Jessica Bezuidenhout | The Daily Maverick | 18 January 2019 An international arms trader, in relentless pursuit of alleged unpaid commission going back to the 1980s, now wants the Auditor General of South Africa to release apartheid-era records to boost his civil claim against the state arms procurement agency in Portugal. The Auditor General of…
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…
Tebogo Tshwane | Mail & Guardian |16 Nov 2018 The widespread looting and corruption by the Gupta family and its associates were enabled not only by political individuals but also by banks and other financial sector institutions, which aided the illicit activities of the family’s network of businesses. This is according to The Bankers, the first volume of…
Steve Kretzmann | Daily Maverick |15 November 2018 The looting of the VBS Bank may be astounding to struggling South Africans, but it is merely a symptom of a banking and auditing system that skirts the law in order to fleece the poor and enrich the rich. This is revealed in a a new report…
Martin Plaut | The Conversation | 30 October 2018 It’s not very often that a book really reshapes our perception of an issue, but Hennie van Vuuren’s “Apartheid, Guns and Money: a tale of profit” is one. It is a massive work: over 600 pages and the result of a decade of meticulous, painstaking work. Read the…
Fatima Moosa | The Daily Vox | 25 April 2018 From 24 to 27 April, civil society organisation Open Secrets along with the University of Witwatersrand’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) will take a complaint to banks in Belgium and Luxembourg regarding their apartheid economic crimes. They are demanding accountability from the international banks that have financed apartheid.…
Ra’eesa Pather | Mail & Guardian | 03 April 2018 | A high court judgement has left the South African History Archive (SAHA) reeling following a cost order which could put the organisation out of business. Protecting and preserving historical records, particularly those relating to the apartheid regime and activism against it, has been the…
Marc Davies | Huffington Post | 02 February 2018 | Crimes of the “rich, powerful and politically well-connected” in South Africa, beginning Saturday, will come under intensified scrutiny as civil society groups rally to ‘join the dots’ in the country’s story of capture and plunder. Organisations including Open Secrets, Corruption Watch, Right2Know and the…
Amil Umraw | Huffington Post ZA | 21 June 2017 | An expert on apartheid-era looting says South Africans should be wary of bounty-hunters. Hennie van Vuuren, Director of Open Secrets and the author of “Apartheid Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit” says it must be remembered that the Public Protector’s Ciex report on…
