"free africa foundation: buying freedom for africa", michael barker

7/28/2019 "Free Africa Foundation: Buying Freedom For Africa", Michael Barker

1/28

Free Africa Foundation: Buying Freedom

For Africa

by MICHAEL BARKER

The Free Africa Foundation campaigns for African development and never

pass es up th e opportun ity to de nounce World Bank an d IMF policie s. But

contrary to appearences, its discourse is actually directed at promoting

economic deregulation. Using this example, Michael Barker revisits the

history of Washingtons backing of the anti-Apartheid struggle. At the time,

it essentially consisted in going along with an unstoppable historical

movement while at the same time deflecting it from a critical position vis-

-vis the economic system imposed by th e U.S.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | LONDON (U NI TED KI NGDOM) | 28 MARCH 2010

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and George Ayittey (US Sate

Department, August 1, 2009).

"You have to separate the humanitarian impulse from therecord of aid itself. We all want to help. Many people would

say that its the moral impulse of the rich to help the poor, butthe record of aid has been terrible."

George Ayittey, President of the Free Africa Foundation


2/28

Foreign aid is an integral tool by which global capital conquers foreign markets, a

sordid history of which the US-based nongovernmental organization Food First has

thoroughly documented since their formation in the late 1970s. It is unfortunate then

that in a recent article titled "Food Aid in Africa: A Profitable Business," Food First

cited with approval the above quote from the president of the Free Africa Foundation,

George Ayittey. This is problematic because while Ayitteys rhetoric meshes well with

progressive critiques of foreign aid, his criticism stems from his desire to fully open up

Africa to the free-market in the name of libertarianism; not quite the same ideas

promoted by groups like Food First. So while both conservative and liberal

organizations are committed to ending exploitative foreign aid practices, it is critical to

differentiate the political trajectories and motivations driving their activities. This

article aims to unpack some of these differences by closely examining the background

of both the Free Africa Foundation and the more famous African freedom organization,

the African National Congress.

Founded in 1993 by American University associate professor of economics, GeorgeAyittey, the Free Africa Foundation aims to "further the cause of freedom in Africa and

propagate ideas on liberty." Ayittey is a well-known international speaker, and in

addition to publishing many books, the latest of which isAfrica Unchained: The

Blueprint for Africas Future (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), in 2009 he was recognized

byForeign Policymagazine to be one of the worlds Top 100 Global Thinkers "for

pushing policymakers to let Africa help itself." Despite this Ghanaian economists work

often being held up as torch for freedom in Africa, it would be more useful to describe

his activities as serving as a torch for imperialism, contrary to his rhetoric that asserts

otherwise. After completing his Ph.D. in 1981, his first connection to the United States

conservative policy-making community occurred when he accepted a national

fellowship at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution[1] in 1988. (He also served as a

visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Public Choice in 1988.) The following year

he then joined the Heritage Foundation [2]as a Bradley resident scholar, and

subsequently while working at the Cato Institute [3] he publishedAfrica Betrayed(St.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb1http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb2http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb3http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb3http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb2http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb1


3/28

Martins, 1992). At present Ayittey is a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and

an associate scholar at the neoconservative Foreign Policy Research Institute [4], a

research center that boasts that they are "devoted to bringing the insights of

scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national

interests."

In terms of funding arrangements, the Free Africa Foundations Web site lists 25

conservative financial donors, with well-known funders including David Kennedy (who

is the former president of the Earhart Foundation a "key backer of neoconservatism"

in the United States), Ed Crane (who is the president and CEO of the Cato Institute),

James Pierson (who was the executive director of the now defunct John M. Olin

Foundation), and Richard Gilder (who is the founder of the Gilder Foundation). Other

notable funders include the Foreign Policy Research Institutes vice president, the

Zionist researcher Alan Luxenberg, and the controversial theorist of non-violence,

Peter Ackerman. Here it is important to note that Ackerman, a long-term affiliate of the

International Institute for Strategic Studies, published the bookStrategic Nonviolent

Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century (Praeger, 1994) with

co-author Christopher Kruegler (who at the time was the president of the "democratic"

Albert Einstein Institution [5]) while he was based at the International Institute for

Strategic Studies. Ackerman recently served on the board of directors of the Institutes

US branch [6] a body that is currently headed by corporate lobbyist Andrew Parasiliti

(of Barbour Griffith & Rogers fame), a person who previously served as the director of

programs at the military contractor think tank the Middle East Institute.

A brief examination of Free Africa Foundations eight-person-strong advisory board

paints a similar picture of the foundations commitment to free markets. For a start this

board includes Bruce Bartlett, the author ofImpostor: How George W. Bush

Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (Doubleday, 2006); another

notable writer is the controversial neoconservative John Fund, who is a propagandist

for the Wall Street Journal. Bartlett and Fund are joined by a leading theorist of

democracy manipulation, Larry Diamond, who is a senior fellow at the Hoover

Institution, and is the founding co-editor of the National Endowment for
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb4http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb5http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb6http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb6http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb5http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb4


4/28

DemocracysJournal of Democracy. One of the Free Africa Foundations less

conservative advisors is Audna Linter Nicholson who was formerly affiliated with the

Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs although even in this hotbed of

liberalism one finds conservatives occupying leadership roles, with their longstanding

president, Robert Myers (1980-95) being a former CIA agent and subsequent publisher

of the right-wing magazine The New Republic (until 1979).

The Free Africa Foundations advisory board has intriguing links to two people who

are connected to what was once the best-known organization committed to freedom in

Africa, the African National Congress. These people are Zwelakhe Sisulu, who is the son

of Walter Sisulu (the former secretary general of the ANC), and Makaziwe Mandela,

who is the daughter of Nelson Mandela. To understand the reason why these two high-

profile individuals are now tied to a conservative freedom group it is necessary to first

unpack their freedom-fighter-parents prior engagements with imperial elites.

A Neoliberal Freedom Charter

To begin with, it is of utmost importance to acknowledge the bravery and commitment

of all ANC activists, especially those who were forced to adopt violence in a bid to end

their peoples oppression.[7] But this does not mean that the ANC, or any other

activists for that matter, should be shielded from valid criticism that can shed light on

our understanding of the dynamics of social change. Indeed the example of the co-

optation of the ANC cadre in South Africa provides a forbidding illustration of the

sophisticated mechanisms that capitalists have developed to defuse revolutionaryactivism: effectively buying "freedom" by transplanting the symbolic leaders of the ANC

onto their own destructive neoliberal project. Patrick Bond points out how with the

formal end of apartheid it rapidly became evident that "full-blown neoliberal

compradorism became the dominant (if not universal) phenomenon within the ANC

policy-making elite." [8]

Nelson Mandela in his autobiography,Long Walk to Freedom(Abacus, 1994) is

frank about the elitist origins of his formal legal education that aimed to draw him "into
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb7http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb8http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb8http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb7


5/28

the black elite that Britain sought to create in Africa." Likewise in his formative years

within the ANC he recognized that the then head of the ANC, Dr A.B. Xuma, enjoyed

good "relationships with the white establishment and did not want to jeopardize them

with political action," a problem that led Mandela and his colleagues to form the more

radical ANC Youth League in 1944. Moreover, while Mandela and the soon to be

invigorated ANC clearly sought to be liberated from their colonial history,

theirFreedom Charter (of 1955), while inspired by Marx, was hardly a call for

socialism. On this Mandela writes: "In June 1956, in the monthly journal Liberation, I

pointed out that the charter endorsed private enterprise and would allow capitalism to

flourish among Africans for the first time." In spite of this evidence, in 1957, the states

"expert" witness against the ANC described theFreedom Charter as communistic. That

said, this misrepresentation of the ANCs political ideology was hardly surprising as

when this same expert was cross-examined and then read an unidentified passage of

text which he "unhesitantly described as communism straight from the shoulder"

it turned out that it was a statement that the witness "himself had written in the

1930s." [9] In court in 1964 Mandela explained that:

The ANC has never at any period of its history advocated a revolutionary change in

the economic structure of the country, nor has it, to the best of my recollection, ever

condemned capitalist society...

[...]

... The Communist Party sought to emphasize class distinctions whilst the ANC

seeks to harmonize them. (p.435)

While not advocating communism, the ANC still presented a massive threat to white

supremacy; thus, in an effort to divide their opposition, capitalist elites supported the

openly anti-communist ANC breakaway group, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). This

group then "became the darling of the Western press and the American State

Department, which hailed its birth [in 1959] as a dagger in the heart of the African left."

Obtaining foreign funding for the ANC from other African states also became an

important issue for Mandela, and after traveling all over the world (during 1962) to
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb9http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nb9


6/28

raise awareness of the liberation movements ambitions, he thought it was necessary

"to effect essentially cosmetic changes in order to make the ANC more intelligible

and more palatable to our allies." This, of course, is a critical problem that faces all

organizations and social movements with limited budgets, as large amounts of money

can clearly bring one group to prominence at the expense of another lesser-financed

one even if the latter is initially better organized and more popular. Recognizing the

importance of this issue Mandela saw his strategy "as a defensive manoeuvre, for if

African states decided to support the PAC, a small and weak organization could

suddenly become a large and potent one." [10]

Some twenty-plus years later in 1984, Mandela was to come across the type of elite

agent that sought to manipulate popular struggles for capitalism, an individual known

as Lord Nicholas Bethell. Lord Bethells prison visit is particularly interesting given that

in 1981 Bethell had been a co-founder of the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, a group

that was formed to generate support for the mujahideen, and was in later years backed

by the leading "democracy-promoting" agency, the National Endowment for

Democracy (NED) [11]. Mandela, of course, knew nothing about Lord Bethells

manipulative background, but in later years he would be unlikely not to have heard of

the National Endowment for Democracy, which was highly active in South Africa. For

instance, in 1988 The New York Times reported that "two South African groups the

Institute for a Democratic Alternative for South Africa and the Black Consumers

Union" received a total of $600,000 from the Endowment. Likewise in 1986 the

Heritage Foundation were advocating for a co-optive intervention into South African

affairs, noting:

Existing U.S. programs to aid the disadvantaged in South Africa specifically should

promote the reform process by such things as directly assisting the upgrading of black

education, including more scholarships for blacks to integrated universities and ending

discrimination against students in so-called tribal homelands. Black businesses

attempts to exercise new rights to operate in white areas should receive assistance

under programs such as the National Endowment for Democracy, as should labor


7/28


8/28

economy was declining as a result of the global decline in stocks. Secondly, it was

becoming expensive to maintain apartheid systems multiple racial administrative

structures. Thirdly, there were high-levels uprisings, for example, the 1976 Soweto one.

Fourthly, there was a growing concern among whites about the viability of apartheid.

Finally, there was the pressure from liberation movements such as the ANC, PAC, other

opposition groups as well as the international community. The international dimension

was very critical. (pp.165-6)

Clearly while such programs like CALS "mitigate... the repressive nature that the

South African legal system exercises over the majority black population" this is not

their only goal. Edward Berman thus suggests that:

Such beneficial programs and worthwhile intentions notwithstanding, there is

evidence to indicate that the major thrust of the foundations overseas activities is

intended to improve conditions in, say, Nigeria, India, or Thailand while

simultaneously insuring that these nations leaders and institutional structures

continue to be linked to the world capitalist system, albeit as members of the periphery

rather than the center. Again, we should be surprised were the foundations to attemptto do otherwise, despite their oft-repeated public claims that their programs are not

intended to serve narrowly national, partisan, or personal interests. As integral cogs in

the capitalist system they can do little else but further that systems interests through

their programs. [18]

It is particularly worthwhile dwelling upon the Legal Resources Centre, as their

current chairman, human rights advocate Jody Kollapen, is also a board member of the

aforementioned Institute for a Democratic South Africa. In addition, one finds the like

of Sheila Avrin McLean on the board of the American friends of the Legal Resources

Centre, an individual who during the 1970s "spent a decade at the Ford Foundation as

Associate General Counsel and the officer in charge of developing and running the Ford

Foundations human rights grants program in South Africa."[19] Other supporters of

the Legal Resources Centres work include former United Democratic Front national

coordinator Cheryl Carolus, who later served as the ANCs deputy secretary general

during the 1990s, and is presently a member of the executive committee of the


9/28

"humanitarian" International Crisis Group, and trustee of the imperialist "wildlife"

beneficiary World Wildlife Fund (WWF). [20]

Moreover, on August 9, 2008, the Legal Resources Centre "celebrated Womens Day

and the beginning of its 30th anniversary with a gala dinner specially organized to

celebrate the achievements and contributions of two leading anti-apartheid women

Dr. Albertina Sisulu [the mother of Free Africa Foundation adviser, Zwelakhe Sisulu]

and Lady Felicia Kentridge." The present director of the centre is long-time ANC

activist Janet Love, and their current board members include their cofounder, Arthur

Chaskalson, who recently served as the president of the International Commission of

Jurists (2002-08). Other notable board members include Steve Kahanovitz and Geoff

Budlender, the latter being a co-director of the elitist philanthropic body the Sigrid

Rausing Trust: these two individuals additionally work closely with the Geneva-based

Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, which is headed by "humanitarian" activist

extraordinaire, Salih Booker. Of most concern to this article, of Bookers numerous

links to the human rights industry he recently acted as the executive director of Africa

Action. Africa Action is the "oldest US-based advocacy group on African affairs,

incorporating the American Committee on Africa, the Africa Fund and the Africa Policy

Information Center in Washington, D.C." A brief examination of the founding of these

groups is in order given the key support they lent to the ANC from the 1960s onwards.

Well-respected pacifist and Congress of Racial Equality co-founder George Houser

was the founding director of two of Africa Actions predecessors, the American

Committee on Africa (founded in 1953) and The Africa Fund (which was formed in

1966). In a speech he gave in 2003, Houser recalled:

It was the Defiance Campaign in South Africa sponsored by the African National

Congress to which we responded, resulting in more then 8500 arrests for nonviolent

civil disobedience against the apartheid laws. It was Bill Sutherland who urged us to get

involved. As representative of CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), I corresponded

with Walter Sisulu, the newly elected Secretary General of the ANC and he encouraged

our support. With Bill Sutherland and Bayard Rustin, we organized Americans for

South African Resistance [in 1952]...


10/28

The American Committee on Africa grew out of this beginning, expanding from the

anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa to contacts with the rapidly developing

movements throughout the continent.

However, as surmised elsewhere, during the 1960s even the once militant CORE did

not avoid the grasp of the status-quo-enforcing Ford Foundation. Furthermore, even

the progressive activism of the two other CORE co-founders, James Farmer and Bayard

Rustin, was effectively neutralized by liberal elites during their careers. Farmer

resigned as the national director of CORE in 1966 to head a new anti-poverty group, the

Center for Community Action Education, "propell[ing] himself into the confidence of

the Johnson Administration" with an initial government grant of some $900,000. And

just prior to his death in 1999, Farmer acted as an adviser to the Albert Einstein

Institution, and even obtained a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.

Farmers colleague, Bayard Rustin, likewise demonstrated a strong propensity to

serve elite interests. Thus in the 1970s he served as a vice chairman of the CIA-linked

International Rescue Committee; in 1975 he organized the Black Americans to Support

Israel Committee; and then in 1982 he "helped found" the National EmergencyCoalition for Haitian Refugees (alongside then president of the AFL-CIO, Lane

Kirkland). Later still Rustin served as the president, and then co-chair, of the

conservative A. Philip Randolph Institute a group that received a $15,000 grant from

the National Endowment for Democracy in 1985 for "Project South Africa."

Additionally, around this time:

As Chairman of the Executive Committee of Freedom House [21], an agency which

monitors international freedom and human rights, Mr. Rustin observed elections in

Zimbabwe, El Salvador, and Grenada. His last mission abroad, coordinated by Freedom

House, was to Haiti where he met with a broad spectrum of individuals in an attempt to

determine how Americans could best help them bring democracy to their country.

Needless to say, Freedom Houses anti-democratic role in supervising

"demonstration elections" is well documented, [22] and they work closely with the NED

to promote low-intensity democracy globally. Thus it is vital to remember that as a


11/28

result of a fact-finding trip that Rustin, his partner Walter Naegle, and Charles

Bloomstein, took to South Africa, their subsequent report,South Africa: Is Peaceful

Change Possible?(New York Friends Group, 1984), "led to the formation of [the NED-

funded] Project South Africa, a program which [sought] to broaden Americans support

of groups within South Africa attempting to bring about democracy through peaceful

means." This democracy-manipulating initiative was headed by Dave Peterson, an

individual who was quickly promoted (in 1988) to manage the NEDs activities across

Africa, a position he retains to this day. Connections between the NED and the A. Philip

Randolph Institute and the A. Philip Randolph Fund (of which Rustin was president

when he died in 1987) were by no means marginal, because at the time of his death

Rustin was chairman of the conservative Social Democrats USA[23], a group whose

former executive director, Carl Gershman (1974-80) went on to become the president

of the NED in 1984 (a position he still maintains).

Returning to Africa Action, their current head since 2007, Gerald LeMelle, had

previously served as the deputy executive director for advocacy at Amnesty

International USA, while in the early 1990s he had acted as the director of African

affairs with the conservative Phelps Stokes Fund. Here it is noteworthy that the history

of the Phelps Stokes Fund provides yet more fuel to suggest that Africa Action has more

in common with imperial democracy-manipulating elites than countering their

activities, contrary to their proclamation that they "support African struggles for peace

and development." Writing in the seminal book-length critique of philanthropic

imperialism,Philanthropy and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundation at Home and

Abroad(Indiana University Press, 1982), Edward Berman writes:

From its incorporation in 1911 until 1945 [the end of the period studied by Berman]

the Phelps-Stokes Fund based its actions on several premises: (1) that the experience of

the Negro South was directly relevant to black Africa; (2) that neither the African nor

the American Negro would be self-governing, or even have a large say in his welfare, in

the foreseeable future; and (3) that a narrowly defined vocational education could be

used to train American Negroes and Africans to become productive, docile, and

permanent underclasses in their respective societies. [24]


12/28

Evidently nothing much has changed, although the Fund now uses honorary trustee,

the Most Rev. Desmond Tutu, as part of their altruistic smokescreen Tutu also being

a patron of the Legal Resources Centre and an honorary chair of the deceptively named

World Justice Project. Tutus humanitarian haze is quickly cleared, however, when one

examines the capitalist elites residing on the Phelps Stokes Funds board of trustees, a

prominent example being former US ambassador to the Central African Republic,

Robert Perry, who is currently vice president for international programs at the

Corporate Council on Africa.

Berman, in another chapter within the bookhilanthropy and Cultural

Imperialism titled "The Foundations Role in American Foreign Policy: The Case of

Africa, post 1945," extends his analysis on the nature of philanthropic interventions in

Africa. He concludes:

There can be little doubt but that the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, and

Rockefeller Foundation have used their largesse since 1945 to insure the controlled

growth and development of African societies through the strengthening of strategic

cultural and political institutions. The primary means to accomplish this end has beenthrough support for African education, as well as complementary social science

research and public administration training institutes. The emphasis on education has

had two advantages over a comparable concern with other areas. First, the quantitative

expansion of education in Africa has enabled foundation personnel to spread their

common ideology across a greater range of local societies than heretofore. Second, the

emphasis on the provision of a commodity which ostensibly has no political overtones

and which is in great demand has enabled foundation personnel to appear in the guise

of disinterested humanitarians. As the above has made clear, there was little

humanitarianism in these foundation attempts to develop educational systems in

Africa, despite the proclivities of random foundation personnel in this direction.

Education was perceived as the opening wedge ensuring an American presence in those

African nations considered of strategic and economic importance to the governing and

business elite of the United States. The contention that American foundation

expenditures in Africa were designed primarily to benefit the recipients cannot be


13/28

sustained. Rather, it was through African education that American foundation

personnel hoped to exert leverage on the direction of African development,

development which would follow lines acceptable to American Interests. (p.225)

As Berman suggests: "In effect, the foundations contributed substantial sums of

money to programs and approaches that promised evolutionary, elite-directed change

as opposed to revolutionary, mass-directed change." [25] Building on their education

efforts, in 1978 liberal foundations become seriously involved in coordinating South

Africas "democratic" transition when the Rockefeller Foundation brought together a

Study Commission on US Policy Toward Southern Africa that was chaired by the Ford

Foundations president, Franklin Thomas. In fact, after the 1976 Soweto uprising,

liberal foundations played a critical role by "disconnect[ing] the socialist and anti-

apartheid goals of the African National Congress." [26]

Although few radical commentators have broached the problematic nature of the

close connections that exist between anti-apartheid activists and philanthropic elites

(both prior to and after the formal end of apartheid), the preceding sections of this

article demonstrate that this is a phenomenon that warrants further critical attention.These revelations, however, do allow us to understand why Nelson Mandelas daughter,

Makaziwe Mandela, and Walter Sisulus son, Zwelakhe Sisulu serve on the advisory

board of the conservative Free Africa Foundation.

Like Father, Like Son, Like Daughter

Makaziwe Mandela, like her father, has come a long way (politically speaking), since

she completed her Ph.D. in anthropology titled "Gender Relations and Patriarchy in

South Africas Transkei" (University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1993), now being a

successful member of South Africa neoliberal elite. After obtaining her doctorate

Makaziwe was rewarded with a Fulbright fellowship, and in 1995 participated in a

Salzburg Seminar (an integral part of the Elite Consciousness Movement) to examine

the topic "Building and Sustaining Democracies: The Role of Non-Governmental

Organizations." Now a powerful businesswoman in her own right, Makaziwe resides on


14/28

the board of directors of corporations like Nestle and Rand Water Services, and is a

committed disciple of Black Economic Empowerment. [27]

Makaziwe is also a former board member of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, a

philanthropic body whose board of trustees includes World Bank managing director,

Mamphela Ramphele. Rampheles role at this foundation, which is dedicated to

creating "a living legacy that captures the vision and values of Mr. Mandelas life and

work," perhaps demonstrates that the Nelson Mandela Foundation is more interested

in capturing Mandelas present commitment to neoliberalism rather than his past

dedication to social justice. This is because in addition to working for the World Bank

Ramphele is a board member of Anglo American, and is a former long-serving trustee

of the Rockefeller Foundation and their democracy-manipulating partner-in-arms the

African Wildlife Foundation and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. However, to

find solid elite connections to Mandela one need look only to his marriage to Graca

Machel (in 1998), an individual who has been "friends" with David Rockefellers

daughter and former Africa-America Institute board member Peggy Dulany since the

1970s. Since then Graca has worked closely with numerous imperial humanitarian

organizations, and in 1999 she received a distinguished humanitarian service award

from the NED-funded Africare, a leading "humanitarian" group that counts Peter

Ackerman and his wife amongst their major financial supporters. Nelson Mandela

himself serves as Africares hononary chairman, and his personal elite tie -ins include

his serving alongside George H.W. Bush as a patron of FW de Klerks Global Leadership

Foundation, which apparently "promote[s] good governance democratic institutions,

open markets, human rights and the rule of law." (For an early demolition of the myth

of Mandela, see John Pilgers 1998 documentaryApartheid Did Not Die.) [28]

Moving on to the second Free Africa Foundation adviser who maintains familial ties

to the ANCs founding fathers, Zwelakhe Sisulu, we can see that like his brother Max,

Zwelakhe is now a well-placed member of South Africas ruling elite. Following in the

footsteps of Nelson Mandela, Zwelakhes career had a smooth transition from the

apartheid years when he acted as the president of the Media Workers Association of

South Africa and later as Nelson Mandelas media officer, and then on to "democracy"


15/28

when he went on to briefly serve as the CEO of the South African Broadcasting

Corporation. Like Makaziwe Mandela, Zwelakhe is a strong proponent of Black

Economic Empowerment, and is a cosmopolitan businessman with financial interests

ranging from his serving as the chair of African Universal Media (a media and

marketing agency whose executive director is the grand niece of Nelson Mandela), and

his being a board member of various mining ventures, most notably Eastern Platinum

Limited.

Here one might note that the chair of Eastern Platinum, David Cohen, worked

during the 1990s in South Africa at Fluor Corporation ("one of the worlds largest,

publicly owned engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance services

organizations") and then for their principal subsidiary, the US-based Fluor Daniel.

Although it bears no direct relations on Zwelakhe Sisulu it is certainly of more than

passing interest that in 2004 Suzanne Woolsey (the wife of former CIA Director, James

Woolsey) became a board member of Fluor Corporation. Likewise Fluors current board

members include Peter Fluor and James Hackett, both of whom are high ranking

executives of oil giant Anadarko Petroleum facts that are of interest to this article

because Anadarko Petroleum (along with the likes of ExxonMobil and Lockheed

Martin) in turn supports the work of the Meridian International Center, a group that

was founded in 1960 and aims to "educate people of all ages about global issues,

connect professionals from different countries and enrich the cultural perspective of

audiences across the United States and abroad." Anadarkos funding tie to this Center is

significant as another of Meridian International Centers funders is the aforementioned

Free Africa Foundation funder, Peter Ackerman. [29] At this point, it is fitting to return

to the Foundations founder, George Ayittey, who according to Ghanaian journalist

Nana Adinkra Apau, was a member of the influential African Oil Policy Initiative

Group. For more on this oily group one can turn to Africa Actions commentary:

The view that access to African oil must be advanced as a "vital interest" of the U.S.

was first publicly developed in a 2002 white paper produced by the oil business experts,

consultants and US policymakers making up the African Oil Policy Initiative Group

(AOPIG), a project of the neo-conservative Jerusalem-based think tank, the Institute


16/28

for Advanced Strategic and International studies. The AOPIG report argues that

"African oil is not an end but a means: to both greater U.S. energy security and more

rapid African economic development." The AOPIG first proposal for African energy

security is the expanded pursuit by "participating companies" of "all the oil available in

the region." Among its policy recommendations to this end are expanded land

privatization, debt cancellation highly conditioned upon free market structural reforms

and the establishment of a regional unified U.S. military command for the African

continent, similar to U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) President Bush announced in

February 2007.

Here it is appropriate to examine some of AOPIGs former members. To begin with,

one might start with PR hack (for oil), Janice Van Dyke Walden, who was the founding

president of the US foundation for the Nelson Mandela-supported United World

College of the Atlantic, and has been an "active supporter and volunteer" with the

Christian evangelical group Living Water International. Another AOPIG member who

serves on the board of this "holy water" outfit is real estate power broker Mark Edward

Winter. Remaining on the combined theme of oil and water, AOPIG happened to be co-

chaired by Paul Michael Wihbey, the president of a consulting firm Global Water and

Energy Strategy Team a team whose two other co-founders were the Zionist real

estate magnate Mark Broxmeyer (who is chairman of the AIPAC-associated think tank

the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) and Nigerian oil executive,

Emmanuel Egbogah. Finally, yet another important person to have enjoyed

membership of AOPIG is Melvin Spence, who served as an aide to William Jefferson

(Democrat-Louisiana), an individual whose strong support of AOPIG meant he was

described inHarpers magazine as a "Tollbooth Operator on the Road to Africa." [30]

Conclusion

By delineating the manner by which elites have hijacked the processes of social change,

this article does not mean to suggest that the vigorous and popular resistance against

apartheid was pointless. Far from it; without the groundswell of public participation


17/28

that rose to quash inequality, it is likely that transnational elites would have left the

apartheid state profitably intact. However, owing to widespread public outrage about

apartheid, imperial elites have had to actively work to undermine such displays of

democratic participation. In this regard, the Free Africa Foundation clearly poses a

serious threat to public freedom, and the foundations demands for free-markets that

facilitate imperial exploitation of Africa (most notably their oil) need to be vocally

challenged by all. Furthermore, it is vital that lessons are learned from South Africas

elite-guided transition from apartheid to neoliberalism. Democracy-manipulating

institutions like the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy,

which played a central role in South African affairs, are for example currently

supporting Palestinians against their brutal oppressors, the Israelis; and so the

question remains, "at what price does this support come?" If we dont attempt to

resolve such questions now, by the time we find out the sad reality is that the chance for

justice may have passed us by, and injustice may simply be further institutionalized.

[1] The Hoover Institution, archives reserved for the Republicans,Voltaire Network,October 26, 2004.

[2] Le prt--penser de la Fondation Heritage,Rseau Voltaire, June 8, 2004.

[3]The Cato Institute or Anarchism seen through the Multinationals Eyes ,Voltaire

Network, February 10, 2005.

[4] Le FPRI et Robert Strausz-Hup, by Thierry Meyssan,Rseau Voltaire, September

24, 2004.

[5] The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA, by Thierry

Meyssan, Voltaire Network, January 4, 2005,

[6] John Hillen, a current neoconservative trustee of the International Institute for

Strategic Studies, is a trustee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and until

recently was the director of their program on national security. Serving under Hillen on

this national security program were Michael Noonan (who is also a member of the

International Institute for Strategic Studies), another well known neocon activist,

Mackubin Thomas Owens, who amongst other things has served as a program officer
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh1http://www.voltairenet.org/article30059.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh2http://www.voltairenet.org/article14132.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh3http://www.voltairenet.org/article30090.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article30090.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article30090.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh4http://www.voltairenet.org/article15022.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh5http://www.voltairenet.org/article30032.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh6http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh6http://www.voltairenet.org/article30032.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh5http://www.voltairenet.org/article15022.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh4http://www.voltairenet.org/article30090.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh3http://www.voltairenet.org/article14132.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh2http://www.voltairenet.org/article30059.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh1


18/28

for the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Christian evangelical activist Chris

Seiple, who is the son of the former long-serving president of the missionaries of

imperialism, World Vision U.S.

[7] Both Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela played a central role in the creation of the

militant offshoot of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"). In his

autobiography Mandela writes: "I saw non-violence on the Gandhian model not as an

inviolable principle but as a tactic to be used when the situation demanded. The

principle was not so important that the strategy should be used even when it was self-

defeating, as Gandhi himself believed." By 1953 he recalled that, "I began to suspect

that both legal and extra-constitutional protests would soon be impossible. In India,

Gandhi had been dealing with a foreign power that ultimately was more realistic and

far-sighted. That was not the case with the Africaners in South Africa. Non-violentpassive resistance is effective as long as your opposition adheres to the same rules as

you do. But if peaceful protest is met with violence, its efficacy is at an end." That said,

although at this time Mandela argued at a public meeting "that the time for passive

resistance had ended" on reflection he suggested that his "thoughts on this matter were

not yet formed, and I had spoken too soon." By 1955, however, the lesson Mandela

remembers taking "away from the [anti-removal] campaign was that, in the end, we

had not alternative to armed and violent resistance." By 1961, Mandela was strongly

pushing the need for violent resistance; moreover, he acknowledged that "people were

ahead" of the ANC in "forming military units on their own" and he thought that "the

only organization that had the muscle to lead them was the ANC." With Mandela at its

head Umkhonto we Sizwe was subsequently formed later that year. Quotes taken from

Nelson Mandela,Long Walk to Freedom (Abacus, 1994), p.147, pp.182-3, p.182, p.183,

p.194, p.321.

[8] Patrick Bond,Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South

Africa, pdf(Pluto Press, 2005).p.10.

[9] Mandela,Long Walk to Freedom, p.112, p.113, p.205, p.245.

[10] Mandela,Long Walk to Freedom, p.268, pp.370-1, p.371, p.619.

[11] The networks of "democratic" interference, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network,

January 22, 2004.

[12] Part one : AFL-CIO ou AFL-CIA ? (no english version available) and Part Two

: 1962-1979: The AFL-CIO and Trade Union Counterinsurgency, by PaulLabarique, Voltaire Network, June 2004.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh7http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh8http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Bond%20Elite%20Transition%202ndEdn.pdfhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh9http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh10http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh11http://www.voltairenet.org/article30022.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh12http://www.voltairenet.org/article14074.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article30046.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article30046.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article14074.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh12http://www.voltairenet.org/article30022.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh11http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh10http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh9http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Bond%20Elite%20Transition%202ndEdn.pdfhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh8http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh7


19/28

[13] Sandy Boyer, "Heres Who the AFL-CIO is Funding in South Africa,"Labor Notes,

December 4, 1986; Debbie Duke, "AFL-CIO: About-Face on South Africa,"Labor Notes,

January 8-9, 1991; Annon, "South African Unionists Tell AFL-CIO: No Trade Union

Imperialism!,"Labor Notes, February 1, 1985; Annon, "AFL-CIO Snubs Main South

African Unions,"Labor Notes, May 1, 1986; Annon, "$1 Million Last Year: Reagan

Funds AFL-CIO? South Africa Activities,"Labor Notes, August 8-9, 1986; Annon,

"State Department Plan Urges AFL-CIO to Push Business Unionism in South

Africa,"Labor Notes, November 1, 1986. Also see, Jeremy Baskin,Striking Back: A

History of COSATU(Verso, 1991).

[14] Ford Foundation, a philanthropic facade for the CIAand Pourquoi la Fondation

Ford subventionne la contestation, by Paul Labarique, Voltaire Network, 2004.

[15] Julie Hearn, "Aiding democracy? Donors and civil society in South Africa,"Third

World Quarterly, 21 (5), October 1, 2000, p.827

[16] Bhekinkosi Moyo,Setting the Development Agenda? U.S. Foundations and the

NPO Sector in South Africa: A Case Study of Ford, Mott, Kellogg and Open Society

Foundations, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2005.

"The dependency syndrome exhibited by NGOs in South Africa should be read in the

context of the transition to democracy and the donors shifts in policy. First, after 1994,

most donors rerouted support to directly fund the democratic government. NGOs were

faced with diminishing budgets. Second, there was an exodus of people from the NGO

sector to government departments. The sector was affected both from the human

resource as well as from the financial resource capacity. According to Chetty (2000)

this diminution in the pool of donor funding and re-channeling to government forced

many CSOs to bow to the pressures of funder demands. The agenda and plans of

institutions became funder driven (Landsberg and Bratton 2000:259)." (p.137)

[17] The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,Voltaire Network, August 25,2004.

[18] Edward Berman, The Ideology of Philanthropy: The Influence of the Carnegie,

Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy (SUNY Press, 1983),

p.38. " The foundations influence in foreign-policy determination and in the extension

of their worldview into the domestic polity and beyond derives from several

interrelated factors: (1) their possession of significant amounts of capital, which can be

allocated as their self-perpetuating directors deem appropriate; (2) their ability to

allocate this capital to certain individuals and groups strategically located in the

cultural apparatus (universities, the arts sector, the media, authors, and publishers),
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh13http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh13http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh14http://www.voltairenet.org/article30039.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article13444.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article13444.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh15http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh16http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh17http://www.voltairenet.org/article30044.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh18http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh18http://www.voltairenet.org/article30044.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh17http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh16http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh15http://www.voltairenet.org/article13444.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article13444.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article30039.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh14http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh13


20/28

who in turn produce works frequently (but not always) supportive of the worldview of

the foundations themselves, thereby providing an important source of legitimation for

their perspective; (3) their links to and incorporation into the decision-making stratum

of the capitalist state; and (4) their shared view that the development of the domestic

polity and polities abroad can best be advanced through the aegis of the world capitalist

system, dominated by the United States." (p.38)

"It is important to mention the frequently contradictory nature of liberal capitalism, as

well as the apparent and very real conflicts within the dominant class. Theirs is not a

unitary perspective on all matters; the most cursory acquaintance with daily political

jockeying in Washington, London, or Paris quickly reveals this. Contradictions

occasionally surface within the foundations as well. Examples include the fundingprovided by the Ford Foundation for the avowedly Marxian interpretation of American

education authored by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis in 1976, or the Russell Sage

Foundations 1972 support of three leftist sociologists to study that foundations

organization and operations. Other examples might include the funding provided for

such radical researchers on Third-World development as Denis Goulet, the support

afforded several left-wing Latin social scientists, or the support and advice given by the

Ford Foundation to enable Tanzania to further its program of African socialism."

(p.39)

Despite these contradictions liberal foundations do withhold support from radical

intellectuals presenting a real and present threat to elite governance. "In a 1961

interview with historian David Eakins, [C. Wright] Mills indicated that he had

approached Ford [Foundation] for assistance for a study entitled The Cultural

Apparatus. The foundations sole response to his detailed prospectus and application

was, according to Eakins, a form-letter rejection. The junior officer processing the

materials objected to such a reply. His superiors answer was that the foundation had

absolutely no intention of risking the support ofwork that might prove another Power

Elite." (p.31)

Returning to South Africa, Patrick Bond writes that: "The agents most responsible for

introducing the late-apartheid regimes neoliberal housing policy were a group of

academics, advocates and deal-makers located within and around the Urban

Foundation (UF), the privately-funded think-tank and housing developer set up by the

Anglo American Corporation in the immediate wake of the 1976 Soweto riots." He adds


21/28

that despite their "untiring... search for minor palliatives for apartheid" one of UFs

subsequent "leading" strategists, Jeff McCarthy, was "formerly the leading urban

marxist scholar in South Africa." Another formerly radical (Communist) scholar who

"during the 1980s... focused on the crafty goal of making neoliberal African economic

policies appear to be homegrown" was Geoffrey Lamb (now with the Bill and Melinda

Gates Foundation), who while undergoing his political reorientation in England along

with another former Communist Party ideologue, Thabo Mbeki. Bond,Elite Transition,

p.95, pp.97-8, pp.123-4.

[19] Sheila Avrin McLean formerly served as the executive director of South Africa

programs at the Institute of International Education (IEE), an organization that

amongst other things administers Fulbright and many international exchanges through

its 20 worldwide offices. According to Berman, the IIE "was established in 1919 with agrant from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Until 1946 it remained a

small organization administering exchange fellowships. Most of its funding during this

quarter century came from grants from the Carnegie Corporation, the Laura Spelman

Rockefeller Memorial (which was absorbed into the Rockefeller Foundation in 1929),

and member universities affiliated with the American Council on Education." However

Berman adds that the "passage in 1946 of the Fulbright Act for foreign-student

exchange marked a watershed in the institutes fortunes," and soon the Institute "began

administering student and professional exchange programs for U.S. corporations with

overseas operations, the U.S. Army, and the major foundations." Indeed, in the early

1950s the Ford Foundation "initiated its overseas training programs... and quickly

turned for assistance to IIE." Thus Berman observes that, "As the foundations

international concerns expanded, so did its reliance on the institutes administrative

apparatus"; a relationship that was later emulated by other leading liberal foundations.

Edward Berman, The Ideology of Philanthropy, p.129, p.130.

Launched in 2000, the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program is an

"independently incorporated supporting organization" of the IEE, and with an

investment of $355 million it is the "largest single program ever supported by the Ford

Foundation." The programs international partner office in South Africa (and Nigeria)

is the Africa-America Institute. Formed in 1953, the CIA "was centrally involved in the

[Africa-America] institutes affairs and remained so for nearly a decade. The chairman

of the institutes board of trustees during the 1950s admitted that the largest

proportion of the more than $1 million which AAI spent in the 1950s came from the

CIA." (Berman,The Ideology of Philanthropy, p.131) In the early 1990s the institutereceived funding from the NED, that is the organization which in the 1980s began
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh19http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh19


22/28

carrying out the democracy-manipulating strategies formerly undertaken covertly by

the CIA. At present significant board members of the institute include "humanitarian"

activist Steven Pfeiffer (who is a member of the International Institute for Strategic

Studies in London), Diamond trader Maurice Tempelsman, and Carl Masters (an

individual who retired from the board of NED-funded Africare in 2003, another

important "humanitarian" group that counts Peter Ackerman and his wife amongst

their major financial supporters).

[20] Cheryl Carolus was a former associate (in 2000 at least) of the ANCs National

Institute for Economic Policy (formerly known as the Macroeconomic Research Group)

at the same time as fellow associate and former Institute Director Max Sisulu (son of

Walter Sisulu). Maxs wife, Elinor Sisulu, is presently a board member of George

Soross Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, and is the media and advocacymanager of the Johannesburg office of the NED-funded Crisis Coalition of Zimbabwe.

(For further details, see Michael Barker, "Zimbabwe and the Power of Propaganda:

Ousting a President via Civil Society"; this article was initially published by Global

Research in April 2008 but with no explanation was removed from their Web site.)

Until recently Max Sisulu sat on board of arms manufacturer, Denel, and on the council

of the Human Sciences Research Council where he served alongside Jakes Gerwel, the

councils chair. (Gerwel is the chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and vice

president of the free-market orientated Peace Parks Foundation a body that honors

Mandela as one of their founding patrons.) Max is presently deputy chair of the African

General Equity Group, where he works with the former chief economist of the

neoliberal New Partnership for Africas Development, Mohammed Jahed, to "benefit

the Non Governmental Sector given the dwindling foreign grants since the advent of

democracy."

With regard to the Human Sciences Research Council it is important to note that, like

their US counterparts, they make a special point of supporting radical scholars. Thus

between 1996 and 1998 Patrick Bond obtained funding from the Council "a Pretoria

parastatal that once specialised in apartheid social engineering" (Bonds own words)

which led to studies that were "encapsulated in Chapters Four and Five" of his excellent

bookElite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (Pluto Press,

2000). Incidentally, Bond had also received a grant from the US Social Science

Research Council to allow him to conduct his doctoral studies (which were supervised

by David Harvey a radical scholar, who like Bond, has been critical of the NGO-

isation of civil society arguing that NGOs regularly "function as Trojan horses forneoliberal globalization." These funding connections are significant as Bond, like most
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh20http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh20http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh20


23/28

other critical scholars, singularly fails to draw attention to the role of liberal

foundations in steering the elite transition from apartheid to neoliberalism. This

criticism is not "meant to be personal: as Marx remarked in Capital, Individuals are

dealt with here only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories,

the bearers of particular class-relations and interest.)" That said it is still critical to

understand the career trajectories of radical researchers (like Bond) and conservatives

(like Roelf Meyer, a member of the "democratic" Project on Justice in Times of

Transition, a person who Bond describes as "the guru of elite-pacting"). Bond,Elite

Transition, p.5, p.46, 10, p.76.

[21]Freedom House: when freedom is only a pretext,Voltaire Network, September 7,

2004.

[22] Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead in their pioneering bookDemonstration

Elections: US-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El

Salvador (South End Press, 1984) observe that "demonstration elections" may be

"defined as elections organized and staged by a foreign power primarily to pacify a

restive home population, reassuring it that ongoing interventionary processes are

legitimate and appreciated by their foreign objects. The demonstration election

emerged in full flower in the second half of the 1960s, paralleling the growing

opposition to the Vietnam war and to U.S. Interventions elsewhere during the post-

Castro-shock years. It was (and is) designed to neutralize this opposition by means of

a symbolic act."

In such symbolic elections "the key actors are not the voters but the interpreters," with

the "most important" of these being the mass media, but with a "secondary but

significant interpretative role... played by the observers." Conservative philanthropists

have actively supported such propaganda offensives led by groups like Freedom House,

and Herman and Brodhead note how:

"In an extraordinary example of the generosity of private philanthropy, Elliott Abrams,

the State Departments Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian

Affairs, proposed that $150,000 be raised for these purposes from private foundations,

and four foundations associated with the support of rightwing causes the Scaife

Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Grace

Foundation quickly contributed the necessary funds, which were then passed on to the
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh21http://www.voltairenet.org/article30112.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article30112.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article30112.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh22http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh22http://www.voltairenet.org/article30112.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh21


24/28

government of El Salvador." Herman and Brodhead,Demonstration Elections, p.5,

p.134, p.135.

[23] The New York Intellectuals and the invention of neoconservatism, by Denis

Boneau, Voltaire Network, January 20, 2005.

[24] Edward Berman, "Educational Colonialism in Africa: The Role of American

Foundations at Home and Abroad, 1910-1945," In: Robert Arnove (ed),Philanthropy

and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundation at Home and Abroad(Indiana University

Press, 1982), pp.194-5. He continues: "These premises were logical outcomes of the

historical processes that had led Samuel Chapman Armstrong to launch Hampton

Institute in 1869, Booker T. Washington to create Tuskegee in 1881 while eschewing

political equality, the Capon Springs Conferences for Education in the South between

1898 and 1901 to institutionalize a "special" education for southern Negroes, and the

agreement of British and American policymakers in the first quarter of the twentieth

century that education was important in helping to maintain stratified societies."

(p.195)

In his book, The Ideology of Philanthropy: The Influence of the Carnegie, Ford, and

Rockefeller Foundations on American Foreign Policy (SUNY Press, 1983), Berman

observes how, "The Carnegie Corporation, following the lead of the much smaller

Phelps-Stokes Fund of New York, made its initial grants for African education in 1925,

and continued its work in eastern, central, and South Africa until the outbreak of World

War II made the continuation of these programs virtually impossible." (p.15)

[25] Berman, The Ideology of Philanthropy, p.213. For other related critiques of

philanthropic enterprises in Africa, see Evelyn Jones Rich, United States Government-

Sponsored Higher Education Programs for Africans, 1957-1970, with Special

Attention to the Role of the African-American Institute, Ph.D., Columbia University,1977; Richard Heyman, The Role of Carnegie Corporation in African Education, 1925-

1960, Ed.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1970; Kenneth King, Pan Africanism

and Education: A Study of Race Philanthropy and Education in the Southern States of

America and East Africa (Clarendon Press, 1971).

[26] Joan Roelofs, "Foundations and Collaboration," Critical Sociology, 33 (3), 2007,

p.497. Also see Mark Curtis, Web of Deceit: Britains Real Role in the World(Vintage,

2003), pp.249-52
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh23http://www.voltairenet.org/article30052.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh24http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh25http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh26http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh26http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh25http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh24http://www.voltairenet.org/article30052.htmlhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh23


25/28

[27] Patrick Bond observes that "disdain [for black elites] has been provoked, for the

nouveau-riche character of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) means that the

objective sometimes degenerates as in a 1996 endorsement by then-deputy trade and

industry minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (a former trade unionist [and advisory

council member of the Nelson Mandela Foundation]) into becoming, quite simply,

filthy rich." Bond,Elite Transition, p.28.

Responding to a recent question about potential strategies for changing society,

Makaziwe Mandela cited Frantz Fanon to support her ideas about the need for

individual change, noting how, "In his bookBlack Skins, White Masks, Frantz Fanon

says, Those who are oppressed always want to emulate their oppressors. Its a sub -

conscious thing, not something that you actively think about. Thats not to say Idiscount group effort, but [societal change] always starts with the individual."

[28] For another critique of Nelson Mandela from the Left, see Andrew Nash,

"Mandelas Democracy,"Monthly Review, April 1999. In summary Nash writes: "It

appears both to those who praise Mandela as a realist, and those who denounce him as

a traitor, that he had abandoned all he had stood for before. But there is no betrayal in

his record. He has simply remained true to the underlying premise which had animated

his economic thought all along: the need for the leader to make use of his prestige to

put forward as the tribal consensus the position which was most capable of avoiding

overt division. ... A hidden consistency in his political thought holds together a dual

commitment to democracy and capitalism, and legitimates a capitalist onslaught on the

mass of South Africans, who sustained the struggle for democracy for decades." (Also of

particular interest is the debate between John Saul, Jeremy Cronin and Raymond

Suttner that took place between 2001 and 2003 inMonthly Review.)

For an alternative take albeit from a conservative political viewpoint on the

controversial history of the ANC and its relations to the democracy-manipulating

community, see Richard Cummings, "A Diamond Is Forever: Mandela Triumphs,

Buthelezi and de Klerk Survive, and ANC on the U.S. Payroll,"International Journal of

Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 8 (2), 1995 , pp.155-77. The current advisory

editor of this journal is the former head of the CIA, James Woolsey.

[29] Peter Ackerman acting as chair of the board of overseers of the Fletcher School of

Law and Diplomacy, he serves alongside Meridian trustee, William McSweeny, and

they are joined by other "democratic" activists like the vice president for research at the

National Defense University, Hans Binnendij. The latter individuals work is connected

to Ackerman by Hanss previous service on the US Committee of the International
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh27http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh28http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh29http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh29http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh28http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh27


26/28

Institute for Strategic Studies and through his daughter, Anika Binnendijk, who in

2006 co-authored a journal article with Ivan Marovic, the Serbian resistance veteran

and the former leader of Otpor an activist whose work is closely aligned with Peter

Ackermans, and more generally with NED-led democracy-manipulating elites.

Ackerman has resided on Fletcher Schools board of overseers for some time, serving in

2001 alongside Lydia Marshall who is a former managing director of the private

investment firm Rockport Capital Incorporated (from 1997-99), a firm at which

Ackerman currently acts as managing director. This is significant because Marshall is

an important "humanitarian" activist who until her retirement in 2007 acted as the

chair of CARE International (this position has now been filled by former World Bank

staffer, Eva Lystad). As I have demonstrated elsewhere, the US branch of CARE

International, is well connected to democracy-manipulating elites, and in 1999, while

being chaired by Marshall, Ackerman similarly served on their board of directors. For a

detailed critique of CARE International, see Timothy Schwartzs bookTravesty in

Haiti: A True Account of Christian Missions, Orphanages, Fraud, Food Aid and Drug

Trafficking (BookSurge Publishing, 2008). Given the criticisms raised in this book and

considering Ackermans involvement with CARE, it is well worth examining some of

their former staffers. Thus, one prominent example is Rafael Callejas, who prior to

becoming the president of the Millennium Water Alliance (in 2008) spent seven years

as the regional director for the Latin America and Caribbean region of CARE USA, and

prior to this was the country Director for CARE El Salvador from 1996 to 2001.Callejass role at the Millennium Water Alliance is intriguing as board members of this

Alliance include Jeannine Scott (who is the vice president of Africare), Mark Edward

Winter (who was a member of the African Oil Policy Initiative Group, see later), and

their chair Malcolm Morris (who is the co-CEO of Stewart Title Guaranty Company, a

"leading provider of title insurance and related services to the real estate and mortgage

industries," which employs the aforementioned Mark Edward Winter). Both the latter

two individuals are tied together by an evangelical group called Living Water

International, that apparently "exists to demonstrate the love of God by providing

desperately needed clean water, along with the living water of the gospel of Jesus

Christ, which alone satisfies the deepest thirst to persons in developing countries."

(Morris was the former chair of Living Water International, while Winter was a former

board member.) The current president of this evangelizing "charity" is Jerry Wiles, a

person who in 1986 was a founding member of the theocratic Coalition on Revival, and

now serves on the advisory board of the International Bible Reading Association

alongside Frank Wright the president and CEO of the conservative National

Religious Broadcasters. (Wrights official online biography notes that, "As an ordained

Elder in the Presbyterian Church (PCA), Dr. Wright has a long history of involvement


27/28

in Christian ministry, including a 25-year association with the ministries of Dr. D.

James Kennedy." For those who dont know, Dr. Kennedy happens to be a right -wing

American televangelist.)

Access to water is a basic human right with which few would quibble. So here it is worth

introducing another former CARE employee, Steve Werner, who until recently served

as the executive director of Water For People. Werners replacement at Water For

People (in 2009) was Ned Breslin, a board member of Millennium Water Alliance a

group that, along with Water For People and CARE, is part of an umbrella organization

(formed in 2006) known as the Global Water Challenge. This coalition focuses on

providing "sustainable solutions for universal access to safe drinking water and

sanitation," and their "chief architect" was Coca-Colas "corporate social responsibilityguru Dan Vermeer. In 2007 Paul Faeth joined Global Water Challenge whose board

includes WWF imperialist, and William Reilly, former CARE International president,

Peter Bell as their president after serving for five years as the managing director of

the elite stronghold, the World Resources Institute. However, considering the

evangelical nature of Living Water International, it is interesting to return to Werners

background, as he is a board member of the US-focused Water Advocates where he

serves alongside three individuals, two of whom include Christian activist David

Douglas (who is a trustee of Wallace Genetic Foundation, a foundation that funds a

variety of agents of ecological imperialism like Conservation International and the

World Wildlife Fund), and CARE employee Peter Lochery (who is vice chair of the

Millennium Water Alliance); and their only listed consultant is the former CEO of the

neoliberal National Wildlife Federation, Mark Van Putten. Clearly more research needs

to be undertaken to determine the real reason why so many corporate elites are

presently so worried about human rights in Africa (at a guess I would say that perhaps

it has something to do with imperialism).

[30] AfricaGlobal representative Warren Weinstein was an AOPIG member, and

William Jefferson in turn is tied to a firm called Schaffer Global Group which owns the

lobbying and business-development company AfricaGlobal, a company that counts the

founder of the Corporate Council on Africa, David Miller, among its two co-founders.

Miller was a member of the African Growth and Opportunity Act Coalition, Inc. that

lobbied for the creation of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), an Act that

was "created to expand US economic and strategic interests in Africa." (Kelly

Harris,"AGOA: Old win in new bottles or enlightened U.S. foreign policy?," (pdf) a

paper presented to the panel on Foreign Policy in the New Administration at the 38th
http://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh30http://www.ncpsa.net/papers/Harris.Kelly.pdfhttp://www.ncpsa.net/papers/Harris.Kelly.pdfhttp://www.voltairenet.org/article164711.html#nh30


28/28

Annual Conference of the North Carolina Political Science Association, February 27,

2009.)

For more on oil imperialism in Africa, see John Ghazvinian, Untapped: The Scramble

for Africas Oil(Harcourt, 2007).

"free africa foundation: buying freedom for africa", michael barker

Documents