in 1986, a guerrilla army led by a defected defense minister named Yoweri Museveni overthrew Uganda's govemment. About 2000 Rwandan Tutsi, including Paul Kagame, fought with him. Museveni later put Kagame in charge of Ugandan military intelligence. In October 1990, more than half of the RPF's invasion force, most of its weapons, and nearly all its leaders came directly out of the Ugandan army. President Museveni claims -- still -- that the deserters "stole" all the weapons they took with them. Kagame is currently the RPF top commander. At the RPF in Mulindi, Toni (his nom de guerre), an educated 30-year-old man with high cheekbones and a very soft manner of speaking, was the intelligence officer appointed to debrief me. Although soldiers served and saluted him, he claimed to be just another faithful recruit: "[What we] want is not necessarily to go back to [Rwanda], but to have a sense of national identity, to have citizenship, and the protection of the Rwandan flag." That may be true for Toni. But many RPF guerrillas told me that they and their families want immediate repatriation.

The renewal of Rwanda's conflict came when the prospect for peace never seemed better: President Habyarimana had signed a peace accord with RPF leaders, and he had agreed to divide cabinet posts equally among them, the Hutu opposition, and the Little House. The Little House had never before shared power. Its members had created the Presidential Guard and ruling party militias.

Shortly after President Habyarimana was killed in his plane as it approached Kigali airport April 6, Little House officials declared themselves in charge. While some of them have said that Tutsi RPF guerrillas shot down the president's plane, the RTLM radio station the Little House controls, said Belgian peacekeepers fired a rocket that brought the plane down. The assassination provoked a popular uprising, the Little House maintains.

Belgium's foreign minister, William Claes, however, said Hutu extremists assassinated the president in a palace coup. Belgian troops reported seeing a rocket fired from the direction of the Kanombe army base just east of the airport; further east are the headquarters of the Presidential Guard. Within minutes of the crash, armed militia loyal to the Little House set up roadblocks in Kigali. Hours later, officials from Belgium and elsewhere said, Presidential Guard units killed three opposition party cabinet members, including then interim prime minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. She was murdered with 10 Belgian peacekeepers who had tried to save her.

For months, RTLM announcers had been inciting Hutu militiamen against Tutsi: "The grave is only half-full. Who is going to fill it up?" Since the president's assassination, RTLM has been "calling on militias to step up the killing of civilians," according to UN spokesman Abdul Kabia in Kigali. Three weeks after the killings began, RTLM radio announced that Thursday, May 5 (when President Habyarimana was scheduled to be buried), would be the target date to finish "the clean-up" of Tutsi.

"When it comes to horror, this is one of the worst situations we have ever seen," said Tony Burgener, spokesman for the Intemational Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. (For diplomatic reasons, ICRC officials rarely comment on the record.) When the slaughter of the Hutu opposition and Tutsi families began, the main body of Rwandan army forces did not necessarily join in. Broadcast from Kigali, the army's radio said that "angry soldiers" had engaged in "shameful criminal acts." But expecting an RPF offensive, commanding officers failed to stop anyone from killing anybody.

When the bloodletting began, an RPF force of about 600 men was camped out in Kigali. The main body force of RPF fighters was still in and around Mulindi, 32 miles north. They began marching south. Destroying army positions along the way, they reached Kigali within five days. That day, April 11, French officials said they had no plans to leave. But the next day after the RPF began attacking Kigali, the French left.

Departing, French Legionnaire advisers predicted the government's fall, as did American intelligence experts. But while Tutsi RPF guerrillas secured the north central corridor from Uganda to Kigali, Hutu militiamen and their mobs' spread south, west, and east, killing more Tutsi families. Rather than then seizing control of a Kigali stacked with corpses, the RPF declared a cease-fire, albeit short-lived since it was contingent on the government stopping the killings. But in doing so, RPF commander Kagame wanted to show the world that his force was disciplined and obedient. Since then, some RPF guerrillas have fought the army, while the rest have pursued the militias.

The RPF now controls at least half the country, and the fighting is fiercer than ever, especially in and around Kigali.

Although I lived in Kigali for a month last year, I find it difficult to imagine the current violence. But I still can clearly picture certain people. One is journalist Sixbert Musangamfura, the editor of Isibo, a weekly newspaper. During an RPF offensive last year the Rwandan army confiscated a Mercedes-Benz truck with Ugandan license plates. Uganda denied, and still denies, supporting the RPF. Although a Tutsi, like the RPF rebels, Sixbert confirmed the Rwandan army's account: By doing so, he helped France and Rwanda find a smoking gun, confirming their claim that Uganda supported the RPF. Nonetheless, after April 6, French-backed Hutu forces killed Sixbert, probably for being Tutsi. Among the dozen Rwandans whose cards are in my Rolodex, only two are known to be alive.

http://www.orwelltoday.com/rwandafrenchconnect.shtml

Footnote 8: THE COLONIAL PACT

This footnote is taken from a site called This Is Africa by Harvey Johnson, where the article ‘How France lives off Africa with the Colonial Pact’ appears. He states that his information is based on a February issue of the New African (and from an interview given by Professor Mamadou Koulibaly, Speaker of the Ivorian National Assembly, Professor of Economics, and author of the book The Servitude of the Colonial Pact).

The Colonial Pact reads as follows:

It is the Colonial Pact that set up the common currency for the Francophone countries, the C.F.A franc, which demands that each of the 14 C.F.A member countries must deposit 65% (plus another 20% for financial liabilities, making the dizzying total of 85%) of their foreign exchange reserves in an “Operations Account” at the French Treasury in Paris.

The African nations therefore have only access to 15% of their own money for national development in any given year. If they are in need of extra money, as they always are, they have to borrow from their own 65% in the French Treasury at commercial rates. And that is not all: there is a cap on the credit extended to each member country equivalent to 20 % of their public revenue in the preceding year. So if the countries need to borrow more than 20%, too bad; they cannot do it. Amazingly, the final say on the C.F.A arrangements belongs to the French Treasury, which invests the African countries’ money in its own name on the Paris Bourse (the stock exchange).

It is also the Colonial Pact that demands that France has the first right to buy or reject any natural resources found in the land of the Francophone countries. So even if the African countries could get better prices elsewhere, they cannot sell to anybody until France says it does not want to buy those natural resources.

It is, again, the Colonial Pact that demands that in the award of government contracts in the African countries, French companies should be considered first; only after that can Africans look elsewhere. It doesn’t matter if Africans can obtain better value for money elsewhere, French companies come first, and most often get the contracts. Currently, there is the awkward case in Abidjan where, before the elections, former president Gbagbo’s government wanted to build a third major bridge to link the central business district (called Plateau) to the rest of the city, from which it is separated by a lagoon. By Colonial Pact tradition, the contract must go to a French company, which incidentally has quoted an astronomical price – to be paid in euros or US dollars.
Not happy, Gbagbo’s government sought a second quote from the Chinese, who offered to build the bridge at half the price quoted by the French company, and – wait for this – payment would be in cocoa beans, of which Cote d’Ivoire is the world’s largest producer. But, unsurprisingly, the French said “non, you can’t do that”.

Overall the Colonial Pact gives the French a dominant and privileged position over Francophone Africa, but in Côte d'Ivoire, the jewel of the former French possessions in Africa, the French are overly dominant. Outside parliament, almost all the major utilities - water, electricity, telephone, transport, ports and major banks - are run by French companies or French interests. The same story is found in commerce, construction, and agriculture.
In short, the Colonial Pact has created a legal mechanism under which France obtains a special place in the political and economic life of its former colonies.

THE BIG QUESTIONS
In what meaningful way can any of the 14 CFA countries be said to be independent?
If this isn't illegal and an international crime, then what is?
What is it going to take for this state of indentured servitude to end?
How much have the CFA countries lost as a result of this 50-year (and counting) "agreement"? (Remember, they've had to borrow their own money from the French at commercial rates)
Do French people know they're living off the wealth of African countries and have been doing so for over half a century? And if they know, do they give a damn?
When will France start paying back money they've sucked from these countries, not only directly from the interest on cash reserves and loans these countries have had to take out, but also on lost earnings from the natural resources the countries sold to France below market rates as well as the lost earnings resulting from awarding contracts to French companies when other contractors could have done things for less?
Does any such "agreement" exist between Britain and its former colonies, or did they really let go when they let go?

Attachment 26: Economic debts of the Crown to South Africans

Debt occurs when products or services are taken for use but not paid for.

The Crown has amassed economic debt to South Africans for reasons which include the following:

· Direct economic debt.

Representatives of the Crown has amassed direct economic debt to South Africans as it attached land which belonged to South Africans through deceit and then sold it without the permission of the people from whom they took the land. The proceeds from the sale of such land were channelled to the Crown. The theft of land through deceit is discussed further in Attachment 7 - Land annexed and the colonies established by the Crown to form the Union of South Africa.

· Indirect economic debt.

Representatives of the Crown have amassed indirect economic debt to South Africans as it funded political destabilization of South Africa which led wars in Africa. Such wars led to financial losses to the South African nation as South Africa was forced to spend money on restoring its buildings, railway lines, busses, cars, trains, electrical sub-stations, and various other components of its infrastructure.

South Africa was further forced to spend money on medical expenses for its people and salaries on staff to protect the nation from physical attacks.

South Africa was also forced to spend money on the purchase of armaments in order to protect the nation against acts of terrorism.

Destabilization of South Africa by representatives of the Crown is discussed further in the following attachments:
Attachment 5 - Key Role Players in the wars against South Africans before the Union of South Africa - Rhodes, Smuts, Milner;

Attachment 6 - War against Southern Africans and mass extermination of indigenous tribes for the creation of the Union of South Africa;

Attachment 9 - Objections to the formation of the Union of South Africa;

Attachment 10 - South Africa is bound as a possession by the Crown;

Attachment 12 - Zionist Jewry supported the pre-1994 reigning NP South African government and the anti-government movement;

Attachment 14 - MK soldiers.

· Tangible economic debt

Representatives of the Crown have amassed tangible economic debt to South Africans as it took possession of her mineral wealth and the proceeds of the sales thereof without the permission of the majority of South Africans. Mining in South Africa by the Crown is discussed further in Attachment 27 - Restitutional atrocities committed by the Crown against Southern Africans, sub-section: Mining in South Africa.

· Intangible economic debt

Representatives of the Crown have amassed intangible economic debt to South Africans wherein the means by which South Africans were able to provide for themselves was taken away by the Representatives and the only means available to breadwinners to earn a living was to be employed by the Representatives for salaries far below the standard of which their work was worth, which forced the South African nation to be able to spend less than what they would have been able to spend inside their country which effected the growth of the South African economy adversely.

A. Her experiences in South Africa advanced the wealth of the Crown

a) The First World War

The Crown benefitted economically during the First World War from technological innovations developed in South Africa which altered mining, guns, and transportation.

Technology used in mining for metals used to create armaments used in the First World War was improved through experience gained from mining South African minerals. The advantage of improved manufacturing helped to tip the scale in the war to the benefit of the Crown.

Deeper mining to delve Kimberley diamonds

In the 1800’s, mining difficulties helped to create and utilise new technology in the Kimberley diamond mines, where new means of extraction were needed. Originally, numerous small mines created a strange network of larger mining claims.

By 1873, Kimberly miners were forced to construct a cable transport system due to several collapses of the roads leading into the mines. The cables in the Kimberly mines were held up by support beams that were placed around the perimeter of the mine. Each level of the mine had two to three platforms. Originally the ropes were made of animal hides or hemp, within a year there was exponential growth of the cable system. The natural materials used for the cables were replaced with wire. After only a year, the mines had grown so elaborate with this system that it inspired awe in people. As mines were dug deeper into the ground, water extraction became a problem. The miners brought in electric pumps to help pump out the water. Cecil Rhodes started a pumping business during this time. The growth in the mines allowed large business owners from the Crown to take control of the mines.

Improved gun technology

The annexation of land in Africa by the Crown during the 1800’s and 1900’s led to an increase in gun manufacturing. It is notable that gun technology greatly improved during the 1870’s.

During her war against the Boers, the Crown discovered that the accuracy of Boer soldiers when shooting was so good that it forced the Crown to improve the quality of her guns. One major creation was the repeating rifle. With these new improvements, companies which belonged to members of the Crown sent large quantities of older models of guns to Africa to sell for large profits. This influx of guns greatly influenced and helped to escalate the war.

Historians estimate that towards the end of the 19^th century around 4 million pounds of gun powder was sold in the German and British occupied regions of Africa.

Around 1896 the Shona and the Ndbele had around 10,000 guns between the two groups, and by 1879 the Zulu tribes had around 8,000 guns. The Shona were even taught how to manufacture ammunition as well as repair broken or damaged guns by representatives of the Crown. The guns were also used to attract miners because they were sold at and close to mining camps.

Sometime in 1890, a blockade was placed on the importation of guns and ammunition in southern Africa.

Protection of transport lines

The Boers used guerrilla warfare to protect themselves during the Anglo-Boer Wars, which forced the Crown to develop new technology to protect their transportation and communication lines between London and the British Military.

The telegraph was important for the movement of communications between Cape Colony and Griqualand West. In 1881, Cecil Rhodes began working on plans for the construction of a railway from Kimberley to Cape Town. These trains would become part of Boer's guerrilla warfare by blowing up trains, lines, and bridges with soldiers on them. They developed new technology to handle the new military tactics. Eventually Hilton, an ex British army Boer guerrilla leader, abandoned the Pretoria Delagoa Bay Railway Line as impossible due to blockhouses, barbed wire, ditches on either side, armoured trains, and frequent checks. Technological developments brought into Cape Colony as a need for them developed.

b) The Crown installed regulations in South Africa which allotted all mineral rights to members of the Crown.

The British decided to take control of the Cape Colony (1806), as a temporary measure against the French, to protect the trade route between Europe and Asia. As time progressed, British policies such as Proclamation 14¹, which caused the Black Flag Revolt and the Franchise Dispute which culminated in the removal of rights of South Africans.

c) The Crown used the South African Courts to protect their mining assets

“The Black Flag Revolt” in 1875 was between the independent diggers and the Cape’s colonial government. Frustrated by high taxes and increased rent for mining sites, rebel diggers agreed to revolt when a black flag was mounted. The rebel leaders were arrested and put on trial but were found not guilty by a jury of their peers. The significance of the “Black Flag Revolt” was the end to independent diggers and signalled the rise of diamond magnates.

As at present, all mining rights belong to the mining magnates and private Southern African civilians are not allowed to mine, or trade with the minerals of the land. All profits from these minerals are shared between the mining magnates and the state.

None of the land has been given back to its original owners or ethnic groups prior to the annexation by the Crown, nor have they received any compensation for it.

d) The Crown used the British Military to expand their mining assets in South Africa

As diamond mining communities developed within the Orange Free State, their great wealth attracted the attention of the Crown; their new found interest eventually led to a heated debate between both the Orange Free State and the British Government.

In 1871, the discovery of diamond deposits by prospectors in Griqualand led to a struggle for control between Britain, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

A Griqua chief claimed the land that the mines were located on belonged to him and asked for the protection of the British Government. This action resulted in the British annexation the region which became known as Griqualand West. In 1880, Griqualand West became a separate province of the Cape Colony, allowing for Cecil Rhodes' entrance into Cape Colony politics to further his agenda as one of the mining magnates when he stood for election to parliament in Barkly West.

In 1886, gold was discovered in the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek of the Boers, which led to attacks on the Boers by such as the Jameson Raid of 1895 and the Anglo-Boer war by the British Military in 1899 by instructions of the Crown.

e) The Crown precipitated war to expand their mining assets in South Africa

John Hays Hammond, chief mining engineer for the House of Rothschild, also was sent to South Africa to precipitate the war. He formed the “Uitlanders Reform Committee”, with Lionel Phillips, head of gold and diamond mining firm Eckstein–the Corner House; George Farrar of East Rand Property Mines; and Col. Frank Rhodes, brother of Cecil Rhodes. The Committee was financed by Abe Bailey, Solly Joel, Barney Barnato, and the Ecksteins, all of whom were big winners in the partition of the gold and diamond properties after the war. During this activity, Hammond was arrested by Paul Kruger, sentenced to death for promoting revolution, and was allowed to leave only after paying a $100,000 fine; he was then hired by the Guggenheims at $500,000 year salary, and in 1921 became chief lobbyist for the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

f) The Crown used South African Military to protect their mining assets

With the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley, gold in Witwatersrand and also coal in the Transvaal, industrial capitalism in the region was markedly accelerated, and independent African chiefdoms gave way to the mobilisation of large numbers of African labourers who migrated to the cities where they provided cheap labour for this industrial revolution.

The inhumane Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, instigated by those with mining interests to gain control of the mineral wealth of the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek of the Boers, saw more than 24,000 Boer children 4,000 women killed in British concentration camps; and the Boer farm houses, crops and livestock burned down in the British "Scorched Earth Policy". The Boers thus impoverished were after the war, obliged to work in the mines. But in 1922, after these Boers were used to build up these mines for twenty years, Ernest Oppenheimer fired them overnight, and replaced them with Blacks: Boers had worked for £30.00 a month; the Blacks would work for only £3.00 a month.

This substitution represented a saving of £27.00 per month per employee on the wage bill -- an immediate benefit to the company! The subsequent riot by the Boer miners was put down brutally by traitor General Smuts whose troops, armed with machine-guns, enforced the decision of Mr. Oppenheimer, the London Elite, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), has directed matters in South Africa ever since, and upon whose Inner Circle, sat Rothschild and his henchman, Lord Milner. After the Anglo-Boer War, Milner whose aim it had been to exterminate the Boers "for ever and ever," declared "It is no longer war with guns and bullets, but it is war still." And so it has been ever since, and is still so today, though a new generation of Rothschilds and Oppenheimers now direct matters.

(i) The Rand Rebellion of 1922

Frustration of poor living conditions and meagre earnings for physically taxing labour at the hands of the great mine-owners finally exploded in the Rand Rebellion of 1922. General Smuts, who represented the Crown as prime minister in South Africa, used troops, artillery, and even bombing by aircraft to crush this rebellion. Smuts had come down firmly on the side of the mine-owners, and the mine-workers were left worse off than ever.

(ii) East Rand Strikes of 12-16 August 1946

Thirty years ago, on August 12, 1946, the African mine workers of the Witwatersrand came out on strike in support of a demand for higher wages - 10 shillings a day. They continued the strike for a week in the face of the most savage police terror, in which officially 1,248 workers were wounded and a very large number - officially only 9 - were killed. Lawless police and army violence smashed the strike. The resources of South Africa, as a colony of the Crown, were mobilised against the unarmed workmen.

Economic hardships led the workers to strike

In response to growing unrest among the African mine workers, the South African government subject to the Crown, appointed a Commission of Enquiry in 1943.

The African Mine Workers' Union presented the worker’s claim to a living wage before this Commission.

The Chamber of Mines made no serious attempt to rebut the Union's case, reiterating that its policy was to employ cheap African labour. Meanwhile, a South African weekly newspaper called ‘the Guardian’, the only paper which totally supported the strike, was sued by four mining companies for 40,000 pounds for publishing the Unions’ memorandum on the grounds that it was false and that the recruiting of mine labourers would be hindered.

The Court decided against the Guardian and awarded 750 pounds damages to each of the four companies.

The report of the Lansdowne Commission which appeared in April 1944 accepted the basic premise of the mine owners; all its recommendations were quite frankly made within the framework of preserving the cheap labour system. The miner's wage, said the Commission, was not really intended to be a living wage, but merely a "supplementary income". Supplementary, that is, to the worker's supposed income from his homeland. The evidence placed before the Commission of acute starvation in the Transkei and other reserves was ignored.

The report of the Commission was received with bitter disappointment by the workers. Even its wretchedly miserly recommendations were rejected, in the main, by both the government and the mine owners.

The recommendations were:

An increase of five pence per shift for surface workers and six pence per shift for underground workers, on the basic rate of 22 pence per shift obtained for nearly a generation;

Cost of living allowance of 3 pence per shift;

Boot allowance of 36 pence for 30 shifts;

Two weeks' paid leave per annum for permanent workers; and

overtime wages at time and a half.

Towards the end of that year, Prime Minister Smuts announced that wages were to be raised by 4 pence for surface and 5 pence for underground workers, and that the extra wage would be borne by the State in the form of tax remission to the mines.

The Chamber of Mines also agreed to overtime pay. All the other recommendations, miserly though they were, were completely ignored.

At a conference of representatives of the workers on the 19^th of May 1946, the African Mine Workers' Union instructed the Executive of the Union to make one more approach to the Chamber of Mines to place before them the workers' demands for a ten shillings (one Rand) a day wage and other improvements. Failing agreement, decided the Conference, the workers would take strike action.

From May till July the Union redoubled its efforts to get the Chamber to see reason. To all their repeated communications they received one reply - a printed postcard stating that the matter was receiving attention.

In his evidence at the subsequent trial of strike leaders and their supporters, Mr. Limebeer, secretary of the Chamber of Mines, said that the postcard had been sent in error. It was the Chamber's policy, he added, not to acknowledge communications from the Union.

Decision to strike

On Sunday, the 4^thof August 1946, over one thousand delegates assembled at an open air conference held in the Newtown Market Square: no hall where Africans could hold meetings was big enough to accommodate those present. The conference carried the following resolution unanimously:

"Because of the intransigent attitude of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines towards the legitimate demands of the workers for a minimum wage of 10 shillings per day and better conditions of work, this meeting of African miners resolves to embark upon a general strike of all Africans employed on the gold mines, as from August 12, 1946."

Before the decision was adopted, speaker after speaker mounted the platform and demanded immediate action. One worker said:

"When I think of how we left our homes in the reserves, our children naked and starving, we have nothing more to say. Every man must agree to strike on 12 August. It is better to die than go back with empty hands."

After the decision to strike was adopted, the President, J. B. Marks, stressed the gravity of the strike decision and said that the workers must be prepared for repression by possible violence. "You are challenging the very basis of the cheap labour system" he told them, "and must be ready to sacrifice in the struggle for the right to live as human beings." His speech was loudly cheered, as was that of the Secretary, J. J. Najoro, who declared that their repeated efforts to secure improvements by negotiation had always ended in failure, owing to the refusal of the Chamber of Mines to recognise the existence of the Union. There was little doubt, he warned, that the government would attempt to suppress the strike by brute force.

An old miner shouted: "We on the mines are dead men already."

The strike

A letter conveying the decision of the meeting to the Chamber, and adding a desperate last-minute appeal for negotiations, was as usual ignored. The press and mass media, except the newspaper called The Guardian, did not print any news of the decision until the morning of Monday, 12 August, when the Rand Daily Mail came out with a front page story that the strike was a "complete failure". The report was obviously mischievous and a lie, as the paper went to bed before midnight, when the strike had not even begun.

The Star that evening, however, had a different tale to tell: tens of thousands of workers were out on strike from the East to the West Rand; the Smuts government had formed a special committee of Cabinet Ministers to "deal with" the situation; and thousands of police were being mobilised and drafted to the area.

They dealt with it by means of bloody violence. The police battened, bayoneted and fired on the striking workers to force them down the mine shafts. The full extent of police repression is not known but reports from miners and some newspapers revealed intense persecution and terror during the week following Monday, 12 August.

Bloody Tuesday

A peaceful procession of workers began to march to Johannesburg on what became known as Bloody Tuesday, 13 August, from the East Rand. They wanted to get their passes and go back home.

Police opened fire on the procession and a number of workers were killed. At one mine, workers forced to go down the mine started a sit-down strike underground. According to the Star, the police drove the workers up "stope by stope, level by level" to the surface. They then started beating them up, chasing them into the veldt with baton charges. Then the workers were "re-assembled" in the compound yard and, said the Star, "volunteered to go back to work".

Support by CONETU for the miners

In protest against these savage brutalities, a special conference of the Transvaal Council of Non-European Trade Unions (CONETU) decided to call a general strike in Johannesburg on Wednesday, 14 August. The Johannesburg City Council sent a deputation to plead with CONETU to maintain essential services. Many workers heeded the call, but the weakness of the unions generally, and the failure to bring the call home to the workers in factories, resulted in only a partial success of the strike.

CONETU called a mass meeting of workers at the Newtown Market Square on 15 August. The meeting was banned in terms of the Riotous Assemblies Act, and the decision banning the meeting was conveyed by a senior police officer, backed by a large squad of armed police. Those present were given five minutes to disperse. Only quick action by people's leaders who went among the angry crowd averted a massacre. A procession of women tobacco workers marching to this meeting was attacked by the police and one pregnant worker bayoneted.

By Friday, 16 August, all the striking workers - 75,000 according to the government "Director of Native Labour" were forced back to work.

The effects of the strikes

Throughout the week hundreds of workers had been arrested, tried, imprisoned or deported.

Leaders of the African trade unions and the entire Executive Committee of the African Mine Workers' Union, the whole of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and scores of Provincial and local leaders of the African National Congress had also been arrested and charged in a series of abortive "treason and sedition" trials. Innumerable police raids, not only in the Transvaal but in all the main cities in the country including Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Kimberley and East London, were carried out on the offices of trade unions, the Congresses and the Communist Party. The homes of leaders of the ANC, the Communist Party, the Indian and Coloured Congresses and the trade unions were also raided simultaneously. The South African Military had been mobilised and was rampant in defence of the cheap labour policy and big dividends for the mining magnates and big business.

During the strike the central strike committee of the African Mine Workers' Union was effectively cut off from the workers at each mine by massive police action and the workers had to struggle in isolation. They were continually told that all the other workers had gone back to work, and apart from Union leaflets brought into the compounds by volunteers - a large number being caught and arrested - there was no system of interchanging information.

During the strike 32 of the 45 mines on the Rand were affected according to one report received by the Union and later confirmed by the Johannesburg Star. According to the estimates issued by the Chief Native Commissioner for the Witwatersrand, 21 mines were affected by the strike, 11 wholly and 10 partially. The dead, according to this official, numbered nine, of whom four were trampled to death, three died in the hospital, one was shot dead and one "killed himself by running into a dustbin".

The government called the strike a failure.

g) The Crown funded Black leaders to protect their mining assets in South Africa

Cyril Ramaphosa, prominent African National Congress member, is one of the Black oligarchs created by the Oppenheimer-Rothschild financial empire of the Crown today. Ramaphosa was detained in the 1970’s for his work as a black consciousness movement organizer. He organized and unionized South Africa's mineworkers, who were forced to live in single-sex, military-style barracks under the control of the mining houses. The Machiavellian Oppenheimer profited from cheap labour under the Apartheid government, forcing his workers to live under these conditions; while simultaneously financially supporting the African National Congress and developing strong ties to their leaders.

Protests against low wages on the mines in South Africa are met with deadly restraint, as can be seen from the recent Lonmin miners at Marikana who were shot in August 2012.

To point, it has been revealed in an IOL media news report titled “Ramaphosa under fire at Marikana” on 24 October 2012 that the night before the shooting of the striking miners at Marikana, Cyril Ramaphosa sent an email which led to the fatal police action taken, which we quote as follows:

“ANC heavyweight Cyril Ramaphosa – who is being nominated by supporters of President Jacob Zuma to be his deputy – has been named as authoring an e-mail that called on the eve of the Marikana shootings for action against striking Lonmin miners.

Sapa reported that advocate Dali Mpofu told the Farlam Commission of Inquiry of an e-mail in which Ramaphosa condemned protests by workers at the mine, describing them as criminal acts and calling for “concomitant action”.

“This [e-mail] was on 15 August at 2.58 pm, exactly 24 hours before the people were mowed down on that mountain,” Sapa reported Mpofu as saying.

“We have e-mails that were being exchanged between Lonmin management, government ministers [of mineral resources and the police] and at the centre is a gentleman called Cyril Ramaphosa,” Mpofu was quoted as telling the inquiry.

“He advanced that what was taking place [was] criminal acts and must be characterised as such. In line with this characterisation [Ramaphosa said] there needs to be concomitant action to address the situation.”

In a statement on Tuesday night, Lonmin said that due to “the violence and loss of life in the period August 10 to 14”, it had “engaged with a number of stakeholders to ensure that the situation in and around Marikana was addressed in the appropriate manner”.

As it was a mining company and “not responsible for law enforcement”, it “stands to reason that the company, including members of its board, would communicate with the relevant stakeholders in government to ensure that they properly understood the company’s view of the situation on the ground to ensure a peaceful resolution of the matter”, the statement said.

“Lonmin’s action to engage with appropriate authorities of the state was simply part of a process aimed at achieving normality.”

Ramaphosa is a non-executive director of Lonmin. His Shanduka group owns 9 percent of the company through its 50 percent stake in Incwala Resources, Lonmin’s black economic empowerment partner.

While he has given no formal indication of his willingness to replace deputy ANC president Kgalema Motlanthe, speculation that he is keen to play a bigger role in the party has been rife for months.

He has been nominated by the ANC in Mpumalanga on a pro-Zuma slate that would keep Gwede Mantashe as secretary-general, have Jessie Duarte as his deputy (in place of Thandi Modise), and Baleka Mbete as ANC chairwoman, and KwaZulu-Natal Premier Zweli Mkhize as treasurer-general instead of Mathews Phosa.

The same list of names was put forward after a meeting of the branch at Zuma’s home in Nkandla earlier this month, the Sunday Times reported at the weekend.

If the speculations are true, however, Ramaphosa – who last month apologised on national radio for bidding R18 million for a buffalo and its calf while fellow South Africans lived in poverty – could find the path to political power very convoluted.

The SAfm interview also offered Ramaphosa the opportunity to reject categorically “outrageous” allegations on a website that he owned a company that was contracting labour to Lonmin but pocketing the bulk of workers’ wages.

The former struggle activist and National Union of Mineworkers leader is now best known as a capitalist, and – as chairman of the party’s disciplinary appeals committee – the man who sealed the fate of ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema.

Elected ANC secretary-general in 1991, he led the ANC in the negotiations that paved the way for the 1994 democratic breakthrough.

The height of his popularity in the ANC was in 1997 when he got the top number of votes for a place on the national executive committee. When he left politics for business, the word was he had been pushed, and speculation was that he would aim for a comeback.

Ramaphosa turns 60 on November 17. If he accepts nomination as deputy president, and his bid is not derailed, he would be well placed to step into top spot come 2017, with a shot at becoming South Africa’s president in 2019.”

(iii) The Marikana massacre of 16 August 2012

The media reported that the Marikana miner strike in Rustenburg, South Africa resulted in the deaths of at least 34 mine workers and two police officers. The violence on the 16^th of August 2012, was the single most lethal use of force by South African security forces against civilians since the end of the apartheid era.

The Crown used South African Military to protect their mining assets

In full view of the public on national television, the South African police opened fire as striking miners charge, killing and wounding workers. ²

The reason for the strike was economic

The reason for the Marikana strike was for economic reasons as the miners asked for a liveable minimum wage of R12 500 per month (about $1560 USD).

B. Crown Mining disasters created economic hardship for South Africans

Various mining disasters caused by malfunctioning equipment, inadequate maintenance of mining structures and collapse of land formations cost the health and lives of many miners and left their families destitute without breadwinners.

Lung diseases contracted from mine dust, loud underground noises such as dynamite blasts causing deafness and physical ailments such as blindness caused by welding became a common occurrence amongst mine workers and cut their natural lives short. To quote, we refer to the Rand Mine Copy on the ‘Coalbrook Main Shaft’ entitled ‘Coalbrook mine disaster, 1960’ as follows:y, April 21, 2011

After 1956 my father moved around seeking the best paid contract work at first, but settling for easier jobs before his last years before retirement. He yearned for the glory years of shaft sinking and tunnel developing adventures of his earlier years. But his age counted against him and shaft sinking and high speed development tunnelling required a freshness and fitness rapidly passing him by. Also years of such arduous activities in which he spent the best of his years were counting in a dust load in his lungs: he died at the age of 67, on 20% breathing capacity. But a spirit of adventure was with him to the end and he was ready, although partially disabled to take on new challenges. One such an option did present itself, but not on a gold mine. During 1959 / 1960 he was recruited by the owners of Coalbrook coal mine, close to Vereeniging, to head up a team of shaft sinkers. An existing shaft had to be deepened and extra tunnels developed to improve air ventilation in the ageing mine. He had barely started on this new challenge when a catastrophe, the biggest in South African mining history took place. In the morning shift a number of black miners, including his own "gang" of tunnellers got bad omens from rumblings coming from rock formations overhanging the underground working. When the underground rat population started fleeing for any opening to fresh air to the surface the miners fled likewise, all headed for incline shafts of shaft stations for hoisting to the surface. However the "front line" management, mainly black supervisory personnel and called "boss boys" and "watch boys" stood in their way and chased them back to the workings. Messages of a strike in progress underground among the black workers were conveyed to the mine managers sitting comfortably in surface offices. These big bosses sent down teams of white supervisors who threatened the workers with either criminal charges for breaking their contracts, or instant dismissal. Alternatively, if they did not return to their work places, the police would be called. No sooner had they gone back into the mine when a methane explosion took place and entire sections collapsed blocking any hope of escape for those trapped in the belly of black earth, at coal faces and haulage ways. After more than a week of anguished operations to sink makeshift shafts and boreholes to ascertain where to focus rescue efforts and conditions in the collapsed underground workings, all efforts were given up. The fatality was 439 black and five white miners, plus 40 horses put to work in underground haulages. My father was among the few who followed the fleeing rats and thought better of going down once more to restore operations at his own working places.

My father then returned to the mature mines with a series of jobs all in the Klerksdorp area: Stilfontein, Vaal Reefs, and lastly Hartebeesfontein, before final retirement in 1975. But the experience at Coalbrook haunted him for time to come and was added to the top of his list of stories told ad infinitum to his sons. The Coalbrook disaster ranked, in my father's estimation of significant events in his life, with the ill-fated storming of Monte Casino by the Americans during World War Two.”

The Crown manipulated the South African economy which included changing the world currency from gold to silver.

After Jan Smuts, key role player on behalf of the Crown in the political arena of South Africa, lost his stronghold in as President of South Africa in the 1922, the South African rand, backed by gold, became so strong that South Africa was fast developing to the point that it threatened to cut loose as a colony of the Crown and was calling for independence. In 1929, the Wall Street Stock market crashed and the Crown of England abandoned the gold standard in 1931 and so dropped aligning its currency to a fixed quantity of gold, to adopt Sterling Silver as the standard by which the wealth of the world would be measured. This upheaval left many South African businessmen bankrupt. The drought which followed soon after left South African farmers, who were mostly from the Boer community, in despair as their crops failed and livestock died. Many farmers committed suicide during this time period.

All Commonwealth countries followed suit to form the Sterling Area, and were among the first countries to emerge from the economic collapse. However in South Africa, the government representing the Crown of England clung to the gold standard until it too, after major currency losses went off the gold standard in 1932. This opened the way to recovery. In 1934, to cushion the effects of the Great Depression, the United States raised the official price for gold from $ US $ 20 to US $ 35 per ounce. This spurred profits and scale of gold mining in South Africa.

Until 1971 the price of gold was arbitrarily fixed against the US $ at $ 35 an ounce. Then the Nixon administration closed this “gold window” by decoupling the price of gold from the US $ in 1974 and gold had to find its own level as a free commodity on the global market. Notwithstanding the fact that the American government sold off most of their gold reserves to flood the market and decrease the value of gold, and thereby weaken the economic strength of South Africa, this became a boom period for the gold mines as the price of gold had escalated from US $ 35 to almost $ US 800 by 1980. However, the exorbitant extraction of profits “repatriated” by foreign investors, and enormous government expenditure on self defence and war armaments as the armed struggle against the Union of South Africa intensified its operations, the majority of the South African nation was left in a worse economic position than before the Union was established.

C. The Crown funded conflict in South Africa which created tangible and intangible economic losses

Members of the Crown, including the Oppenheimer family, funded violent protest movements against the White South African government. This included funding the Black Consciousness movement activist Chris Hani through the Rockefeller Foundation as discussed in Attachment 9 - Objections to the formation of the Union of South Africa.

Such movements created unrests in the townships, amongst school children and in the work force. Homes of South Africans were damaged, schools were damaged, and various work stations as well as transport vehicles for work have been damaged in South Africa due to these protests which caused South Africans economic losses, both tangible and intangible. Besides having to replace or fix their broken property, the potential of the youth to attain a good education to better their chances for future survival through gainful employment was destroyed.

(i) The Crown funded White monopoly in South Africa

Members of the Crown funded organizations in South Africa which gave the White population power over the other races in South Africa which led to polarization between Whites and Blacks, and ultimate hatred. These organizations made profits in South Africa and funnelled such profits back to the Crown.

To point, billionaire Anton Rupert, who was an Afrikaner businessman and media mogul, owed his fortune to the Crown of England. Rupert had a direct partnership with Rothschild in Rupert & Rothschild Vignerons. As a frontman for Rothschild, Rupert was a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), instituted to create trans-frontier parks worldwide; and he founded the 1001 Club to fund the venture.

(ii) The British Crown is the white monopoly in South Africa

Members of the British Crown control the South African economy. To point, the Oppenheimer family has been controlling the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, even though his company paid minimum taxes to the state.

Following a trend from 1980, by 1990 just four mega- corporations, mainly mining companies, controlled 82% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), which represented almost the entire GNP of the country: Oppenheimer's Anglo-American (including De Beers) by itself, controlled over 52% of the JSE, however the gold mining companies paid a mere 2.9% of the taxes. ³

(iii) The Crown used wealth taken from other African countries to damage the South African economy through protests against the Apartheid government

Funds generated by companies owned by the Crown in African countries were used to create the ‘people’s war’ in South Africa. To point, funds from the Anglo AngloGold Ashanti conglomerate was used to topple South Africa's White so-called 'apartheid regime' on 'moral' grounds. ⁴

AngloGold Ashanti

AngloGold Ashanti is part of the international mining conglomerate Anglo American which belongs to members of the Crown of England including the Oppenheimer family. AngloGold Ashanti won the mining rights to the vast gold concession in Mongbwalu, DRC in 1996. Prevented by ongoing war, (until a peace agreement was signed and a transitional government was established in Kinshasa), from gaining access to its claims, the company forged links with the armed group, Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), which retained control of the gold-rich mining site in the north-eastern Ituri district.

The mineral-rich Northeastern Congo has been one of the worst hit areas during Congo's devastating seven-year war. Competing armed groups carried out ethnic massacres, rape and torture. According to United Nations estimates, a local conflict between Hema and Lendu ethnic groups, allied with national rebel groups and foreign backers, including Uganda and Rwanda, claimed over 60,000 lives between 1999 and 2005. These losses are just a portion of an estimated four million civilians dead throughout the Congo, during the same time period, yet artisinal goldmining continued throughout the conflict.

Millions of dollars worth of gold is smuggled out of the Congo each year, some of it destined for Switzerland. One starving miner told Human Rights Watch: "We are cursed because of our gold. All we do is suffer. There is no benefit to us," while a Congolese government official lamented: "We just watch our country's resources drain away with no benefit to the Congolese people."

D. The Crown chased the South African KhoiSan communities off their land to take the minerals out of their land

The San and the Khoi, collectively known as the Bushmen or KhoiSan, are the aborigines of southern Africa. After the arrival of the VOC representatives of the Crown at the Cape harbour, south of Africa, the KhoiSan were hunted as slaves.

To the left of them was the sea. Those who fled to the right were attacked by other migrating African tribes. Most KhoiSan fled northwards to the territory which later became known as Southwest Africa, and thereafter was renamed Namibia.

(i) The diamond fields of Namibia

Namibian Mines and Energy Minister Erkki Nghimtina, and Nicky Oppenheimer - member of the Crown and Chairman of the De Beers Group, signed an agreement creating the Namibia Diamond Trading Company. Since then, the KhoiSan have been chased off their land without economic reparations for the loss of their land, nor the minerals taken from it.

(ii) The corrupt practices of De Beers in Namibia

Namibia was illegally occupied by Apartheid South Africa throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. The United Nations passed a special decree forbidding mining companies from extracting minerals unless they had specific permission. De Beers and its sister company, Anglo-American, defied this decree and made secret arrangements to overmine the diamonds ahead of Namibian independence. As the technical assistant to the mine manager, Gordon Brown felt it was his simple duty to blow the whistle and came forward to give hard evidence of this illegal behaviour to a judicial enquiry. Since then he has been targeted by members of De Beers' security and their colleagues in the Police Diamond Branch.

In addition to the United Nations initiative, action is being taken to bring the De Beers diamond cartel to account for its human rights abuses, illegal diamond mining operations in Namibia and a raft of other human rights abuses including conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, malicious prosecution, suborning and interfering with witnesses. Brown wants the directors and officials who conspired to destroy his reputation and his business activities in Southern Africa brought to book and punished for their crimes.

For decades De Beers worked hand in glove with the apartheid government and the Namibian and South African diamond police to protect its monopoly and hobble its critics and business rivals. ⁵

References:

¹Proclamation 14 August 1872 was a decree by British Cape Colony officials to pacify the Kimberly diggers and control black labour. It stated that “servant” could be black or white but that all blacks must carry a pass with them all times to cross the Kimberly pass point. These could be day passes to find employment or work passes (labour contracts). The labour contract would be signed by the “master” and had to show the black worker's name, wage and length of employment. These contracts had to be carried on their persons at all times or they could face imprisonment, fines or a flogging. Colonial officials did excuse some blacks from this requirement if they deemed them “civilised”.

²The Washington Post. Associated Press. 16 August 2012. Retrieved 16 August 2012.)

³ The Star, 2nd May, 1990

⁴ http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/06/02/congo11041.htm

⁵ ‘Namibia: Exposing The Corrupt Practices Of The De Beers Diamond Cartel’ by Laurie Flynn Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Hoping to beckon you interest in this matter.

Independence Commission for Africa

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Attachments 6a ,24 and 26 of icazar as shown at http://icazar.weebly.com

Today, the United States based Rwanda Global Education Fund describes the role of Rose Kabuye in the Rwandan massacre as a hero, stating that, “Rose Kabuye became part of the Tutsi-led liberation army that ousted the Hutu militia and ended the genocide...”

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