A report that a tip from a Central Intelligence Agency spy to authorities during apartheid led to former president Nelson Mandela’s arrest in 1962 is proof that western powers were trying to destabilise former liberation movements in Southern Africa, the ANC said on Sunday.
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Rickard’s claims were first reported by the Sunday Times newspaper.
“He could have incited a war in South Africa, the United States would have to get involved, grudgingly, and things could have gone to hell. And I put a stop to it”, he added.
After his arrest, Mandela, who was elected to be South Africa’s first black president, served nearly 28 years in prison for his efforts to rebel against white minority rule in the country. He died in December 2013 at the age of 95 at his home in Johannesburg.
The training reportedly took place a few months before Mandela was arrested and jailed for over 27 years.
Transparency activist Ryan Shapiro in the USA launched legal action against the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency in 2014 over the agencies’ failures to furnish United States government documents from the period of Mandela’s arrest through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
John Irvin’s new film, Mandela’s Gun, details the events leading up to Mandela’s arrest in 1962 and the film has been scheduled for screening at the Cannes film festival this week.
Rickard was a junior diplomat at the US Durban consulate at the time of Mandela’s arrest.
He was posing as a chauffeur when his vehicle was stopped at a roadblock by the police in the eastern city of Durban in 1962 and he was detained.
At the time, Rickard was working as USA vice consul in the South African city of Durban when he discovered that Mandela was headed to Natal. The ANC leader spent the next 28 years in prison.
Because of this, US President Ronald Reagan had placed the ANC on a terrorism watch list in the 1980s – and Mandela required special permission to visit the US during and after his 1994 to 1999 presidency.
Kodwa told a reporter, “They never stopped operating here….”
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A spokesperson for the ruling ANC Party, of which Mandela was a member of, said that the Rickard admission confirmed their suspicions that America and other Western powers conspired with the Apartheid-led government. “The CIA is still collaborating with those who want regime change”.
