Nelson Mandela & the Jews

2,909 words

French translation here

Editor’s Note:

This article demonstrates two important points. First, in South Africa as in the United States, the Jewish role in promoting  “civil rights” for blacks is essentially the same. It springs from the same motives of anti-white hatred and has the same results: the rule of Jewish oligarchs over whites through black proxies and puppets. Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama went through the same grooming process and play the same role. Second, in South Africa as elsewhere, Jewish Communism and Jewish capitalism — Communist expropriation and capitalist “privatization” — are essentially interchangeable in terms of their results and even their personnel. Both are simply ways that Jews appropriate the wealth and power of a nation and destroy the best of their rivals.

Nelson Man

rn in the Transkei region of South Africa in 1918. After being expelled from school and fleeing an arranged marriage he looked for work in Johannesburg. His friend Walter Sisulu recommended him to Lazar Sidelsky, one of the founders of Witkin, Sidelsky, and Eidelman – a Jewish law firm in Johannesburg. Mandela was hired as an articled clerk and Sidelsky generously waived the usual premium.

It was here that Mandela met his first white friend – Nat Bregman. A cousin of Sidelsky, Bregman was an eighteen year-old articled clerk and member of the Communist Party. Bregman introduced Mandela to Communist-organized social gatherings. At these multiracial gatherings Mandela met such figures as Michael Harmel, a member of the Communist Party’s central committee for nine years until its dissolution in 1950. Initially, Mandela was hostile to Communists and especially their influence within groups such as the African National Congress of which Mandela would become involved.

Mandela pursued a Bachelor of the Arts degree by correspondence while working at Sidelsky’s law firm. Following his final examination he enrolled part-time as a law student at the University of Witwatersrand and met Jewish students Ruth First, Harry Schwarz, and Harold Wolpe. Schwarz recalled Mandela as being a reserved student and not a frequent participant of discussions. All of them would become prominent opponents of apartheid.

After passing a qualifying examination, Mandela began his first employment as a lawyer under another Jew, former communist Hyman Basner. It was in this new capacity that Mandela began to know affluence. He discarded his old patched clothing and bought fashionable suits from a tailor named Alfred Kahn. Despite being married, Mandela also began having an open affair with one of the secretaries at his office, much to the shock of his wife.

Before going into Mandela’s political development it is necessary to take notice of several things. Even at this early stage he was heavily dependent upon Jewish connections to succeed. His contacts with Sidelsky’s law firm had given him the opportunity to earn a small wage while studying law and paved the way for his later rise to prominence. If Mandela’s personal development seemed to hinge upon Jewish connections, then his political existence would come to absolutely depend upon them.

Mandela, along with his friend Walter Sisulu, formed the Congress Youth League, a branch of the ANC in the early 1940s. They represented a growing faction within the ANC urging for more aggressive action against apartheid including civil disobedience, boycotts, and mass strikes. By 1949 the Congress Youth League was gaining momentum within the ANC. Mandela’s group presented a blistering criticism of ANC policies to the president, Dr. Albert Xuma. At the next election they supported Dr. James Moroka to challenge Xuma’s leadership. Moroka was elected president of the ANC in 1949 and a new course for the organization was decided upon. The ANC then adopted the ‘Programme of Action’ to replace earlier non-confrontational ANC policies.

In 1952 the ANC embarked upon the Defiance Campaign. The ANC then grew from an organization of 7,000 into a mass movement of perhaps as many as 100,000 members. But this new political agitation veered into illegal demonstrations and unruly behavior. In 1956 the ANC adopted the ‘Freedom Charter’ to replace the earlier ‘Programme of Action.’ The Charter was a collection of demands that was drafted into a document by Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein. Bernstein was not only a Jew, he was also a member of the underground Communist Party’s central committee and its chief propaganda expert. Mandela and the rest of the ANC leadership adopted Bernstein’s document with few changes.

In a June 1956 article Mandela defended the far-left positions of the Freedom Charter. He declared that the “nationalization of the banks, the gold mines and the land” would strike a “fatal blow” at the “financial and gold-mining monopolies and farming interests that have for centuries plundered the country and condemned its people to servitude.” Mandela then argued that the realization of their goals was impossible unless “these monopolies are smashed and the national wealth of the country [is] turned over to the people.”

The influence of ‘whites’ and communists within the movement was becoming too much for some within the ANC. During the 1956 ANC conference meant to ratify the Freedom Charter, a group of Africanists “kept up a noisy barrage of attacks . . . with shouts of ‘Africa for the Africans!’” The Africanists demanded a return to the ‘Programme of Action’ adopted in 1949 and for a purified all-African movement that defined South Africa as belonging only to blacks.

Due to the ANC’s confrontational tactics and its call to nationalize South African industries, the ANC leadership was arrested in 1956 and accused of having adopted “a policy to overthrow the state by violence.” The defendants were also accused of belonging to a Communist organization. There were 156 defendants in the trial. Specifically, there were 105 blacks, 21 Indians, 7 coloreds, and 23 whites. Of the whites, more than half were Jewish. They were Jacqueline Arenstein, Yetta Barenblatt, Hymie Barsel, Lionel Bernstein, Sonia Bunting, Ruth First, Lionel Forman, Isaac Horvitch, Leon Levy, Norman Levy, Ronald Press, Sydney Shall, Joe Slovo, and Ben Turok.

Jews were prominent not only as defendants but also as their defense counsels and fundraisers. In the initial stages, the defense included Jews Maurice Franks and Norman Rosenberg. At the most critical stage of the trial the defense was conducted by Jews Israel Maisels and Sydney Kentridge. The idea for a defense fund for the accused was originally conceived in part by Alex Hepple. It was the most successful appeal launched during the 1950s and represented the first major international response to apartheid. Of the defense fund’s twenty-two sponsors, seven were Jews. Two of the four trustees of the defense fund, Dr. Ellen Hellman and Alex Hepple, were also Jews. The trial would last until 1961.

It was during this time that the strong Jewish presence within the anti-apartheid movement became noticed by the South African public. A 1956 letter to the editor of Die Tansvaler read, “That the support of the Jews is readily granted to the powers which aim at the downfall of the Boer [whites] must be deduced from the behaviour of the Jews.” It continued, “When photographs appear in newspapers of resistance processions, or of joint singing and dancing with the ‘Africans’, or of the ‘Black Sash’s’ slander tableaux, the Jewish facial type is in the majority. When a book is published on the ‘bad conditions’ in South Africa, the writer is ten to one a Jew. Under petitions protesting against the Boer’s policy there always appear numbers of Jewish names. Jewish professors, lecturers, doctors, rabbis and lawyers fall over one another in order to sign. Behind the tables in the street collecting signatures against the Boer’s policy a Jewish lady is usually enthroned…”

Important events were unfolding during the Treason Trial. In 1959 the Africanist faction split from the ANC and formed the Pan Africanist Congress. They had decided that Africa would be liberated by Africans without the influence of ‘whites’ and communists. Its leadership decided upon a campaign of mass resistance to apartheid policies, especially the system of pass-laws that applied to blacks. On 21 March 1960 the PAC organized a general protest urging blacks to burn their passes and present themselves for arrest en masse. Robert Sobukwe and other leaders of the PAC marched in front and were among those arrested.

The appeal was largely unsuccessful throughout the country but in Sharpeville the organizers successfully rallied thousands of blacks into a violent mob. The police were already nervous after the recent murder of nine policemen outside Durban only two months prior. When the massive crowds at Sharpeville began to mob the police lines and throw stones – the police opened fire. What followed was the death of dozens of blacks, known as the Sharpeville Massacre.

Mandela, however, accused the PAC of having co-opted the ANC’s idea and dismissed the PAC’s sacrifices as “a blatant case of opportunism.” The ANC followed the 21 March protests with an anti-pass campaign of their own on 28 March. On 30 March the government declared a state of emergency and on 8 April both organizations were banned. The PAC, however, was not totally defeated. They would soon begin forming a military wing known as ‘Poqo’, a Xhosa word meaning ‘alone’ or ‘pure.’

On 29 March 1961 the court acquitted Mandela and other defendants. The long Treason Trial was now over. Mandela, however, immediately went underground. A call for a general strike was issued but proved disappointing due to the government’s preventative measures. It was this failure that led directly to Mandela’s advocacy of violent methods. It proved highly ironic that Mandela would now embrace a violent campaign despite having “. . . just emerged from a marathon trial, the outcome of which had depended on convincing a panel of judges about the ANC’s commitment to non-violent methods.”

It was in these circumstances that Mandela would now rely almost wholly upon his Jewish contacts, especially those in the underground Communist Party. The Jews in his inner circle embraced the new campaign of violence enthusiastically. Joe Slovo became “the key figure in devising the party’s military armed struggle” and was chosen as Chief-of-Staff of the new armed wing, known as Umhonto we Sizwe, or MK. The MK’s constitution was largely drafted by Mandela, Slovo, and Bernstein.

A suitable location for the headquarters of the MK was found in the Johannesburg suburb of Lilliesleaf. It had been bought as the headquarters for the underground Communist Party in July 1961. Harold Wolpe, with the cooperation of Michael Harmel, had bought the property by setting up a dummy company and providing Harmel with a false name. The farm was occupied primarily by Arthur Goldreich, his family, and black farm workers. Goldreich had spent his youth in the Palmach, a branch of the underground Jewish army in Palestine. Except for the farm workers, all were Jews and members of the Communist Party.

The new campaign was no small undertaking. Jack Hodgson, Second World War veteran and communist, would become the MK’s first instructor in explosives. Hodgson and others manufactured bombs for the MK and tested them at a brickworks east of Johannesburg owned by the brother of Wolfie Kodesh, a Jew and fellow member of the Communist party. But this was only the beginning. At a newly acquired property in Krugersdorp, Denis Goldberg was given responsibility for manufacturing the arms requirements of the new underground organization. Goldberg, a thirty year-old engineer, acquired production materials under a variety of pseudonyms. The planned production was to include 1,500 time devices for bombs, 48,000 land mines, and 210,000 hand grenades. The funding for all of these activities came, of course, from the underground Communist Party and their sponsors abroad.

The early stages of the campaign were more akin to a terrorist plot. It was reasoned that bombing attacks on infrastructure and government targets would drive away foreign capital and bring South Africa into capitulation. However, the bombing campaign and public declaration of the MK’s existence had to be delayed. The reason was that the ANC’s president, Albert Luthuli, was traveling to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize! The award ceremony was held on 11 December 1961. The terrorist attacks began five days later. By July 1963 the sabotage campaign hit nearly two-hundred targets including communications and transport facilities, fuel dumps, utilities, and government buildings.

Mandela had been in hiding since March 1961. He had been provided with a support committee to arrange for “safe houses, transport, and reading material.” Jews such as Wolfie Kodesh and Bob Hepple were a part of this committee. Mandela, in fact, spent two months living in a small bachelor apartment rented by Kodesh under a false name. Mandela also met with his second wife at Arthur Goldreich’s house in Parktown. For a while Michael Harmel was also a member of his support committee.

Mandela traveled abroad shortly after the beginning of the bombing campaign, leaving in January 1962. To his surprise the PAC was actually more popular abroad than the ANC, which was widely seen as a Communist-dominated organization. After returning to South Africa Mandela was caught and arrested on 5 August 1962. His legal advisers were undercover communists and co-conspirators Joe Slovo and Bob Hepple. He was sentenced to three years for inciting the 1961 strike and two for traveling abroad without documents.

The South African government claimed the ANC was a body of “communists and terrorists.” Curiously, some historians dismiss these claims as mere propaganda. Yet, the plans for a full-scale guerilla conflict were being drafted while Mandela was already incarcerated. Joe Slovo and Govan Mbeki, a close friend of Slovo’s wife, developed a plan known as ‘Operation Mayibuye.’ Meanwhile, Arthur Goldreich was busy traveling to sympathetic states such as China, East Germany, and the Soviet Union. Goldreich managed to successfully lobby for approximately $2.8 million in aid from the Soviet Union and its allies.

In 1963 the South African authorities raided Lilliesleaf farm and arrested nineteen leading members of the ANC and MK. Among those arrested were five whites: Lionel Bernstein, Hilliard Festenstein, Denis Goldberg, Arthur Goldreich, and Bob Hepple. Shortly thereafter, James Kantor and Harold Wolpe were arrested in connection with the Liliesleaf raid. They were all Jews. The raid and subsequent arrests would prove a devastating setback to the “African” liberation movement.

Shortly after being arrested, Harold Wolpe and Arthur Goldreich were left in the custody of a young guard. He was promised a handsome bribe in return for allowing them to escape, which they did. It was during this escape that they were hidden by Barney Simon, a fellow Jew. Simon, like Benjamin Pogrund, had been a member of the Habonim in his youth and edited The Classic, the “first nonracial literary magazine” in South Africa. Two days later Wolpe and Goldreich parted ways with Simon and eventually fled abroad.

During this time the MK Regional Command in Natal was Ronald Kasril’s area of responsibility. Another South African Jew, he had been forced to flee the country with his girlfriend Eleanor Anderson after one of his fellow terrorists, Bruno Mtolo, was caught during what his comrades assumed was a drinking binge in town. Mtolo had visited the MK headquarters in Rivonia earlier in 1963. Mtolo already had an extensive record of petty crimes and agreed to become a state witness within mere hours of his arrest. Kasrils would play a role in coordinating the movement abroad with fellow Jews Joe Slovo and Gill Marcus.

Nelson Mandela was ultimately dragged into the new Rivonia trial owing to a number of documents in his handwriting that had been seized from Lilliesleaf. Other documents included the plans for ‘Operation Mayibuye.’ Two of the three defense lawyers, Arthur Chaskalson and Joel Joffe, were Jewish. The head prosecutor, Percy Yutar, was also Jewish. In a 1988 interview, Yutar claimed that he had deliberately reduced the charges against the defendants from treason to sabotage with the intent to save the accused from the death penalty. However, on 11 June 1964 Mandela, Sisulu, and Mbeki would be sentenced to life imprisonment. He would remain in prison until 1990.

Mandela maintained his far-left positions two weeks before his release from prison, “The nationalization of the mines, banks, and monopoly industries is the policy of the ANC, and the change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable. Black economic empowerment is a goal we fully support and encourage, but in our situation state control of certain sectors of the economy is unavoidable.” Two weeks later, Mandela would be released from prison by F. W. de Klerk. The South African government unbanned political organizations such as the ANC and Communist Party. Mandela’s communist supporters such as Slovo, Kasrils, and Marcus would be allowed to return to the country.

Mandela had an astounding change of heart upon being released from prison. After Mandela began holding regular meetings with former Anglo American and De Beers chairman Harry Oppenheimer, they reversed the ANC’s economic position. In his first post-election interview as president Mandela stated: “In our economic policies . . . there is not a single reference to things like nationalization, and this is not accidental . . .” Following the 1994 election in which Mandela was elected president, the ANC submitted its economic program to Oppenheimer “for approval.”

Ironically, between 1997 and 2004 eighteen state-owned firms were sold by the South African government, raising $4 billion. Even stranger, the Minister of Finance elected during the 1994 elections was none other than Gill Marcus. In fact, it was under this new leadership that the central South African Reserve Bank was privatized. Marcus became Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank in 1999, and its Governor in 2009.