[vidarh]

> Would South Africa be a better place if it had become a Russian-influenced Communist country?

If it had been, it would have been thanks to idiotic operations like this.

There was no secret that there were tons of SACP members working within the ANC - they were in an explicit alliance with the ANC and COSATU (trade union alliance), and when the SACP forerunner - the CPSA - was outlawed with the introduction of apartheid, because they'd consistently opposed it, many CPSA members joined the ANC with full knowledge of the ANC. Some continued working within the ANC after the party was re-formed as SACP.

To the extent the SACP had "secret" operatives in the ANC, they were secret from the public, not from the ANC. There'd be no point - SACP members were actively encouraged by both the SACP and ANC to be active in the ANC leadership.

And the official statement on Mandela's death from the ANC [1] is what stated he was a member of the SACP Central Committee - it was not a statement from the SACP.

However, given the policies he's actually fought for, which included openly opposing a lot of the SACP's programme, this likely says more about the close mutual relationship of the SACP and the ANC than about Mandela's political views.

More importantly, prior to Mandela's arrest, the ANC was largely a social democratic leaning organization. If the CIA was concerned about Soviet influence on the ANC, getting Mandela arrested was entirely counter-productive.

Because after Mandela and other leaders was arrested, the weakened ANC radicalised massively while it rebuilt as its leadership was forced into exile where the SACP used Soviet contacts to ensure training and supplies of weapons, and many ANC leaders ended up spending a lot of time working closely with Soviet-supported governments.

The CIA basically handed the ANC to the Soviets.

> Ending apartheid, creating a communist paradise, pick one.

That's a pretty idiotic statement. The CPSA/SACP made ending racial segregation a cornerstone of their programme to lead South Africa towards socialism from the 20's, about 30 years before apartheid was even introduced, and their membership continued to risk imprisonment for about 70 years to fight apartheid.

They did so because the Soviet dominated Comintern explicitly told them to.

There were plenty of Stalinists amongst them who nobody in their right mind would want to lead a country, but there were also a great of them that gave their lives to end apartheid because they believed it was the only way forward for South Africa, and members of the SACP were also central to the creation of the Freedom Charter

[1] http://www.anc.org.za/nelson/show.php?id=10658

[digi_owl]

Best i can tell, the thinking in Langley was/is that any social democratic movement will soon after coming to power be hijacked by hardliners and turned "soviet".

Sadly their actions seems to more often than not hasten the takeover rather than counteract it.

Then again there is also the whole "banana republic" issue, that had been going on since at least WWI.

[HaePhee8]

Agreed - the pre-1994 ANC was clearly more complex than just being a puppet of the Soviet Union.

However, despite the CIA's (perhaps counter-productive) interference, it is a common misconception that the ANC's violent struggle forced the capitulation of the Apartheid government. I believe Mandela's arrest had little to nothing to do with how things played out. MK was outmatched by the government's security forces, and as long as the world wanted our gold, this could have continued indefinitely. It is tragic, but, those who gave their lives in the struggle did so only to maintain the threat of all-out civil war. Instead, what determined South Africa's future was the west's reluctant imposition of sanctions (not co-incidentally, just as the Soviet Union was falling apart).

I'm convinced that the end of Apartheid was negotiated between the nats and the West. The government knew that they were going to run out of money, in which case the ANC would become a real threat. The US first forced them to destroy their nuclear arsenal, and then the CODESAs followed as the public face of negotiation, but I suspect the actual terms of the transition was decided largely by world powers and the ANC was given instructions.

I sense a lot of outrage from Americans on this CIA/Mandela thing, but look at it this way: the US did eventually end Apartheid in a way that didn't create another Cuba, while simultaneously disarming bunch of white guys with nukes who were convinced that it was their God-given right to wield them.