by Kerry Bolton
While Portuguese fled Mozambique for their lives, the Money Power moved in, unperturbed by noises about ‘nationalisation.’ Millions in aid money came in from the West, and lucrative business deals were made regardless of nationalisation. Likewise, in Zambia, when Kaunda grabbed a 51 per cent share in the Anglo-American owned copper industry, Oppenheimer regarded ‘government participation’ as a welcome move.[53]
The AAI is not some Marxist lobby or a group of naïve, wealthy liberals who have been tricked into funding communistic causes. It has since its foundation been a nexus between the U.S. Government and Big Business in shaping post-colonial Africa and providing the personnel for the bureaucracies. The present Chair of the AAI Board, Kofi Appenteng, has been employed with Thacher Proffitt, corporate lawyers, is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and is on the board of the Ford Foundation.[54]
The President and CEO of AAI is Mora McLean, who came from the Ford Foundation, and is a CFR member. Members of the Board include: William Asiko, President of the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation & Director of Public Affairs and Communications for the Coca-Cola Company in Africa; Rosalind Kainyah, ex-Director of Public Affairs, USA for the De Beers Group, part of the Oppenheimer mining conglomerate; George Kirkland, Executive Vice President, Chevron Corporation; Carlton Masters, President & CEO, GoodWorks International, a CFR member; Steven Pfeiffer, Chair, Executive Committee, Fulbright & Jaworski LLP, corporate law firm, a CFR member; Maurice Tempelsman, past Chairman AAI, Senior Partner, Leon Tempelsman & Son (involved with mining, investments and business development), and ‘Chairman of the Board of Directors of Lazare Kaplan International Inc., the largest cutter and polisher of ‘ideal cut diamonds in the United States,’ member of the International Advisory Council of the American Stock Exchange, member of the CFR, etc.[55]
The AAI provides a few profiles of the 23,000 Africans they have trained, such as: Joy Phumaphi, Botswana, Vice President and Head of the World Bank Human Development Network; Dr. Mbuyamu I. Matungulu, Congo, Mission Chief to Benin, International Monetary Fund; Charles Boamah, Controller and Director, African Development Bank; H. E. Nahas Angula, Prime Minister, Republic of Namibia; Mamadou Dia (Senegal) Country Director for Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, Africa Region, World Bank; Dr. Renosi Mokate, Deputy Governor, South African Reserve Bank, et al.[56]
It would be naive to think that the United States, in conjunction with the global financial powers, have trained 23,000 Africans to take over post-colonial Africa simply as a humanitarian gesture. Some of the sponsors of AAI include for 2008 (the latest available): Barrick Gold Corporation; Citibank; Coca-Cola Africa; Credit Suisse; Chevron; Coca-Cola Africa Foundation; De Beers Group; Exxon Mobil Corporation; Fulbright and Jaworski LLP; Global Aluminium; Goldman Sachs & Co.; H. J. Heinz Co.; J. P. Morgan Chase; Lazare Kaplan International Inc.; PepsiCo. Inc.; Shell International Limited; Thacher Proffitt & Wood LLP; H. J. Heinz Company Foundation; American Express Foundation; International Finance Corporation, etc.[57]
Note the involvement of the Council on Foreign Relations, and luminaries of the Money Power such as Goldman Sachs, Oppenheimer, and Rockefeller interests.
Belgian Congo
The former Belgian colony of the Congo represents a special story on the incursions of global neo-colonialism, the civil war between the central authority and the breakaway province of Katanga reflecting rivalry between two factions of monopoly capital. U.S. Congressman Donald Bruce exposed the forces at work in a speech before Congress in 1960.When Katanga attempted to secede, United Nations troops invaded it. Congressman Bruce showed that the reason for the UN invasion of Katanga was to secure for the American Anaconda group the copper mining interests owned by Union Minière du Haute Congo. A consortium had been formed by American and Swedish companies, and was directed by Bo Hammarskjöld, brother of the UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. Sture Linner, UN representative in the Congo, had been the chief engineer of the Liberian-American Mining Company (LAMCO), one of the consortia. UN Congo ‘experts’ Sven Schwartz and Borj Hjortsberg-Nordlund, were both also part of LAMCO. From the U.S. Fowler Hamilton, the State Department official responsible for implementing U.S. policy through USAID in Africa, was part of the U.S.-Swedish consortium. Congressman Bruce’s investigation found that prior to the UN invasion, Schwartz had been sent to the Congo by the UN to undertake a study on mining. His recommendation was that Union Minière interests should be nationalised.[58]
U.S. policy operated through the United Nations, with the aim of undermining the Katanga secessionist government of Tshombe, where Belgian mining interests were maintained and which had the support of Rhodesian and Belgian interests. The UN invasion of Katanga aroused much ill-will in Europe against the US-UN action.[59] The UN forces went on a rampage through Katanga, where ambulances were strafed and bombed and civilians were shot.[60]
In 1974 what is now called Zaire served notice on 50,000 non-Blacks that their properties and businesses had been nationalised.[61] Conversely, American Big Business was described as ‘a financial power in the country.’[62]
Last Empire: America’s Assault on Portuguese Africa
While the Portuguese armed forces were engaged in fighting Black guerrillas in Angola and Mozambique, in their rear they were being ‘stabbed in the back’ by a much more lethal enemy based in the United States. The Portuguese territories in Southern Africa were the last vestiges of European colonial power that not long ago had spanned the world.
Imperial Scuttle
While most of the European colonial powers had been engaged in a fratricidal war that left them materially and morally ravished, and in debt to international finance, Portugal was an exception, wisely having maintained her neutrality during World War II, and continued to develop her African territories. The Portuguese Empire administered by a Christian Corporatist[63] ‘New State’ inaugurated by Professor Salazar, was a major obstacle to the post-1945 new world order.
While the focus for superpower incursions into Africa and other decolonised territories was on the USSR, which trained its African puppets at Patrice Lumumba University, few realised that the major centre of subversion was the United States. While Patrice Lumumba University was established in 1960,[64] the United States had established the Africa-America Institute (AAI) in 1953 to train their Black puppets.
Although the Portuguese regular army had uprooted FRELIMO in Mozambique in 1970 with Operation Gordian Knot, that terrorist organisation continued receiving funds from the Ford Foundation via the Mozambique Institute.[65] Black terrorists were provided with a refuge and training under the AAI’s East Africa Refugee Program (1962–71) and the Southern African Training Program (1971–76).
Fernando Andresen Guimarães, a director of the UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations, stated that the United States gave support at an early stage to the murderous Holden Roberto:
The Kennedy administration also acted beyond the United Nations and sought directly to support an anti-colonial movement against the Portuguese. Holden Roberto, the U.P.A. (and later FNLA leader) had by the end of the 1950s established a wide range of contacts in the United States. Due to its prominent role in the anti-colonial uprising in northern Angola in 1961, the U.P.A. was the Angolan nationalist movement with the most international exposure. Washington authorized the C.I.A. to extend support to Roberto and U.P.A.[66]
In 1959 Roberto travelled to Washington where he met President Kennedy. U.S. support to Roberto included a university scholarship programme for African students from the Portuguese colonies.
U.S. military assistance for Portugal was cut from $US25,000,000 to $3,000,000 and a ban on commercial sales of arms to Portugal was imposed in mid-1961. The United States supported the prohibition on the use of NATO war materiel in Africa.[67] From 1965 U.S. military aid to Portugal was reduced to $1,000,000 annually, and mostly consisted of spare parts.[68] That year the U.S. State Dep
artment advised its Embassy in Lisbon what its line should be towards Salazar:
Basis for U.S. policies: . . . U.S. believes change fact of life in our era. Changes in Portuguese Africa as inevitable as elsewhere in world, though Portugal still has power to decide whether they will take place with her or against her. We believe failure to respond now to self-determination aspirations of Portuguese Africans will result in changes detrimental to interests of United States and West as well as to Portugal. This is why U.S. continually urges Portugal in its own interest become champion of political changes which will take place in her territories and, being based on pragmatic principles, it is why U.S. policies in respect this situation have not changed and should not be expected to change. . . .
You should also tell Salazar U.S. gratified at indications certain African leaders interested in further talks with Portugal. We plan emphasise with Foreign Ministry importance these conversations and our concern that there be no prior conditions attached to them. We hope Portugal will adopt constructive attitude toward such meetings.[69]
As we have seen previously in regard to U.S. policies towards the French in Indochina and Algeria, Washington feared alienating Portugal during the Cold War, but the United States’ support for Roberto continued nonetheless. The policy was typically duplicitous, and a classic ‘stab in the back.’ Roberto’s adviser was John Marcum, an adviser to Averell Harriman[70] on the Portuguese colonies. Already in 1964 there was a close association between Americans in Leopoldville linked to the U.S. Embassy, the CIA, Congolese political circles and Holden Roberto. ‘Later in 1975, this triangle was to be instrumental in formulating the context for the U.S. decision to provide covert support for the FNLA.’[71]
However, U.S. support to Roberto was more significant than indicated by Guimarães. Since 1969, Roberto had been on a $10,000-a-year retainer from the CIA.[72] Yet, despite the U.S. support for the FNLA to supposedly counter the Soviet-backed MPLA, the official policy was not to discourage the MPLA.[73] What is not stated in such analyses is that international power politics and Cold War rivalries were being played out over the corpses of White settlers. Roberto, as the ‘moderate’ option to the Soviet-backed MPLA, was later to recall that when his gang invaded from their base in the Congo in 1961, overrunning farms, government outposts, and trading centres, ‘this time the slaves did not cower. They massacred everything.’[74] The subsequent 27-year civil war between the FNLA and the MPLA resulted in 500,000 deaths.
Recolonisation
The AAI’s initial programme for ‘refugees’ (i.e., fleeing terrorists) from Portuguese Africa was for the training of personnel ‘in anticipation of independence.’ After Portugal’s departure from Africa the program was directed towards ‘Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, for employment in their countries of asylum with a later focus on the repatriation of trainees.’[75] This programme was continued through 1976–1981, with funds from USAID.[76]
In 1975, soon after the Portuguese departure from Africa, the AAI established the Development Training Program for Portuguese-Speaking Africa (DTPSA) to train the post-colonial leadership for the former colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé, and Príncipe. This programme was also funded by USAID,[77] which serves as a means by which U.S. influence is extended worldwide via foreign aid.
As the European colonial administrators moved out of Africa, international corporations extended their own form of colonialism by entering into partnerships with the new African leaders. Behind the façade of nationalisation, global capital embarked on lucrative business arrangements under the protection of the post-colonial tyrannies. For example, the day that Mozambique’s President Samora Machel announced his nationalisation programme General Mining, linked with the Oppenheimer dynasty’s Anglo-American Corporation, negotiated with the new regime a deal for bulk-handling chrome loading equipment.[78]
The Portuguese ‘New State’ that had outlived all other such experiments from Europe to South America, was an anomaly in a world that was being prepared for ‘globalisation’ and the ‘new world order.’ Salazar’s ‘New State’ subordinated economics to High Policy, which in turn was based on traditional Christian European values. Such a state could not be allowed to endure in a world that had to be reshaped on economic principles. Journalist and author Ivor Benson, who lived in Africa and knew the situation well, having been an adviser to the Rhodesian government of Ian Smith, commented that ‘in Portugal politics has remained in power and has not become subordinate to economics . . . they have not made the Gross National Product their God. Therefore in Portugal economics is the servant, not the master.’[79]
Unlike most politicians then or since, the Portuguese statesmen were conscious of what they were up against. Dr. Franco Noguieira, Portuguese Foreign Minister, stated of the subterranean forces at work in Africa:
Africa has been subjected to a regime that excludes European interests and African interests as well, neither being sufficiently strong to impose themselves. A form of autonomy and independence has been created which ensures the destruction of the old forms of sovereignty and permits the setting up of new forms of sovereignty so precarious and so artificial that it is an easy matter to dominate them. The result has been that the real autonomy and the real control are to be found outside the frontiers of the new political units. The aim is to dominate Angola and Mozambique and to include them in the spheres of foreign influences, to utilise their economic and strategic positions for the benefit of other Powers.[80]
The scuttling of Portuguese Africa followed soon after the ‘Carnation Revolution,’ the leftist army coup of junior officers in 1974 that toppled the New State; a revolution moreover that had been precipitated by years of economic strain as Portugal fought to hold her empire. The war against the Soviet and U.S. backed terrorists had accounted for 42 per cent of Portugal’s annual budget.[81] However, the new leader of Portugal, General Spinola, had nonetheless aimed to establish a Portuguese federation and keep the African territories within the Portuguese sphere, but Spinola was soon passé. The way was opened for the continuation of the onslaught against the final bastions of European rule in Africa: Rhodesia and South Africa.
Rhodesia and South Africa
The destruction of White rule in the Portuguese Territories was the beginning of the end for the White geopolitical bloc of Southern Africa. Rhodesia was targeted next. In 1965 R. D. McClelland, U.S. Consul-General in Rhodesia, gave the American green light to the terrorists when he stated that,
there is as much legitimacy in revolution as there is in government. To be other than a revolutionary is to defend the status quo, and the status quo was colonialism. It is the innate role of the revolutionary, and this applies a fortiori to the still white-dominated southern part of the Continent, to change an existing and unsatisfactory order.[82]
Pressure began to be applied on Rhodesia when U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met with South Africa’s Vorster to lay down the law on the northern neighbour, while simultaneously ‘South Africa suddenly found the money taps of America and Europe inexplicably turned off,’ according to G. Sutton, editor of the South African Financial Mail. The strategy to destroy White rule in Rhodesia followed a familiar tactic: a pincer movement of terrorism from below and economic pressure from above. These names stand out in the elimination of White rule:
Lord Soames, last Governor of Rhodesia, installed for the purpose of handing over political power, was a director of N. M. Rothschilds and the National Westminster Bank;
‘Tiny’ Rowland, CEO of Lonhro, involved in brokering the Lancaster House talks of 1979, which settled the political future of Rhodesia;
British Foreign Minister Lord Carrington, a director of Hambros Bank, Chairman of ANZ Bank, and a member of the Trilateral Commission, a globalist think tank founded by David Rockefeller; chairman of the globalist Bilderberg Group, and later a member of Kissinger Ass
ociates, the global consultancy firm of omnipresent former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
South Africa, the final redoubt of White rule anywhere in the world, lost its vision after the assassination of Verwoerd.[83] Like Portugal under Salazar and Caetano, Verwoerd knew precisely what the forces were at work against European authority, stating of Harry Oppenheimer’s economic empire: ‘With all that money power and with his powerful machine which is spread over the whole country, he can, if he so chooses, exercise enormous interference against the Government and against the state.’[84]
Oppenheimer for his part explained precisely why the Money Power opposed White authority in Africa, and it has nothing to do with humanitarian ideals: ‘Nationalist politics have made it impossible to make use of Black labour.’[85]
Legacy
In 1959 J. G. van der Meersch of the international banks J. H. Whitney and Dillon Reed & Co. formed the American-Eurafrican Development Corporation ‘with the object of meeting the financial needs of emerging African nations when the former colonial powers left.’[86] Mr. van der Meersch stated with exactitude what lay behind the façade of ‘human rights,’ ‘equality,’ decolonisation,’ ‘opposition to apartheid,’ and the other facile slogans that were used to remove White rule from Africa and replace it with cosmopolitan finance.
