Peter Hain | The Spectator | 15 December 2018
Most people would claim to abhor apartheid, but London, Washington, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv were all in on the act.
Around 1970 I was labelled ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ by white South Africa’s newspapers for leading militant anti-apartheid protests which stopped all-white sports tours to Britain. And a year ago when, under parliamentary privilege in the House of Lords, I exposed looting, corruption and money-laundering by former President Zuma and his cronies the Gupta brothers, some jaundiced white South Africans again attacked me — this time for having helped deliver ‘corrupt black majority rule’.
They should read Hennie van Vuuren’s fine book, which tellingly concludes:
The current struggle against [Jacob Zuma-inspired] corruption in South Africa is undermined by a basic lack of appreciation of the nature of that corruption and the criminal networks that facilitate it — namely, that they are continuities of a profoundly corrupt system that predates the first democratic election [of Mandela].
In other words, Zuma and friends merely continued where the apartheid state had left off.
Van Vuuren’s monumental work is a gripping story of conspiracy, assassination, bribery and two-faced global dishonesty from London to Washington, from Paris to Pretoria, from Moscow to Beijing, from Buenos Aires to Tel Aviv.
Read more.