Hello Goalie
A couple of articles of interest.
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The face of the counter- revolution September 25, 1998
Khareen Pech
A right-wing millionaire linked to weapons cartels and rebel armies in Africa is at the forefront of a bizarre plot to destabilise South Africa before the 1999 general elections. Former Civilian Co- operation Bureau (CCB) operative Johan Niemoeller is planning a fervent campaign he calls the "Fourth Boere Revolution" to "reimpose white Afrikaner rule" by force.
The rightwinger's plan involves mustering popular support within the beleaguered white farming community and mobilising a white rebel army composed of thousands of citizen force soldiers formerly trained and deployed by the old South African Defence Force (SADF).
Niemoeller is linked to former SADF arms networks that established trafficking routes into Central Africa and who have recently struck new deals to arm and train rebel forces in the Congo and Unita rebels in Angola. He also recruited and deployed more than 100 former SADF mercenaries to back Jonas Savimbi in his recent military operations against the MPLA government in Luanda.
Niemoeller is also said to be secretly masterminding a plot to foment internal instability and sabotage the elections, intelligence sources have told the Mail & Guardian.
Niemoeller's operations are run by a mobile command group of middle-ranking operatives recruited from covert units of the apartheid-era security forces. They include members of the former white government's most violent military and intelligence units - Koevoet, Vlakplaas, the reconnaissance regiments, the police security branch, the CCB and the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
Niemoeller's group also includes hidden agents who are presently serving members of both the military and police, according to intelligence sources.
The command group is constantly on the move and travels in a convoy of luxury and four- wheel-drive vehicles between cities and rural districts - mostly in the Free State, Northern Province, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape and Gauteng.
The group, who refer to themselves as the "Boerevolk", claim to control senior military officers within more than 90 citizen commandos in 185 respective rural districts in South Africa.
"We have a bigger army than the present state has," Niemoeller's operations chief, Jan Johannes Smith, told the M&G last week.
"Jannie" Smith is a key member of Niemoeller's military command. At a secret meeting three months ago, Smith outlined the group's battle plan to more than a dozen members of its Eastern Cape regional command.
In this meeting, Smith outlined a "total- onslaught" strategy and emphasised that all persons not sympathetic to their cause must be "eliminated".
State intelligence sources have played down the group's political threat, claiming that Nie- moeller's group is influential in only a handful of regions and does not have the ability to galvanise cohesive support from either the farmers or other right-wing groups.
They are not trusted by other right-wing groups because Nie- moeller has a reputation as a buccaneer, who has been engaged in criminal activities such as illicit diamond dealing and arms trafficking for more than a decade, an intelligence source said.
While members of Niemoeller's group do have right-wing backgrounds, sources report that Niemoeller has made no attempt to seduce other right-wing groups into a strategic alliance. On the contrary, in his meetings with Eugene Terre'Blanche of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging and Jaap Marais of the Herstigte Nasionale Party, he has instructed them that he is staging a revolution and they either sign on under his banner or be excluded from it.
But the state intelligence sources admit that Niemoeller and his men are well-funded, fanatical and dangerous.
Recently Niemoeller was named the mastermind behind a massive arms theft carried out at Tempe military base in the Free State. The source, Marius Swanepoel, was convicted of the arms theft. He withdrew his statement under pressure from Niemoeller and as a result the criminal case against Niemoeller was withdrawn.
Niemoeller is suspected of having support from agents within special task groups set up to monitor him, according to intelligence sources. He has threatened police officers tasked with investigating his activities as well as several journalists reporting on the right wing.
Niemoeller and his Boerevolk group are conducting public meetings with farmers where they distribute a range of propaganda materials, including a revolutionary manifesto which is attached to gruesome, full-colour pictures of burnt children, raped and murdered women and a man hung in his own bathroom. In this manifesto, Niemoeller claims that he is prepared to kill for a Boer republic. He draws a chaotic picture of a South Africa where law and order have broken down and whites are targeted for elimination in a murderous war.
To help sell this vision, Niemoeller has also distributed video material that shows sequences of horrific and gruesome shots of murdered whites.
An intelligence source says that this kind of propaganda is aimed at mobilising ordinary Afrikaner opinion: "They are decent, farming people on the one hand, but on the other they are easily influenced by these gruesome pictures of violence on whites."
Niemoeller's propaganda, he said, creates the impression there is a war against white Afrikaner farmers and, on the basis of this, he and his Afrikaner politician associates are fomenting a farmers' uprising.
When the apartheid regime began crumbling in 1990, Smith established himself as a credible source with the African National Congress when he exposed a far-right-wing plot to create "total anarchy" through the assassination of top ANC leaders and the destruction of strategic installations.
Smith also revealed his involvement in a police plot in Lesotho where he conducted reconnaissance on ANC transit houses and training camps. The plot aimed to discredit Reverend Allan Boesak as a communist and embarrass the Soviet embassy into withdrawing from Lesotho.
Smith claimed it failed when he grew too close to his Soviet source and confessed that he was a police spy.
At this time, he admitted to infiltrating right-wing networks as an undercover spy for both the security police and the NIS. He also described himself as a former "Springbok judo champion". After leaking the reports, he was whisked away by security police into a witness protection programme and temporary obscurity.
When asked about his return to right-wing activities and whether he could be a spy again, he firmly denied this. He told the M&G that he was never a judo champion and he never really turned to the ANC after leaking the reports. "That was all part of Stratcom," he answered.
African bourses have much to offer August 28, 1998
You may be surprised to learn that Africa's stock exchanges have outperformed most other emerging markets in the year to date in dollar terms - and that's despite war in the Congo, bombs in Kenya and Tanzania and the general perception of the continent as a haven for corruption and chaos.
You may be further surprised to learn there are more than 16 stock exchanges up and running throughout the continent and that most are growing in terms of the shares they're offering local and international investors.
The best way of looking at the African exchanges and their activities, says Standard Bank London African equity analyst Karin Schoeman, is by a focus on regions - North Africa, East Africa, West Africa and southern Africa (for our purposes we will exclude South Africa).
Starting with North Africa, where the investor can access stock exchanges in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, the general outlook is good, says Schoeman.
While foreign investors have to limit their investments in a listed company to 49% in Tunisia - a small market dominated by banks - the Casablanca and Cairo stock exchanges are completely open to investors, who have the option of dabbling in the growing economies of the north.
Turning to East Africa, Schoeman says the markets to look at are in Tanzania and Kenya, where, surprisingly, the latest terrorist bombings have had no effect on the market or currency.
Interim results for Kenyan companies are now being released - Firestone posted a 27% earnings increase, with Barclays, Standard Chartered and Housing Finance Company reporting improvements of between 9% and 17% - which appear to be positive and have all helped market sentiment. Kenyan interest rates are trending down, falling about 1% a month, inflation is under control and this too is lending support to the market.
"Tanzania looks finally to be making it with Tanzanian Breweries' privatisation 80% subscribed and bringing some critical mass to the fledgling Dar es Salaam market," says Schoeman.
The Mauritian market, which for the purpose of geography we will include in the East African region, has proved the star performer rising about 23% in the year to date, based on its strong financial and hotel stocks.
Crossing the continent to the West one may be surprised at the performance of the stock exchange in Ghana, which is up in excess of 100% in dollar terms in the year to date - unfortunately there are restrictions on foreign investors. There's also a lot of optimism for Nigeria, which Schoeman says is now moving to centre stage.
"The Nigerian stock market has a market capitalisation of $2,8-billion and the top companies are all subsidiaries of first-rate multinationals who have been in Nigeria for decades, know their markets, have good corporate governance and pay their staff properly.
"Over the past two years the stock market has fallen 30% since its March 1997 high as a result of chronic petrol/gas shortages, jitters concerning elections ... Our view is that, given a modicum of good government, economic growth could reach 5% to 8% for several years, which would do wonders for the stock market."
On the other hand the stock market in Cote d'Ivoire is pretty much in limbo, with the market in Uganda offering only one bond to potential investors and junior bourse Zambia rising in July to erase losses incurred earlier in the year.
OK, so now we head back into familiar territory with the markets of Namibia, Malawi, Botswana and Swaziland where there are five stocks listed.
It will probably come as no surprise that the exchange in Zimbabwe has taken a knock from recent government actions and policies, as well as from the decline in the rand. The decline has been dramatic with just over 12 months ago the market capitalisation more than US$5bn compared with less than US$2bn.
The Namibian front remains quiet with rises in the offshore diamond mining sector being offset by declines in the fishing sector and First National Bank. Malawi has seen modest rises in the share prices of the Sugar Corporation of Malawi and Commercial Bank of Malawi, which has helped the market gain some ground.
Botswana fell 5,5% last month as a result of currency weakness following the rand's earlier depreciation, with the most significant recent events the goverment's announcement of a civil service pay award.
Schoeman says this should boost spending power, with companies like Sechaba Brewery and PEP Botswana likely to benefit.
Bottom line, the fledgling bourses of many African countries and more mature exchanges like Cairo appear to offer some interesting morsels to would-be investors. If countries like Zambia and Tanzania are able to continue on their roads to privatisation, these morsels might even provide hearty meals.
Regards
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