Tag: Broederbond

Who is Naspers?

naspers_cartoon

by Albert Brenner

The bewildered herd must be governed by a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality. (Walther Lippmann)

Knowledge is power… and power is money. In order to make big money, you need big money.

The first big fund to invest in Naspers was Comerica Foreign Equity. This fund is run by World Asset Management, the investment arm of HSBC. This bank has its main (private) office on Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands.

And guess where Naspers’s investment arm, MIH Holdings Limited, is located? Yes, in the exact same street of this tax-haven of the (mostly) British elite. Just think about the above every time you pay a small fortune to watch M-Net, SuperSport, DSTV, et cetera.

Now, HSBC is the world’s 3rd largest bank with $2.36 trillion in assets. Formerly known as Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation, HSBC is one of the most unscrupulous banks ever. It has been the cash cow of the British elite since its inception as a repository for British Crown opium proceeds accrued during the Chinese Opium Wars.

Armed with a royal charter, Lord Shelbourne started the Chinese opium trade in 1783 with merchants from the East India Company. Shelbourne’s main spin-doctor was Adam Smith. The latter worked for the East India Company, which was formed from the slave-trading Levant Company and later became known as Chatham House. The latter is home to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), the second most influential think tank in the world.

The RIIA was founded in 1920. Its American sister institute, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), was founded one year later. Walther Lippmann, the Pulitzer-Prize essayist, journalist and mass-media genius was one of the founding members of the CFR. But more about him later. Needless to say, these two organizations, the RIIA and CFR, work hand in hand.

Now, the CFR is run by some of the best brains in America. They are truly exceptional people. They basically run the State Department, the CIA and are connected to nearly everybody that matters in the business and academia in America, and globally.

The CIA operates under the cover of various organizations when it comes to furthering America’s strategic and economic interests. The Ford Foundation is one of the main fronts of the CIA (i.e. the CFR).

In June 1985, this foundation hosted the first ever meeting between the ANC and the Broederbond (i.e. the NP).

The conference took place in Glen Cove, Long Island on June 1st. The main players were Professor JP De Lange (Head of the Broederbond) and ANC officials, Thabo Mbeki, Mac Maharaj and Seretse Choadi.

This meeting did not produce the results the CFR were hoping for. So they summoned the (economic) artillery, David Rockefeller.

Along with being a CFR director for 46 years, David Rockefeller served as chairman of the board from 1970-85 and was the organization’s honorary chairman till 2001. During this time, he was also chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank.

On 31st July 1985, Chase Manhattan decided not to roll over South Africa’s debt. Apparently Pik Botha’s traitor heart nearly stopped beating: “I will never forget the night of July 31 when [Minister of Finance] Barend du Plessis phoned me … [He said]: ‘Pik, I must tell you that the country is facing inevitable bankruptcy … The process has started.'” (source).

The rest is history.

So what has this got to do with Naspers? Well, it just shows that Naspers is just another appendage of interest groups beyond the borders of South Africa. In other words, it does not serve the interests of South Africans. But then, neither do other media giants in South Africa.

Caxton/CTP’s chairman in the early 1990s was Van Zyl Slabbert, who also became the chairman of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Slabbert was the useful idiot of CFR member George Soros. The latter, through his Open Society Foundation, sponsored Slabbert and super-useful idiot Max Du Preez… especially with his anti-Afrikaner Vrye Weekblad newspaper.

So, every time you hear about the Davos Afrikaner called Koos Bekker, the big boss of the 33rd largest media company in the world called Naspers (worth R344 billion or $34,88 billion) just know that he is just another witting puppet on an Anglo-American string.

He is just like those rich Boer farmers who became hensoppers during the Anglo-Boer War… selling out their own people purely for profit. Nothing more, nothing less.

Meaning that the “Who is Naspers?” question is not really that interesting. The really interesting question is the “why” behind Naspers.

Answering this question will take us through the wonderful worlds of Baudrillard (e.g. see my article Mandela’s Empire), Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the Washington Consensus, Bretton Woods, Walther Lippmann’s  Public Opinion… all the way back to Edmund Husserl`s phenomenology (e.g. see my article Why Mandela).

It is a fact that people can only make sense of Reality through “ideal meanings”. Those ideal “pictures in your head” prevent you, more often than not, to “… come to judgment by critical thinking” (Walther Lippmann).

Journalism is “intelligence work” and journalists are a link between policymakers and the public, according to Lippmann.

Meaning that journalists (and the media companies that employ them, e.g. Naspers) always sanitize the Truth at the behest of their pay-masters…

(to be continued)

Issues of race dominate interviews for judicial positions

Issues of race, ethnicity and transformation dominated the Judicial Service Commission’s first day of interviews for judicial positions.

On Tuesday, the importance of Zulu ethnicity being a prerequisite to holding one of the top two positions in the KwaZulu-Natal division was raised during the interviews of judges Achmat Jappie and Mjabuliseni Madondo for the vacant deputy judge president position in that division.

The other candidate vying for one of the three vacant positions on the North and South Gauteng High Court bench, advocate David Fourie, was also questioned about his former membership of the “two secret organisations”, the Afrikaner Broederbond (which he resigned from in 1993), and its youth wing, the Ruiterwag.

Tanya Brenner, white, was especially grilled by advocate Dumisane Ntsebeza, and then by fellow commissioner KwaZulu-Natal state attorney Krish Govender on her statement that she appeared not to know enough black counsel to brief at her private practice.

Responding to Ntsebeza’s suggestion that there appeared to be an impression among litigants and lawyers that “briefing black people is taking a risk”, Brenner said: “With respect, I wouldn’t brief any person that I didn’t know … It doesn’t have a colour sensitivity.”

Ntsebeza at one point mused on how, 18 years after the end of apartheid, Brenner had been unable to acquaint herself with black counsel during her time as an attorney with the high profile Feinsteins law firm in Johannesburg, later in private practice or while serving as an acting judge in that division over the past eight years.

Brenner was also quizzed on a perceived lack of judgment when she admitted she had kept doing private attorney work while acting as a judge – which goes against section 11 of the Supreme Courts Act. The section requires an acting judge in such a position to get special permission from the justice minister.

Some of the commissioners was however convinced by Fourie’s reconstruction as a committed South African despite at one time belonging to the Broederbond, the secret Afrikaner society that wielded considerable political and economic influence during apartheid.

Ntsebeza noted the “values of our Constitution are the antithesis of what these organisations stood for” and asked Fourie whether his attitude “had changed since you were a member of these organisations?” To which Fourie responded in the affirmative.

Said Fourie: “I made a terrible mistake in my past, and I am haunted until this day. I am sorry,”

Recalling his time as a commissioner at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ntsebeza, noted for that commission, it was imperative there was “an acknowledgment that should precede reconciliation”, and that he was “impressed by [Fourie’s] honesty and all the responses you have given”.

Fourie was also asked about how he would help assist young black judges if appointed and also on his record as convener of the transformation committee of the Pretoria Bar.

Madondo had in an interview for the judge president position last year that caused controversy when he had stated that the judge president of the KwaZulu-Natal division should be an ethnic Zulu, as that part of the population was in the majority in the province and that the judge president would have to interact in his official duties with political leadership of the same ethnic group.

This time around he suggested that these “social dynamics” made it a requirement that at least one of the judicial leaders in the province should be someone sensitive to that ethnicity and their historical and contemporary experiences.

The other contender for that position, Achmat Jappie, is the longest serving judge in that division and has the support of the majority of his colleagues on that bench, as well as the Advocates for Transformation in the province, the General Council of the Bar and the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s law school. During his interview Jappie noted wryly that he was classified “other coloured” during apartheid; “whatever that means”. He noted there were social issues that required attention in KwaZulu-Natal but was not convinced that his racial classification impacted the work that needed to be done as deputy judge president.

The commission also interviewed acting Labour Court judge president Basheer Waglay – the sole candidate for that position. He appeared to have a convivial interview.