Winnie Mandela’s last wish: “Mama” feared corruption would destroy the ANC….
Winnie Mandela, the late wife of South Africa's first democratic president, Nelson Mandela, feared that corruption would destroy the African National Congress (ANC). In fact, she was so worried about it that she even enlisted the help of a former Apartheid-era Crime Intelligence (CI) officer Doc Pretorius to mitigate the damage. The two became so close over two decades that she called him "the son I never had" in the inscription to him of her book "491 Days". Pretorius – who wrote a book titled "Winnie Mandela's Last Wish" – gives BizNews the inside story of the "unholy trinity" between transnational organised crime, criminal terrorist groups and corruption that is "protected by securitisation structures". He believes it is still possible to fix the problems in the country, and urges people to come forward to do so "because if we're not gonna work together, people might find out that they're going to get exposed…" He also shares details of a meeting between him, Mrs Mandela and Jacob Zuma; and reveals what she told him about the Stompie Affair that so severely damaged her international standing. – Chris Steyn
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.
Watch here
Listen here
Highlights from the interview
Ex Crime Intelligence officer reveals "Mama" feared corruption would destroy the ANC – and was fighting it behind the scenes…
Winnie Mandela, the late wife of South Africa's first democratic president, Nelson Mandela, feared that corruption would destroy the African National Congress (ANC).
In fact, she was so worried about it that she even enlisted the help of a former Apartheid-era Crime Intelligence (CI) officer Doc Pretorius to mitigate the damage.
The two became so close over two decades that she called him "the son I never had" in the inscription to him of her book 491 Days.
Pretorius – who wrote a book titled Winnie Mandela's Last Wish – gives BizNews the inside story.
"…obviously, for her, it was an attempt to start and clean out the criminal networks that was not part of the structures because what she identified was a lot of the criminals that all of a sudden came back into the ANC…was not people that she knew, and it's obviously those people received protection from the police and from intelligence structures which means they most probably was intelligence assets, was deployed within the ANC to act as sources of information."
He says the reason Mrs Mandela – or "Mama" as he calls her – was so concerned about those networks was "because it will destroy" the ANC.
"And what you see today is a combination of what she already saw 25 years ago. If one look at the situation of today of lawlessness…is a direct result of the situation in terms of what causes lawlessness. And because of the protection of criminals in the ANC by securitisation apparati, we're sitting with a problem of lawlessness today."
Pretorius says those networks were established "long before" 1990.
"What I can tell you was that, for example, what we discovered was the Greek Mafia, the Portuguese Mafia, the Italian Mafia, the Triad, the Indian Mafia, all of them worked very closely as Intelligence Assets (IAs), key positions within that mafia structures. It's very, very deeply rooted with securitisation structures in South Africa.
"…I know after 9/11, those structures were reactivated and used for the 2010 Soccer World Cup. I became part of counterintelligence operations from 2010 to 2016, managing the securitisation structures behind the scenes…From 2017 you can look at South African crime statistics when there was no operation mitigating these structures. From 2017 to now, it just escalated out of the roof."
Pretorius calls the interrelationship between transnational organised crime, criminal terrorist groups and corruption an "unholy trinity" that is "protected by securitisation structures".
"Now, if you look, then, at how many of those criminal networks are receiving protection from the State now, it is just mind-boggling that we still were able to survive…But I was informed confidentially that there's currently no operation to (mitigate) the networks that is behind these structures."
Pretorius – who is "very well connected in the underworld" – reveals how the crime lords use "the red telephone" in times of need. "Now, the red telephone is one that's getting you can get out of jail free ticket. So in the underworld, it's quite important for them to be able to pick up the phone and say, listen, leave me alone. And obviously, there's a lot of people. You will be surprised of how many known criminal elements in South Africa reports directly back to the formal structures."
Asked if Winnie would have left the ANC eventually, Pretorius says: "We had that discussions as well. At one stage, she wanted…because everybody know that she contributed to EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters)…And she considered and said, maybe the ANC is a little bit too corrupt to continue the process or to continue to support them.
"The thing is, it's not the corruption, it's the securitisation elements within the ANC that runs the ANC contrary to beliefs of and the ideology of ANC. So yes, we did discuss it, but I think she decided against it when I showed certain things, documents and things to her…So, she realised that most of the people, if not everybody, were compromised."
He shares a photograph of himself with "Mama" in her bedroom three months before she passed on. "I think she received some comfort when I told her I finally understood what is happening in this country and I will be able to mitigate these networks going forward. And that gave her a little bit of, I think, peace of mind."
Pretorius – who now operates as a crime-risk mitigation expert – believes it is still possible to fix the problems in this country. "It can be done…if I really start working today, it will take me two months to collapse everything. But then there will be consequences for some people in the process. Now, those people are the people who is really… the noisemakers and the dealmakers behind the scenes. But you don't have to destroy them in the process…."
On behalf of "Mama Winnie", he has this to say to them: "We know what's going on. We know everything what's going on in this country. We've been observing for six years from the side….you will know as Counter Intelligence, you don't get involved; you just watch. And we're watching now, we watch with COVID, we watch with all these different things, we see who's the players, who's the people involved with framing, who's the people involved with securitisation structures. We know everything.
"So it is now a game of chess in this process, where you're gonna position yourself going forward. And please come out, let's work together because if we're not gonna work together, people might…find out that they're going to get exposed…"
Read also: