Hennie van Vuuren: Apartheid Guns and Money - A Tale of Profit

Book presentation / Talk

"Apartheid, Guns and Money... is probably the single most important book that has been written about South-Africa for the last 20 years.", Prof. Achille Mbembe, author of Critique of Black Reason

Hennie van Vuuren's book Apartheid Guns and Money reads like a thriller. It describes how the white minority regime in South Africa kept itself alive when it came under increasing pressure in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite international sanctions, a clandestine corruption network comprising nearly 50 countries provided the apartheid state with goods from abroad. As is well known, these included actors from Switzerland, whose banks marketed South African gold and ensured the flow of money to South Africa. In addition, there were trusting relations between the civil and military elites of both countries. Wire-pullers in European governments, secret services, companies and banks supplied weapons and laundered money. And they also collected money for circumventing the international sanctions against South Africa. Whistleblowers were silenced or murdered. These crimes were never dealt with. Even after the end of apartheid, the corrupt networks built up at that time continue to work in today's democratic South Africa and cause great damage. With years of meticulous archive work in eight countries and numerous interviews, Hennie van Vuuren sheds light for the first time on prominent statesmen, arms dealers, bankers, parliamentarians, spies and secret lobby groups that made the long survival of apartheid possible.

Hennie van Vuuren is a political scientist, anti-corruption researcher and journalist. His Cape Town-based organization Open Secrets is accountable for these crimes, including in Europe, and, if necessary, in court. The author reads Swiss passages from his book and discusses his research with the anti-corruption expert and professor of criminal law at the University of Basel, Mark Pieth.

Tickets: Admission free
Language: German, English
Book: https://www.opensecrets.org.za/agm/

Organised by KEESA, Campaign for Debt Relief and Compensation in Southern Africa, and Tim Zulauf/KMU productions as part of the theatre project Converting Eviction (AT)

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