SUMMER 1982

~ GOOYES 0 AF leA

oon Shines on Apartheid

On May 17, a new, conservative newspaper hit thestreets of Washington, D.C. The first daily to take theplace of the Washington Star which folded lastsummer, the Washington Times bills itself as the

"alternative" to the well-established, "liberal" Washington Post.There is just one catch: the paper is owned, financed, and partlystaffed by the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, andis associated with pro-apartheid interests.

Moon and his church have been the subject of great contro­versy over the past decade, including charges of brainwashing,illegal business practices, illegal projects to buy political influ­ence (the most well-known being the "Koreagate" scandal of thelate 1970s), and accepting money from assorted right-winggovernments and industrialists. Moon is presently appealing arecent conviction for tax evasion and faces possible deportation.Moreover, Moon has chosen to ally himself with any governmentor group that promotes anti-communism, one of the center­pieces of his doctrine.

Consequently, it is not surprising that many members of theTimes' top management have strong connections to the SouthAfrican government. Leading the list is John McGoff, a 58-year­old Michigan publisher and primary American recipient of SouthAfrican Department of Information "Muldergate" funds in the1970s. The return of John McGoff and his associates toWashington in producing the Times gives Pretoria a strong, newvoice in the nation's capital.

Did Rhoodie'and McGoff Achieve their Goal?

In February 1974, Secretary of the South African Depart­ment of Information (DOl), Eschel Rhoodie, met with PrimeMinister John Vorster, Minister of Information Connie Mulder,and General Hendrick Van den Bergh, head of the Bureau ofState Security (BOSS), to discuss South Africa's propagandaefforts around the world. According to Rhoodie, he toldVorster and his aides, "I want you to approve, not aninformation asset, but a propaganda war in which no rules orregulations would count." The officials approved a plan thatwould spend a minimum of $73 million on more than 160secret projects to buy politicians and media enterprises and

®

support pro-apartheid groups around the world. When thedetails of this plan were eventually divulged in 1978, theensuing scandal (dubbed "Muldergate") forced all of theseSouth African officials to resign.

Less than one month after that planning meeting, Michiganpublisher John P. McGoff met with Rhoodie and other 001officials in South Africa. According to the official SouthAfrican Erasmus Commission findings, released in December1978 after an intensive investigation, at least $11.75 millionwas given to McGoff by the DOl through the South AfricanDepartment of Defense to buy the Washington Star and ashare in UPI Television News (UPITN), the second largest

'~Whe/an and McGoff arenowable to do what McGoffcould not do eight yearsago: counter the Washing­ton Post."

newsfilm producer in the world. McGoff offered $10 million ofthe money as part of his unsuccessful $25 million bid for theStar. In December 1975, after the Star deal had collapsed, hebought the Sacramento Union instead for about $6 million. Healso-used $1.7 million of the secret m.oney to buy 50% interestin UPITN. Although he calls these charges "utter nonsense,"McGoff remains the subject of an on-going investigation bythe US Securities and Exchange Commission, for possibleviolation of US securities law, and the Department of Justice,for failing to register as a foreign agent.

The surreptitious purchase of the Star would have been apropaganda coup for Pretoria. The apartheid regime viewedthe influential Washington Post as "anti-South Africa," andwanted a media outlet to counterbalance it. As the Erasmusreport states: "For understandable reasons such a newspaper

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South African Ties Run DeepAlthough the editorial might appear to reflect nothing more

than the standard right-wing rhetoric of support for the SouthAfrican regime, McGoff's close connections with Pretoriasuggest that some of the Times' top managers deserve closer

attention:• James R. Whelan, editor and

publisher. Before Whelan be­came editor of the SacramentoUnion in 1980, he served as vicepresident and editorial directorof McGoff's Panax Corporationfor three years. Whelan's officialbiography explains that heworked as a reporter all overLatin America for a variety ofnewspapers and news agenciesfor twenty years before comingto Panax. In April 1961, he wasassigned to "a special, secretUPI team in Miami organized tocover the Bay of Pigs invasion."His career also included a two­year stint in the late 1960s withthe Western Hemisphere divisionof International Telephone andTelegraph (ITT), a corporationknown for its connections withthe CIA in Latin America. Whenthe Washington Tribune askedexecutive editor Smith Hemp­stone about suggestions that

Whelan has the taint of the CIA, Hempstone replied, "So what?I thought they were on our side."

• Smith Hempstone, executive editor. Hempstone isknown as the long-time associate editor of the WashingtonStar. He is also a long-time apologist for South Africanapartheid and Ian Smith's former regime in Rhodesia.

Hempstone recently wrote a lauditory article on JonasSavimbi in the February 1981 i~,e;;ue of Reader's Digest aftertraveling with South Africa-backed UNITA for ten days insouthern Angola. Entitled, "Angola: Where the West Can StillWin," the article states: "If ever there is a place and a time inwhich the lengthening string of communist victories andWestern defeats is to be ended, that place could be Angola andthe time 1981."

Hempstone began promoting South Africa and US inter­vention in Africa in early issues of the Washington Times. In anApril 7 column, he wrote that what the Reagan Administration"ought to do is to retaliate against the Kremlin by making mat­ters extremely unpleasant for the Russians and the Cubans byvigorously supporting viable nationalist guerilla movements inplaces such as Angola and Ethiopia, Cambodia andAfghanistan." In his May 20 column entitled, "South Africa:Slow to Change, but Modest Reform Happening," Hempstonewrote: "Blacks now dine in swank Johannesburg restaurantsonce as pristinely white as Washington's were 30 years ago.Blacks receive equal pay for equal work, and can aspire to anyjob in industry." Hempstone failed to mention the upsurge inarrests of trade unionists and church activists, the massremovals of the squatters near Cape Town, the continuedmilitary occupation of Namibia, and the invasion of Angola inhis complementary article."

• Carlyle Reed, associate publisher and general manager.Reed published the conservative Sacramento Union from1966 to 1974, before McGoff bought it with Muldergate money.

"We reply that we are totally opposed to South Africa'sapartheid . .. [However, we] feel that the democraticinstitutions prevailing in South Africa, distorted thoughthey are by racist restrictions, offer more hope in the longrun for a genuinely free society than their violent over­throw would . ... [W]hen we think of South Africa, wethink of geopolitical strategies and unique mineral re­sources as well as apartheid. "

2 WASHINGTON NOTES ON AFRICA

in the heart of Washington could ... do a great deal for SouthAfrica if it had a positive attitude towards the Republic."

When the Washington Times' first prototype copy waspublished on March 1,1982, Mc­Goff had recently sold his shareof the Sacramento Union to con­servative millionaire Richard Mel­lon Scaife. The editor of theUnion, James R. Whelan, re­signed to become editor of theWashington Times, inviting JohnMcGoff to serve on his editorialadvisory board.

McGoff and Whelan are nowable to do what McGoff couldnot do eight years ago: counterthe Washington Post. As Whelanstated in March: "I really believethat our nation is at peril becausewe don't have an alternative voicein the nation's capital. I can'tremember a time when the rightwas adequately represented indaily print journalism here.""Many conservatives feel thatthe news coverage of the Post isactually detrimental to the na­tion, particularly in the effect ithas on foreign policy," add Moon: A marriage of convenience with Pretoria?Washington Tribune reportersMark Jenkins and Charles Paul Freund in their in-depthexpose of the Washington Times and the Unification Church."Among the Post's worst sins, conservatives maintain, is thecoverage it has featured from Africa and Central America."

Whelan insists that the Washington Times will never be anorgan of the Unification Church. "I don't speak for the Church.The paper doesn't speak for the Church," claims Whelan.Whether or not this is true remains to be seen, although,significantly, over one-third of the paper's staff are "Moonies."Nevertheless, the Unification Church and the American Righthave found a genuine marriage of convenience, puttingdifferences aside to promote their virulant anti-communism.That anti-communism, intentionally or unintentionally, playsdirectly into the hands of the South Africans.

Only three days after it began publishing daily, theWashington Times expounded its view of apartheid in aprotracted editorial response to a letter from Gilbert H.Caldwell, Associate General Secretary of the Commission onReligion and Race for the United Methodist Church. Amongother questions, Caldwell had asked: "Why is conservativephilosophy so vehemently anti-communist because of its[communism's] suppression of individual liberty, and yet sotolerant of 'democracies' (South Africa), that deprive personsof color of the right to participate with equity in government,business, etc.?" The new daily responded true to form:

!U! e £M e 5 £Wj e SO! SO! e !U!

Reed was one of fifteen Americans who participated in adelegation led by South African agent, Andrew Hatcher, toTranskei's "independence" ceremonies in 1976, despite theobjections of then-President Gerald Ford.

• Jeffrey P. Green, marketing director and Joseph J. Gross,business consultant. Both worked previously for McGoff'sPanax. Green is South African.

• Edward King, international and Capitol Hill reporter, CletoDi Giovanni, editorial writer, and Jeremiah O'Leary, WhiteHouse correspondent. Each has strong ties to the intelligencecommunity. King and Di Giovanni were both CIA officers inLatin America. O'Leary left the National Security Council as"special assistant" to William Clark to work at the Times.Documents obtained under the Freedom of Informat~on Actindicate that former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover frequently

Botha: "We're sick and

tired of being represented

as thugs."

used O'Leary to promote the Bureau's perspective at theWashington Star.

• William Rusher, member of the editorial advisory board.Publisher of the very conservative National Review since 1955,Rusher also has had a long association with white minorityregimes in Africa. In the mid-sixties, Rusher co-chaired therightist American African Affairs Association (AAAA) withMax Yergan. It was revealed in 1966 that AAAA and the Officeof Rhodesian Affairs in Washington collaborated very closely,to the point that they used the same postage meter. Morerecently, AAAA was revealed to be a recipient of Muldergatemoney-$13,000 in 1978-79 alone. According to theWashington Post, Rusher's first trip to South Africa in 1962was at the expense of the South African government'sInformation Service, and a later, week-long trip in October,1976 was totally subsidized by the pro-apartheid South AfricaFoundation. Rusher wrote a June 1 column for theWashington Times entitled, "South Africa Unable to Please itsCritics," claiming "it is obvious that in the long run thecoloureds and Asians have as much to lose as the whites froma system of one-man-one-vote in a unitary state."

• Allan C. Brownfeld. Although not on the staff, Brownfeld isa frequent column contributor. Brownfeld also writes forMoon's Rising Tide and a variety of other right-wingpublications. According to Alan Crawford's authoritativebook, Thunder on the Right, Brownfeld once serviced "anumber of South African newspapers as a Washingtoncorrespondent," including the Department of Information­financed To The Point. He also attended the Transkei's"independence" ceremonies in 1976, writing for the PhoenixGazette, "[T]he fact must not be forgotten that both Rhodesiaand South Africa are more free than any of the black statessurrounding them-for both blacks and whites. In addition,they are an intrinsic part of the Western world and arestrategically located both geographically and with regard toresources. It is a policy of suicide to encourage theirdestruction and barbarization." In a May 17 column in theWashington Times, Brownfeld attacked UN support for theliberation movements.

Is There a Link?

There is no conclusive evidence that the South Africangovernment has actually put money into the Washington"Moonie" paper. However, four facts are worth noting:

• McGoff has had past encounters with the "Moonies." AsKaren Rothmyer writes in her article, "The McGoff Grab," inthe Columbia Journalism Review, McGoff considered buyingthe short-lived New York Trib in 1977 with the assistance ofGerald Zoffer. (Zoffer, "a self-styled investment broker," writesunder the (lame Matthew Conroy for Moon's New York paper,News World.)

Trib publisher Leonard Saffir states that Richard M. Scaifeand Zoffer separately suggested he speak to McGoff as apossible financial contributor. "Saffir says Zoffer told him thatthe South African government wanted a stake in the paper(South African sources confirm this), and that it was preparedto disguise its involvement," writes Rothmyer. "He quotesZoffer as saying, 'We have a way-John McGoff. He will makethe actual investment.' (Zoffer in rebuttal, calls Saffir'sstatement 'total nonsense.') ... McGoff did not pursue thematter, however, and The Trib, which began publishing inJanuary 1978, folded three months later."

• At the height of the Muldergate scandal in December 1978,Prime Minister PW Botha said that the South Africangovernment would continue to fund secret projects despitethe furor over Muldergate. "We are sick and tired of beingrepresented as thugs," he said. A special governmentcommittee recommended that 56 of the 138 secret projectscontinue.

• According to the Erasmus report, McGoff and Rhoodiedetermined that McGoff would pay back a portion of theoriginal $11.75 million since he had not used it all for agreedupon projects. Although some of the money was returned, thereport states that, "$5,380,000 of the debt was written off.:' ButSEC investigators have indicated that, in fact, about $2 millionwent to buy more than 400,000 shares of Panax in 1977 so that

(continued on page 8)

Times Publisher James WhelanInset: John McGoff

SUMMER 1982 3

• e a !OJ a S §OJ S SUJ! §OJ S Q! S !OJ

amibian Talks: Diplomacy or Deception?

State Department officials are again openly optimisticthat a plan for Namibian independence consistent withUN Resolution 435 may be developed and implementedas early as next spring. A frenzy of diplomatic

discussions throughout the past two months have supposedlydiminished South African intransigence on several key issues.Pretoria now appears willing to set aside its long-standingdisputes concerning UN impartiality, the size and composition ofthe UN election and transition monitoring forces, andestablishment of a demilitarized zone along the Angolan­Namibian border. In addition, South Africa has indicated that itmay accept substantial modifications in the confusing "two­track" election system proposed by the Western Contact Groupearlier this year, but flatly rejected by SWAPO and the Frontlinestates.

Despite the State Department's elation, the Contact Groupremains unableto conclude Phase I of the negotiations. Skepticspoint out that South Africa has really only agreed to abide byconditions which they originally accepted in 1978-and laterrefused. SWAPO officials note that the supposed "concessions"portend nothing more than the potential dissipation of variousobstacles thrown up by South Africa and the Contact Groupearlier in the process; they in no way reflect interest in genuineNamibian independence. Why does Pretoria suddenly appear socooperative?

State Department officials maintain that South Africa is readyto move for financial and political reasons. Military occupation ofNamibia is purportedly too expensive to continue. Furthermore,Prime Minister P.W. Botha, under attack from hard-liners, wishesto coalesce a "liberal" base of support around this issue, movingit permanently off the agenda. However, this official explanationlacks credibility. The war in Namibia has always placedenormous demands upon Pretoria's coffers, but expenditureshave been more than offset by the bounty of minerals whichSouth Africa has reaped from the territory. South Africa is notlikely to surrender these resources unless it is confident that itcan maintain its economic hegemony without the expense of amilitary occupation.

Furthermore, South Africa's internal political situation does

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SWAPO's Theo Ben Gurirab and Sam Nujoma

6 WASHINGTON NOTES ON AFRICA

not seem conducive to a settlement. Given the size and growingstrength of the South African right-wing, it seems improbablethat Botha would risk deepening the rift within the party andfueling the opposition's claims that he is "soft on terrorism."

Most important, however, relinquishment of Namibia wouldeliminate the last of the protective cordon that South Africa haslong maintained around itself, leaving it to stand alone as the lastbastion of white colonialism on the continent. Such a position isuntenable in the regi me's eyes; in order for Pretoria to movesuddenly in this direction, it must see substantial advantage indoing so.

Such advantages may indeed be surfacing in several areas.The Reagan Administration, openly sympathetic to SouthAfrican demands for the withdrawal of Cuban troops fromAngola, appears to be pressuring Luanda to acquiesce. Citingits so-called "concessions," Pretoria has now labelled Cubantroops as the major obstacle to a settlement.

In June, special envoy Vernon Walters and Deputy AssistantSecretary of State Frank Wisner, Jr. toured Southern Africancapitals, holding a series of talks with government officials.According to State Department sources, the subject of Cubanwithdrawal was "definitely on the agenda." Although AngolanForeign Minister Paulo Jorge has insisted that the matter of thetroops not be tied to Namibian negotiations, the US governmentcontinues to dangle the carrots of recognition and aid in front ofAngola, while South Africa offers glimpses of a new stick bythreatening to establish a secessionist state in southern Angolaunder UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi if the Cubans stay.

South Africa may also be hoping to capitalize upon the USgovernment's eager (but largely unsuccessful) efforts to bolsterPretoria's international image by putting SWAPO on thedefensive. Hearings sponsored by Jeremiah Denton this springsought to portray SWAPO as a "terrorist" organization. Morerecently, the State Department refused for several days to grant are-entry visa to SWAPO's UN observer, Theo Ben Gurirab,because his name appeared on a list of persons that the ReaganAdministration wished to bar from the country during the UNSpecial Session on Disarmament. US press reports too haveincreasingly criticized SWAPO for obstructing the negotiations.

Just as the Western Contact Group's election plan wasdesigned to force SWAPO objections (and, hence, create theillusion that SWAPO was delaying negotiations), so, too, thepresent pronouncements may be contrived to saddle SWAPOwith the responsibility for the future of the negotiations. SWAPOwill now feel pressure to respond to South Africa's hollow"concessions" by yielding on more substantial points. Moreover,Walters and Wisner's tour seemed designed to coax even theFrontline states into being a part of that pressure, thus driving awed.ge between SWAPO and its traditional supporters.

In addition, South Africa may be receiving other concealedincentives from the Reagan Administration. Both Congress andthe executive branch are currently considering a number ofpolicy issues concerning South Africa: nuclear collaboration,military cooperation, export controls, etc. US-South African talksoffer the opportunity for the administration to commit itself togreater strategic cooperation in exchange for a Namibiansettlement.

Thus, if the multi-lateral Namibian talks presently underway inNew York produce any noteworthy agreements, it will not bebecause South Africa has sacrificed any of its own interests, butrather because the US has fou nd less obvious methods ofsatisfying those interests.•

- IlIWSBBllrS-New Consulates Proliferate

In its continuing efforts to polish its image, bolster relationswith the US, and gain international recognition of apartheid,the South African government, with the approval of the StateDepartment, will be opening three more honorary consulatesin the US, to be located in Cleveland, Denver, and Seattle.These three bring the number of South African honoraryconsulates in the US up to ten, in addition to the five officialconsulates. The South Africans may also seek approval for anhonorary consulate in Miami or Atlanta.

Honorary consulates operate on a part-time basis, oftenwith American directors. Like South Africa's officialconsulates, the honoraries function primarily to promote andprotect business relations between the US and South Africa.Moreover, the South Africafls use these footholds todisseminate pro-apartheid propaganda, exert politicalinfluence, and counter anti-apartheid activities.

South Africa's ongoing effort to establish an honoraryconsulate in Pittsburgh in the spring of 1982 has met with stiffopposition. "Pittsburghers Against Apartheid," a coalition oflabor, church, and civil rights groups, has organized.continuing demonstrations since the consulate's installationon March 9 and has th us far forced its relocation from thecenter to the outskirts of Pittsburgh's downtown area.

Expanding South African representation in the US reflectsthe intensification of US-South African rapproachment underthe Reagan Administration. As has been shown in Pittsburghand other cities, however, the proliferation of honoraryconsulates also provides an important area of focus for local.anti-apartheid organizations.•

New Boys at StateThe State Department recently hired two new architects of

Southern African policy: Frank Wisner, Jr. and Robert Cabelli.Wisner, the son of CIA dirty-tricks mastermind, Frank Wisner,Sr., was appoi nted deputy assistant secretary of state forAfrican affairs, replacing Lannon Walker.

Wisner joined the State Department in 1961. After a briefstint in Algiers, he served in several capacities in Vietnam,including a year as senior advisor to for the province of TuyenDuc during 1968. In 1975, Wisner was appointed specialassistant to Under Secretary for Political Affairs Joseph Siscoand had an active hand in forming Southern African policy inthe Kissinger State Department. The following year, he wasnamed director of the Office of Southern African Affairs.

As the US ambassador to Zambia from August 1979 to April1982, Wisner remained a key figure in US diplomacy inSouthern Africa during negotiations for Zimbabwean

independence. Recently, he represented the US at Maputo'sFrontline state summit meeting, where he lobbied for theContact Group's Namibian election scheme.

Robert Cabelli, the new special assistant to the assistantsecretary of state for African affairs, Chester Crocker, also hasa long history of ties with Southern African. A formeremployee of Goldfields, a South African mining firm, Cabellihas many high-ranking South African friends, including LeoConradie, the second-in-command of South Africa's UNmission.

Cabelli became involved with the State Department severalyears ago when the agency contracted with him for an analysisof the effectiveness of the anti-apartheid divestmentmovement. He is expected to promote US trade andinvestment in Southern Africa, particularly in Botswana,Malawi, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.•

ANC Sentences CommutedOn June 3, 1982, after a month of intense international

pressure, the South African government granted clemency tothree ANC members who had been convicted and sentencedto death in 1980 for high treason under South Africa's vicipusTerrorism Act. Ncimbithi Lubisi, Petrus Mashigo and NaphtaliManana were sentenced by the Pretoria Supreme Court fortheir part in the January 1980 attack on a police station inLebowa. This is the first time the apartheid regime hasimposed the death sentence for a strictly political "crime"involving no loss of life. On April 7, the Supreme Court inBloemfontein rejected appeals against the death sentences,leaving a clemency petition to the State President as the soleavenue of redress.

International pressure generated by the ANC in support oftheir three members was overwhelming, and a prime factor inPretoria's decision for clemency. The UN Security Council, forexample, despite vigorous debate by the US, unanimouslypassed Resolution 503 on April 9, urging South Africa tocommute the death sentences. The debate concernedinsistence by the US on changes in the resolution, includingthe removal of a reference to the three as patriots and thedemand that they be freed. Despite acquiescence to USdemands, the resolution was nevertheless impressive as it wasthe first time the Security Council had adopted a resolutioncalling for clemency for those convicted under South Africa'sdreaded security laws, and the first time the ReaganAdministration voted against South Africa at the UN.

Although the death sentences have been commuted to lifeimprisonment, the international community has struck yetanother blow at the South African government and quelled thesetting of a dangerous precedent by the regime to legallymurder those on trial for political crimes.•

SUMMER 1982 7