BOOKS
ANTHONY BUTLER: Gripping tale of dirty apartheid arms deal outs global financiers
Society cannot grapple with ANC corruption today if it glosses over the national party corruption of yesterday
Hennie van Vuuren’s new book, Apartheid Guns and Money, is an important milestone in the understanding of corruption in contemporary SA. Analysts of corruption have mostly focused on the internal dynamics of the ANC in the pre-and postapartheid eras. Studies have traced the malfeasance that scarred the ANC’s long period in exile and the importation of malign practices when the exile-dominated leadership returned to domestic soil in the early 1990s. Deeply corrupt Bantustan politicians and officials were imported into the new SA — and into the liberation movement — after 1991. Reflection on the behaviour of trade unionists and the United Democratic Front in the 1980s has revealed corrupt churchmen and activists, proliferating bank accounts and a stubborn "struggle accounting" legacy.The exchange of government contracts for party donations and "pay for play" conventions, in which money is a prerequisite for access to government business, are commonplace. So too is the deployment of pa...
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