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Subject: TS: South Africa: Operation Thunderstorm (1/2)
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/** reg.safrica: 218.0 **/
** Topic: Operation Thunderstorm in S.A. **
** Written  1:21 am  Jan  6, 1993 by [e-mail] in cdp:reg.safrica **
Copyright GEHEIM / TOP SECRET MAGAZINE
Mr. Michael Opperskalski
P.O. Box 270324
5000 Koeln (Cologne) 1
Germany
Mail: [e-mail]

Operation Thunderstorm in South Africa

by Billy van der Merve

[Billy van der Merve is the pseudonym of a high-ranking officer
in the South African intelligence community, with whom Top Secret
communicates regularly. The information passed on by Mr. van der
Merve has been carefully edited by Top Secret's Editor Michael
Opperskalski for journalistic and security reasons]

Inkathagate is haunting the media like a ghost, and not only in
South Africa. On its face, this is a matter of the South African
government's financing of the Inkatha Freedom Party of Chief
Mangosuthu Buthelezi. It is a known fact that Inkatha is a puppet
organization manipulated by the South African apartheid regime.
Proofs of the covert cooperation between Inkatha and Pretoria's
intelligence services and security forces have been published by
Top Secret.[cf. the detailed account in Top Secret, Autumn
1990, p. 28 ff. and other journals] But the extent of Inkathagate
that has been publicly confessed to - after long hesitation - has
revealed only the tip of a massive iceberg: attempts to retain
"white power" in the Cape region through a reformed and not openly
proclaimed form of apartheid.

The following facts that have come to light are no longer denied
by the apartheid regime:

1) In 1990 alone, Buthelezi's party received 250,000 rands from a
secret fund of de Klerk's government.

2) Since 1986, more than 1.5 million rands were channeled into
Inkatha's so-called labor organization, the United Workers Union
of South Africa (UWUSA). Furthermore, the founding of UWUSA in
1986 was a "police project" aimed at counteracting the growing
influence of the South African labor-union association COSATU. In
accordance with this aim, UWUSA members primarily acted as
militant strike-breakers and armed agents provocateurs against
strike actions organized by COSATU. In the ensuing clashes, it was
generally COSATU members who ended up among the dead and wounded.
This funding was organized by influential members of de Klerk's
Cabinet, in particular by Minister for Law and Order Adriaan Vlok
and Foreign Minister "Pik" Botha. However, Top Secret has received
reliable information from South African secret service circles
that de Klerk not only was personally informed by his National
Intelligence Service (NIS) about the financial assistance being
received by Inkatha but expressly authorized it.

These facts make it clear that Inkathagate was not due to mistakes
made by individual ministers; rather, it was a project of the
government as a whole, aimed at building up Inkatha, by all
available means, as a strong rival of the African National
Congress (ANC).

The flood of Inkathagate disclosures has revealed what immense
financial reserves the apartheid regime made available for such
"dirty tricks". During the past four years, the South African
government's fund for financing this kind of covert operation
amounted to the amazing sum of 1.5 billion Rands. For 1991,
Pretoria's strategists had 380 million Rands available for this
purpose. This fund, distributed among various ministries and
governmental as well as semi-governmental institutions, was
established in 1978 as part of an action to support "services of a
covert nature" on behalf of the "national interest".[cf. "die
tageszeitung" (Berlin), 24 July 1991]

Experiences in Namibia

Regular readers of Top Secret will remember that in 1989, during
the election campaign that preceded Namibia's independence, the
Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, Michael Opperskalski, and his
British colleague Nick Wright succeeded in working together for
almost two weeks, in disguise, with Nico Basson, who was at that
time the Chief of Progaganda of the South African military secret
service, DMI.[cf. the detailed account in Top Secret, Namibia
Special, October 1989] During this period they learned in detail
about the "dirty tricks" which Pretoria was using in its attempts
to prevent SWAPO from winning the election, as it was generally
expected to do. The facts that Top Secret was the first to publish
have now been confirmed by Nico Basson himself.[cf.  Independent,
11 June 1991; SouthScan, 7 June 1991 and 14 July 1991, etc.]

The South African government strategy which was given the code
name Operation Agree was essentially based on two elements: the
creation of one or more alternatives to SWAPO, and a massive
campaign of election fraud and intimidation. (It was assumed that
Sam Nujoma's liberation movement would win the election, but the
government's aim was to keep his majority under the two-thirds
that was necessary for drawing up the Constitution and for making
later constitutional amendments.)

Before and during the election, the South African regime financed
at least seven anti-SWAPO parties through secret channels, in the
amount of at least 35 million US dollars. Most of this money was
collected by the strongest of these parties, the Democratic
Turnhalle Alliance (DTA). The rest went to: the SWAPO Democrats,
the Patriotic Unity Movement (PUM), the National Patriotic Front
of Namibia (NPF), the Workers' Revolutionary Party, the United
Democratic Front of Namibia, the Parents' Committee, and the
Political Consultative Committee (PCC). Money from the South
African secret service fund also was received by the most
important oppositional newspaper in Namibia, the Times of Namibia,
which is linked with the DTA.

In their propaganda, the authors of this covert strategy who were
in Nico Basson's circle concentrated on organizing a national and
international campaign accusing SWAPO of torturing its own members
who were in exile. The sponsor of this campaign was the so-called
Parents' Committee. Michael Opperskalski and Nick Wright were
eyewitnesses as Nico Basson - officially Director of the South
African DMI firm African Communication Project and employed by the
DTA for press and propaganda work - guided this campaign from Room
111 of the building which at that time was the headquarters of the
DTA.

Election fraud and intimidation were everyday occurrences in
Namibia, even as newspapers throughout the world were spinning
tales about "free and fair" elections. Not only did South African
citizens and members of the Angolan contra army UNITA register to
vote; not only did election booths never arrive at some towns in
northern Namibia which were SWAPO strongholds; members of the DMI
and the CCB were also responsible for numerous acts of violence
during the elections, including the creation of an armed troop of
dissidents commanded by the Vice President of the DTA, Mishake
Muyango.[cf. the detailed account in Top Secret, Namibia
Special, October 1989] The fact that the violence in Namibia did
not eventually reach South African proportions is due less to the
good will of those responsible for this campaign than to the large
numbers of international observers who were present.

Nonetheless, Pretoria was able to achieve one success: it managed
to push SWAPO's electoral victory under the decisive two-thirds
majority. This has forced SWAPO, the ruling party in Namibia as a
result of that election, to make drastic constitutional and
political compromises with the opposition, and thus with South
Africa. At the same time, it has laid the groundwork for the
manipulation that can be expected during the regional and local
elections at the end of this year and the next national election
in 1994.

Operation Agree II

We can expect to see a scenario similar to the one that was staged
during the first national election in 1989 - but this time around,
without the presence of international observers, which was a
critical obstacle for Pretoria in 1989. As part of the South
African government's pre-election preparations, even before the
revelations of Inkathagate, ca. 80 million Rands were transferred
from secret funds to various secret accounts in Namibia and South
Africa, stashed away to be used later for precisely targeted
intervention in the Namibian elections. Most of these funds will
once again be spent on the opposition party DTA and specifically
targeted media operations against SWAPO.

The South African media strategists intend to exploit the economic
and political problems that have resulted from Namibia's still-new
independence, which have in part been engineered by Pretoria's
strategists. In Nico Basson's words, South Africa intends to "let
SWAPO make every possible mistake".[quoted from SouthScan, 14
June 1991]

And such "mistakes", especially economic ones, are being
"organized" so that SWAPO can then be accused of corruption and
mismanagement. However, the fact is that South Africa is pumping
money out of Namibia on a massive scale - legally, semi-legally,
and illegally. This is being organized by persons who hold various
positions within the Namibian government and operate as agents of
Pretoria's influence. Many of them have close connections to the
South African secret-service community.

We can provide several examples here. The Tender Board is in
charge of granting publicly advertised government contracts in
Namibia. This board has been, and continues to be, indirectly
influenced by South Africa, which has resulted in the granting of
numerous contracts to South African firms, firms partially owned
by South Africans, and "Namibian" firms which are fronts for South
African ones. In this way, money is filtered out of the country
legally, and at the same time contracts of the Namibian government
are influenced by South Africa. These operations are made easier
by the fact that the rand is the official currency of both Namibia
and South Africa, and that the Namibian banking system is
controlled by its "big neighbor".

In this connection, South African secret-service circles leaked to
us the information that a certain Mr. W.N. Greef plays a key role
in these operations on the Namibian Tender Board. According to our
informants, Greef has excellect contacts with the South African
secret services and coordinates his activities with them. He works
together with DMI agent John Engels, who has "built up" South
African front firms in Namibia, e.g. a small chemical firm which
was until recently active in the logistical support of the UNITA
contras. Another person of this type is a certain Cohen van Zyl,
whose contacts include people at the highest levels of the South
African government.

Once the Namibian election campaign has reached its "hot phase",
all needed will stand ready to organize intimidation campaigns at
the command of South African strategists, as they did in 1989. The
network of the CCB and the DMI has not been completely destroyed,
nor have the members of the special units Kovoet, Battalion 101,
and Battalion 102 totally disappeared from the scene. And Mishake
Muyango's armed (DTA) dissidents - who are in many cases identical
with the special units created by South Africa during the colonial
period to combat SWAPO - can be reactivated. Some of these
personnel are still in Namibia, others are among the UNITA ranks,
still others are in the Namibian harbor Walfish Bay, which is
still occupied by South Africa, or concentrated in the South
African military base at Uitenhage, not far from the Namibian
border. In the words of a source already known to us, Nico Basson:
"Intimidation is the only thing that works in Africa."[quoted
from The Independent, 11 June 1991] Furthermore, South Africa has
placed important influence agents in the Namibian security
apparatus, who are in a position to carry out destabilization
activities: Henk Reeder, currently head of the Namibian Defence
Force, and Derek Brune, now head of security in Namibian President
Sam Nujoma's office.[cf. also: SouthScan, 14 June 1991] Both
are DMI agents.

Intervention in Angola Too

Suddenly, almost unnoticed by international public opinion, peace
reigns in Angola. After 16 years of war, the ruling MPLA and Jonas
Savimbi's UNITA agreed in early summer of this year on a truce,
free elections, a multi-party system etc. The war has devastated
this potentially rich country. Those responsible for this are
primarily the South African apartheid regime and the US
administration, which provided massive military and material aid
to Savimbi's contras - aid that included regular military
invasions directed by Pretoria - in an effort to bomb the MPLA out
of power.

But although the truce has - for the moment - ended the war, it
has not ended the massive intervention of South Africa and North
America in this country. In the last issue of Top Secret,[cf.
the detailed account in Top Secret, Autumn 1990, p. 19 ff.] we
documented, in great detail, how Washington and Pretoria armed
UNITA in 1990. This military aid was continued literally until the
final minutes of the negotioations that ended the war. Thus for
example, Hercules 130 and Dakota planes of the South African Air
Force were flying arms shipments to Savimbi's forces as far as
Jamba at least until the end of May. These planes started from two
bases: Upington, north of Cape Town, and Wonderboom near Pretoria.

The CIA too, supported by Israel, continued its shipments of
military aid until recently. Angola's neighbor Zaire was used as a
base for reserve forces and supplies.

Ship deliveries of US and Israeli weapons were observed in the
harbor of Matadi, Zaire, and CIA transport planes were observed
flying arms from Kamina Air Base in southern Zaire to Jamba. The
aim of these intensified arms deliveries to UNITA was to arm
Savimbi's troops optimally before the truce was declared, thus
preparing them for all eventualities.

Now that the truce has been declared, Washington's and Pretoria's
secret service operations have shifted more to the political
level, but their goal remains the same: a change in the power
structure in Luanda in favor of Jonas Savimbi. These activities
are being closely coordinated. According to sources in the South
African secret service, since the beginning of this year there
have been several high-level meetings for this purpose between the
CIA and the South African secret services NIS and DMI. (Top Secret
knows exact details concerning some of these meetings, including
the names of the participants; however, we cannot publish any of
these details yet, for fear of directly or indirectly revealing
the identity of our sources.) The Pretoria/Washington axis against
the MPLA is in place!

The political operations in Angola will develop according to the
pattern set by the actions in Namibia.

First, an apparatus is being built up in order to develop
effective propaganda activities on behalf of UNITA. The CIA and
the South African secret services are currently providing UNITA
with material support of its construction of a UNITA television
broadcasting station whose range will cover the whole country. The
Contras already have a radio station that can broadcast to the
whole country. Furthermore, the publication of a newspaper is
being planned. The purpose of these activities is to build up a
media empire in Angola that is controlled by Savimbi.

Official US aid provided to UNITA in this year alone amounted to
20 million dollars.[Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 13 June 1991] This is
being supplemented with funding channeled to UNITA via CIA-front
firms and right-wing "pressure groups" (e.g. Freedom Inc., the
World Anti-Communist League, the International Freedom Foundation
etc.). Further sources of funding are donations from Pretoria and
profits from the diamond and ivory smuggling that is organized by
UNITA.

The South African secret services NIS and DMI are securing their
continued influence over UNITA's propaganda activities via
structures they are building up in France. Nico Basson refers to
this operation as the "French Connection".[cf. SouthScan, 14
June 1991, 12 July 1991] One of these structures is the firm
Interaction International, which was founded by Mike Wells, a NIS
officer and long-time employee of the South African Foreign
Ministry, and DMI man Philipe Bohn. Their task will be to organize
and channel international solidarity with UNITA, working together
with other right-wing influence organizations. For example, it was
Philipe Bohn who in May 1991 put together a delegation of Members
of the European Parliament for a visit to the UNITA headquarters
in Jamba.

Wells and Bohn were brought together last year by a certain Sean
Cleary, who is employed in Johannesburg as Managing Director of a
consulting firm called Stategic Concepts. This consulting firm is
being used as a screen by none other than the National
Intelligence Service (NIS) of South Africa. Cleary already has the
appropriate experience: from 1985 on, before Namibia became
independent, he worked as a "consultant" for the
South-Africa-controlled colonial administrative structure (called
the Transitional Government of National Unity). His clients
included SWAPO opponents who headed the so-called SWAPO-D (Anderas
Shipanga) and SWANU (Moses Katjiuogua). Cleary has excellent
personal contacts with UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, and his firm
has equally good contacts with Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly,
who organize UNITA propaganda in the USA. It should also be
mentioned in this connection that Cleary has been made a member of
the South African Forum of Reconciliation, in which South African
businessmen and representatives of South African churches work
together to develop "possible solutions to the current violence in
South Africa". In short, Cleary is a strategist for the NIS.

Another element of the so-called "French Connection" is a certain
Alain Guenon, who officially has consulting contracts with the oil
company Elf and the construction firm Batignolles, and also
represents the Sagem firm, which is part of the French
military-industrial complex. All of these firms are economically
active in Angola. Thus Guenon has the task of effectively exerting
influence on the Angolan government.

But the CIA and its South African partners are still counting
primarily on the elements of military pressure, terrorism, and
organized intimidation to influence the Angolan elections for
their own benefit. To be sure, the peace treaty signed by the MPLA
and UNITA calls for the dissolution of both sides' military
formations and the creation of a national army, but elite units of
UNITA are being specifically exempted from this process. They are
being withdrawn to neighboring Zaire and are stationed there,
heavily armed, in and around Kamina Air Base, together with their
CIA leaders. In addition, during the past few weeks about 300
members of the notorious Namibian/South African unit Koevoet were
put in readiness for this purpose. A further factor is the
notorious South African army unit Battalion 32, which was built up
by Pretoria in the 'Seventies using soldiers from the Contra group
FNLA. Members of this unit are currently being prepared at their
base near Pomfret, South Africa, for possible action in Angola. In
order to ensure the fastest possible transport of this unit, a
small airport has been built during the past weeks; it is part of
this military base and provides enough landing space for C-130
transport planes to take off and land. All of these preparations
are for the purpose of holding open a military option for UNITA
and the South African government.

There is also the element of possible specifically targeted
terrorist activities in case the elections do not transpire
according to the wishes of the strategists in Washington and
Pretoria. As early as last year, a terrorist organization was
created which officially operates independently of UNITA; its name
is Catana Ardente (Burning Sword). For this purpose members of the
South African special unit Bat 21, among others, were smuggled
into Angola, disguised as returnees.[cf. in detail on Catana
Ardente: Top Secret, Autumn 1990]

These destabilization activities in Namibia and Angola and the
continuing support of the Mozambique contras of the MNR by South
African secret-service circles prove that Pretoria has not given
up its neo-colonial plans to maintain hegemony in the entire
region of southern Africa.

Operation Thunderstorm in South Africa

The activities of the apartheid regime's secret services against
the ANC in South Africa have the same characteristics as the
operations in Namibia and Angola that we have already described.
These activities go under the code name Operation Thunderstorm.
[cf. also: Top Secret, Autumn 1990]

One element of this operation is that of organized violence. For
years, the CCB and special police units have been preparing
Inkatha units for military and terrorist actions against the ANC.
The necessary weapons are provided by the South African military
secret service from stocks which it has bought from Israel and
Mozambique.[cf: ibid.] But not only Inkatha units have been
armed and trained; gangs of criminals have also received weapons
and training.[Top Secret has detailed information, e.g.
concerning Inkatha's armed bases in some townships, and the names
of criminal gangs that are armed and controlled by South African
security forces.] In the past few months, such training programs
have been intensified, notwithstanding repeated denials by the
apartheid regime and President de Klerk. One of the bases used for
this training program, Vlakplaas, has even had its capacity
expanded.[cf. also: Top Secret, Autumn 1990] And the climate of
violence is having an effect. Nico Basson says, "The message has
reached Soweto: if you're for the ANC, you're risking your life
(...) Six months ago you could see people everywhere wearing ANC
T-shirts, in front of some of the houses there were even ANC flags
waving. All that has disappeared. A result of the intimidation
campaign (...)."[quoted from: die tageszeitung, 18 June 1991]
In charge of propaganda activities are strategists from the South
African Army Troops Information Unit (SATI), which stands under
the direct control of the DMI. Its activities are coordinated by
very high-ranking officials with those of the NIS. One of the
officers in charge is a certain Colonel Tony Vermaak. The media
campaigns organized by these forces have included, e.g. the
exploitation of Winnie Mandela's trial with the goal of
discrediting her husband, Nelson Mandela; repeated "disclosures"
to the effect that the ANC is controlled by the Communist Party
(SACP); and the deliberate channeling of so-called "hot items" to
the South African press that are meant to "burn" leading figures
of the ANC. An example from the latter category is the
"disclosures" concerning alleged spy services performed by the
Chairman of the ANC Youth League for the security police. These
"disclosures" were then cleverly blamed on officials of the ANC
security service. (Especially with regard to these "disclosures"
the CIA plays an important supportive role. By way of proof, we
offer the example of the CIA-front organization International
Freedom foundation (IFF), which has an office in Johannesburg.

Recently the IFF has mounted a veritable media campaign against
the SACP.) The goals of all of these operations are to divide the
liberation movement ANC, to discredit its leading figures, and to
dissolve or compromise the strategic alliance between the ANC, the
SACP, and the labor unions (COSATU). Simultaneously, alternatives
to the ANC are being built up, as Inkathagate has proved. All of
this is taking place while the international sanctions against the
apartheid regime are crumbling and South Africa's international
isolation is being gradually broken through (including the fact
that even former friends of the ANC, such as the USSR, are
entering into close relationships with Pretoria). In an internal
NIS strategy paper whose existence is known to Top Secret, the
assumption is made that Operation Thunderstorm will maneuver the
ANC, step by step, into a position of weakness, both at the
national and the international levels, which will worsen the
country's climate of terrorism and tension, intensify the internal
conflicts and contradictions within the liberation movement, and
thus lead to a situation in which the ANC's leadership will be
ready to make compromises regarding their basic principles (with
the attendant dangers of splits, confrontations and a decrease in
the ANC's prestige among the African majority of the country.) The
NIS strategy paper also assumes that the climate of terrorism and
intimidation that has been created by the South African security
forces will severely weaken the readiness of the majority of the
South African people to actively support the ANC and participate
in its public activities. In the view of the NIS strategists,
important members of the ANC leadership are now no longer
personally inclined to throw their weight behind a "course of
radical opposition" (breaking off the negotiations, possibly
risking the organization's being again declared illegal, renewed
exile, armed struggle). "They have grown accustomed to the
advantages of legality", according to the NIS strategy paper. The
strategists continue, after they have played out several possible
political scenarios for the near future: "(...) they will return
to the negotiating table in any case, but we will be the ones who
lay down the conditions (...)."

The aim of all these considerations and strategies is obvious:
apartheid without visible apartheid, the retention of white power
at the southern tip of Africa. But secret services and their
strategists have often made mistakes in the past. Their weak point
is their strategic amalgamation with the ruling elites of their
respective countries, whose executive agents they are. This
amalgamation causes them to underestimate the dynamic force of
mass movements and overvalue the role of individual persons. And
the South African masses have had enough of apartheid - in any
form!

A message to all of the secret services and security organizations
of South Africa:

Help us to build up a more just South Africa. Apartheid is dying.
Help to make the transition to a new, more just society as
painless as possible. Do what your colleagues are doing.

Secure your future and that of your families! Contact us! Inform
us about the dirty tricks of those who would like to reverse the
wheel of history! Send us, anonymously if you choose, information,
names, and background information about secret-service operations!

Contact address:

Postfach (P.O. Box) 270324
5000 Koeln
GERMANY
Tel.: [phone]; Fax: [phone]
** End of text from cdp:reg.safrica **