Apartheid Guns and Money by Hennie van Vuuren;

Author:Hennie van Vuuren; [Vuuren;, Hennie van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787382473
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2018-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Iran–Contra scandal: South African links

The growing use of intelligence services for quasi-legal activities in the United States set the stage for the Iran–Contra affair, perhaps the defining scandal of the Reagan administration in the mid-1980s. It involved top US politicians and securocrats, who developed a complex scheme to sell weapons to Iran in violation of a US embargo against that country. The proceeds of the Iranian sales were used to supply weapons to the CIA-backed anti-government Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

The Iran–Contra scandal was investigated by the presidential-appointed Tower Commission as well as the US Congress. Reagan and his vice-president, George HW Bush, were largely cleared of direct involvement in the affair, although Reagan’s complicity and that of other individuals and fronts were no doubt obscured by the fact that many of the intelligence documents linked to the deal were never released. Crucially, CIA chief Bill Casey died from a stroke the day before he was to appear at the congressional hearing into the matter. Rubbing salt in the wounds, many of those who were convicted of malfeasance were later granted a pardon by President Bush. Even the fall guy, Colonel Oliver North, who was a member of the US National Security Council, would be granted immunity by Bush.

One of the links that was never fully explored in the final reports of investigations into the deal by Congress was the role of South Africa. While much is known about the links to Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Nicaragua, little has been written about the involvement of Casey and the US security establishment’s old friends in Pretoria. One of the allegations that surfaced at the time, although denied by all parties, was that Saudi Arabia was covertly exceeding its OPEC oil quota and selling this at a premium to South Africa, which, according to RT Naylor, contributed to a secret fund run by American intelligence.133

When we turn to arms links, there is a view that South Africa was courted but a deal was never struck. According to this view, the CIA gained the promise of assistance for the Contras from South Africa in 1984,, but balked when it learned that the South Africans expected payment from the United States.134 According to Theodore Draper, author of a book on the scandal, ‘the CIA backed out altogether … as a CIA message put it because it did not wish to add a South African entanglement to the existing imbroglio. Despite his qualms, US Secretary of State Shultz was reported in a CIA cable to have approved of the “initiative”.’135

A contrary view is provided by Craig Williamson, who confirms the South African arms link as part of South Africa’s grand international ‘anti-communist’ alliance. ‘You have to get into the context of the time. The Contras are fighting the Sandinistas. Russian weapons captured by UNITA in Angola would be passed to the SADF, who would pass it to the Contras. We were not feeling alone at the time.’136 Stephen Ellis, who investigated these types of

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