For those of you following the Spy Cables saga currently unfolding (which is *everybody*), the bit where Israeli citizen Yitzhak Talia stole Denel anti-tank missile blueprints and gave them to Mossad is a weird reversal of times past when, as related in DWG, the Israelis sold ballistic missile technology to apartheid SA for its nuke programme: Al Jazeera story on Israeli theft of SA missile tech
Tuesday, 24 February 2015
Friday, 20 February 2015
Was SA the conduit for July 2005 London bombings?
The Times' story today on alleged al Qaeda-linked terrorists perhaps eyeing South Africa as a safe operating base reminds me of the DWG tale of how Africa's biggest arms dealer, Viktor Bout, may have organised the laundering of
₤1-million to transship 10 Pakistani and Afghan men, given them false identities as SA businessmen and inserted them into the UK just ahead of the 7 July 2005 London Bombings: al Qaeda at the gates
DWG author Michael Schmidt in conversation with Mzilikazi wa Afrika
Drinking with Ghosts author Michael Schmidt will be in discussion with Nothing Left to Steal author and investigative journalist Mzilikazi wa Afrika at the University of Johannesburg, at the Auditorium, 6th floor, APK Library, 4,30pm, 24 February 2015.
DWG e-book soon!
I'm pleased to announce that my publishers, BestRed, have informed me that the e-book version of Drinking with Ghosts should be available in April.
Sunday, 15 February 2015
DWG sister volume now complete!
I'm delighted to be submitting my fourth book to the publishers today. "Under the Rusted Rainbow: Perdition and Promise in the New South Africa" (BestRed, Cape Town, due September 2015) is the sister volume of "Drinking with Ghosts," but covers conditions of exclusion in democratic SA: poor whites, Bushmen, illegal coal miners, land claimants, squatters, the AWB, etc. John Pilger asked me to send him a portion of it to read, which is great! It weighs in at 80,000 words.
Tuesday, 3 February 2015
The Anwa Dramat case and extraordinary renditions
The Anwa Dramat claims reminds me of the tales in Drinking with Ghosts of the SAPS conducting extraordinary renditions:
a) In 2004, Malefa Sefora Maphaleba, deputy leader of the Women's League of the Basotho National Party, living in exile near Bloemfontein, was kidnapped and flown by SAPS chopper to a forest where she was interrogated for four hours about Lesotho politics - and threatened with deportation (she was terrified as she had been sexually assaulted in jail in Lesotho by goons of the ruling party);
b) In 2005, Burundian IT specialist Nestor Niyonzima and his psychologist wife Gertrude fled to SA because he had blown the whistle on bank fraud in Burundi. With a Burundian hitman on his tail, crooked SAPS members who appear to have been in the pay of the bank fraud syndicate illegally deported Niyonzima back to Burundi under false charges. Facing assassination in jail by the syndicate, it took an emergency intervention by the Central Methodist Church to get Niyonzima released and into asylum in Sweden.
a) In 2004, Malefa Sefora Maphaleba, deputy leader of the Women's League of the Basotho National Party, living in exile near Bloemfontein, was kidnapped and flown by SAPS chopper to a forest where she was interrogated for four hours about Lesotho politics - and threatened with deportation (she was terrified as she had been sexually assaulted in jail in Lesotho by goons of the ruling party);
b) In 2005, Burundian IT specialist Nestor Niyonzima and his psychologist wife Gertrude fled to SA because he had blown the whistle on bank fraud in Burundi. With a Burundian hitman on his tail, crooked SAPS members who appear to have been in the pay of the bank fraud syndicate illegally deported Niyonzima back to Burundi under false charges. Facing assassination in jail by the syndicate, it took an emergency intervention by the Central Methodist Church to get Niyonzima released and into asylum in Sweden.
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