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…
“I have saved enough to retire peacefully. But now I will turn in my grave because I will die in poverty.” This was said by Douglas Maila, a member of the Unpaid Benefits Campaign, at a protest outside Alexander Forbes demanding that it pay pensioners the benefits they are owed. Maila’s experience of contributing a…
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
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…
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 the…
News broke last Friday that the Public Protector’s leaked report into the Bankorp/Absa “lifeboat” scandal dating back to the dying years of apartheid rule called for Absa to repay over R2-billion to the South African fiscus. The public response was cacophonic. Depending on your vantage point, media reports suggested that this was one of two…
The municipal elections this year are likely to be the most expensive local polls yet. Political parties are seeking more and more money to finance electoral campaigns, increasing the need to attract private funders. This opens up the space for the capture of politics by narrow private interests, a hot topic when it comes to…
