Keep your eye on the gold
Unravelling how South Africa funded expansion of Britain’s Empire, and feeds corruption
RELEASE of my third book, Eye on the Gold, has unfortunately coincided with the cancellation of book launches and festivals because of the Covid-19 gathering restrictions.
The upside is that instead of attending public events, people now staying at home have time to read. Even the shambles of Eskom’s load shedding does not prevent reading, at least during the hours of daylight.
The thesis of Eye on the Gold is that South African gold funded the British Empire and its wars, and that Saudi Arabian “black gold” now funds the US Empire and its wars. Part 1 is titled Mlungu Tegate – white man’s plunder.
That era, I believe (and with it the dominance of the US dollar) has crashed, and global financial and economic implications will be immense.
What will replace the US dollar? Will bitcoins (or another cryptocurrency) become “the new digital gold”? That’s for the younger generation to work out. What is clear is that the system is bust, and is not fit-for-purpose in the 21st century.
Just two months ago, as I went to press, President Trump had recklessly ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani. The world gasped at the prospect of yet another war that, ironically, the US would almost certainly have lost – as per its wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump then blinked and has lost the Empire, and with it obsessions to impose American military and financial hegemony on the rest of the world.
Suddenly we have the coronavirus panic, and stock markets are tumbling. The oil price has crashed to below $30 a barrel.
War against Iran is no longer an American priority. So let’s conveniently blame the Chinese, instead of acknowledging the financial consequences of an Anglo-american obsession to inflict wars around the world.
Ironically, that imperialist obsession originated here in Cape Town, with Cecil Rhodes’s vision of “Capeto-cairo-all-british-red”, to entice the US back into the British Empire. Of course, Rhodes assumed that the English would be the senior partner.
Rhodes’s vision was the forerunner of what today is the “Five Eyes Alliance”, comprising the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand – an alliance of white, English-speaking men who have arrogated to themselves the right to intervene anywhere in the world, but especially in the Middle East in such virtuous causes of so-called “peace and democracy”.
Eye on the Gold is autobiographical, placed in the context of the international monetary system. It records how a once-conservative white banker became a revolutionary and a peace activist by launching the New York banking sanctions campaign in 1985 against apartheid as a last non-violent bid to avert a civil war in South Africa.
Mandela later acknowledged that the campaign was the single most effective strategy against apartheid. But there is little on the public record of what actually happened behind the scenes ahead of then president De Klerk’s announcement in February 1990.
De Klerk most certainly did not experience any “Damascus Conversion”. The international role of the dollar in foreign exchange markets and access to seven major New York banks was the real and crucial reason.
The ANC was asleep in Lusaka, still dreaming of an “armed struggle”. It would have been suicidal.
Nonetheless, once in office, the ANC inflicted the arms deal scandal on the country, unleashing the culture of corruption that now threatens the survival of South Africa’s hard-won constitutional democracy.
Cartoonist Zapiro allowed me to use one of his superb cartoons to illustrate the point. The devil is knocking at the ANC’S door. The caption: “Who are you? What do you want? “You don’t remember? You sold me your soul about a decade ago – that arms deal business.”
The war business thrives on conspiracy theories. Militarists are driven by paranoid beliefs that there is a “communist-under-every-bed”, or, alternatively, a “Muslim-behind every bush”. These are the guys with guns, who are not afraid to use them.
You’ll have to read the twists and turns for yourself – the war business is estimated to be responsible for about 45% of global corruption.
These include whether the arms deal was payback from Thabo Mbeki to Joe Modise for removing Chris Hani and then Cyril Ramaphosa as successors to Nelson Mandela. Plus, my battle with Trevor Manuel over the 20-year foreign loan agreements he signed for the arms deal.
The arms deal affordability study had warned the Cabinet that it was a reckless proposition that would lead the government and country into our present mess. There is also the continuing mystery over the crash of the SAA Helderberg in 1987, which killed all 159 passengers and crew.
Jacob Zuma is a “small fish” compared with arms trade corruption that drives Washington, London and Paris.
Given the coronavirus crisis, the issue is whether world leaders – including President Ramaphosa – will finally have the courage to use public financial resources for the benefit of people, instead of wasting them on the war business and corruption.