Translation of the picture:
Dutch Anti Apartheid keeps Zephyr under surveillance
'Rhodesia Trader': I trust no one!
LOW KEY INTELLIGENCE: BUST SANCTIONS BUSTERS
Reading the Guardian article on the plan to sabotage the Beit Bridge mention is made of the “low key intelligence work” undertaken by the Dutch Anti Apartheid Movement (AABN). This was a whisper that was often made. The question implied was, “these guys have a superb research capacity”, an impression which not only suited us for conveying the message that sanctions busters or collaborators with Apartheid would be caught. But the answer was also half true. The fact is that a good of the Dutch Movement work was intelligence driven. But it also had an impressive research capability. Dr. Ton Korver, who led the research work of the Dutch Communist Party, also headed the research programme of the AABN.
The research work in itself was impressive. In papers presented by the AABN at an international conference on sanctions busters held in Amsterdam, 1974, jointly organized by the AABN and the Transnational Institute, the AABN research programme was unpacked in detail. Even though noting was mentioned on unorthodox research practices, during the conference there was strong opposition from the British AAM against their impression that the AABN achievements looked more like an “economic war” than sound, peer reviewed research findings. Indeed the AABN was not shy of its approach and affirmed its approach without expounding on the practical aspects. It was at that very conference where the plan to blow up the Beit Bridge was hatched in partnership with ZAPU.
But more to the point was the tactics involved with “low key intelligence work”. When the AABN commenced with the “bust the sanctions busters” campaign a good number of months were spent on gathering information through formal channels. The evidence was there, namely statistics of the Dutch Reserve Bank actually noted sizable amounts registered as $ Rhodesian, but with such and other pieces of evidence there was no proof, no way to get a handle on the actual trade underpinning these figures that would frighten any guilty party, let alone interest the media. So we set up an intelligence gathering Task Team. The Team was highly selective in choosing its members, with a strict approach of their being useful in one way or another to achieve the Team’s objectives. The Rhodesia Committee, which merged with the AABN early in 1970, was made up of students from an Amsterdam-based Technical High School. They in fact brought into the AABN some novel ideas about how to trace and expose sanctions busting.
The Task Team operated at nights only, from the office of the AABN. The office was situated in a student club house so having a bar at hand was a further useful cover for ensuring the clandestine measures taken to keep the work out of the limelight. The kick start to the project was patience, and then more patience. It took months of trying one plan, then another, and then yet another before our efforts bore fruit. As with all intelligence work, much is contingency based, one needs luck to hit lucky but such luck is not just luck, it is the result of perseverance and dedication of the Task Team members.
The first major exposure was Zephyr, which was a hub of commercial networks spread throughout the world, including even Eastern Europe. While its transactions were mostly small off-the-shelf items, like consignments of Christmas toys for children, or a ton of Marmite, or a consignment of English Mustard, as we continued to expose the web of sanctions busters we progressively found ourselves dealing with major trade involving chemicals for munitions and tobacco which was the cornerstone of the rebel Rhodesian economy. But even so, this run-of-the-mill retail-type trade of Zephyr in itself totalled millions and could be seen as a vital cog in the network of sanctions busting in general.
Zephyr was traced via its banker, Van Lanschot, which was just opposite the offices of the AABN on the Heerengracht. The lead to the discovery was a plan that each member had to find friends or acquaintances working in banks, and ask them if they had ever noticed $ Rhodesian passing over their desks. We struck lucky as a school pal of one of the Task Team members spilled the beans. From there tactics evolved from collecting and rummaging through garbage bags, through infiltrating sympathetic members into office cleaning contractors, to even having some one in the Amsterdam Post Office who had access to the entire network of telex communications coming and going from all corners of the world.
The impact of the “low key intelligence” approach was immediately obvious. We had a number of firms approaching the AABN to find out if any of their products were being traded in Rhodesia. Some were. This more or less undercut any serious action possibility as breaking a “gentleman’s agreement” could rebound and other firms clam up. The objective, after all was to stop trade with illegal Rhodesia and collaboration with Apartheid and not for publicity. Like the owner of Zephyr protested, “I trust no one”. He became paranoid and did not know what had hit him! Firms could cover their tracks in illegal trade ensuring that they could not be traced and prosecuted, but they could not hide the trade itself. Not from unorthodox research approaches.
After a few years of operation the finesse and efficacy of the AABN increased and, indeed, probably went over the borders of the conventional by a far way with actions like the plan to blow up Beit Bridge coming in under the radar, so to speak. We started getting criticism that came mainly from our British comrades who probably felt that they were being shown up as incompetent because many of our exposures involved British firms exposed in the British press. So it was not for nothing that Abdul Minty, of the British AAM, came to the 1974 international conference with some of his teeth extracted. Reg September, the London representative of the ANC, paid me a visit and asked if he could meet our researchers to assist our comrades in the British AAM. I then took him to a conference room in the basement of the Anne Frank Foundation. Around the large oak table, clad with newspapers as table cloth, were about 20 elderly women volunteers, piecing together little fragments of documents. They were having great fun at this as well. The fragments were passed on to them in neat little packets by the Task Team, the “nightshift”. September stood looking in amazement. “Is this your research team?” Yes, but not all of it. The “open” research team was separate and worked in SOMO at the Transnational Institute.
Opposition also came from the Dutch Economic Intelligence Service, the ECD. They were also being shown up as inefficient. So they started focusing their investigation on us after we refused to reveal our “sources”. The media was mostly cooperative as mostly we gave them leads for stories. We had no problem if we got no credit as the leads were was under cover work after all. The Task Team recorded a really rich harvest in 1974 which also seemed to rub the wrong way. After the Breytenbach fiasco all underhanded and falsehoods became fair play as in love and war, and the AABN came under attack from the SACP as being “anti communist”.
But the fear of those who were expelled from the AABN, which was basically everyone including its Board as well as the clandestine Task Team members, there seems to have been a lingering worry that the “low key intelligence” approach would resurface in Sietse Bosgra’s Holland Committee. He and his team were summoned to Luanda by Cde Joe Slovo. He reports on this as follows:
“More painful was that during a visit to Luanda we were invited by Joe Slovo for a meeting. For us it was a kind of tribunal. In the presence of some twenty ANC cadres we had to answer questions full of distrust. . . . . . Their message was that we should not campaign against Dutch firms to stop their collaboration with South Africa, as the ANC feared that the workers would be alienated from the freedom struggle. Instead we should campaign for ‘total sanctions’. And we should not campaign for Dutch government support for the ANC as such support would only be an excuse for the continuation of collaboration with the apartheid regime. Our position was that it was for the ANC to decide if they wanted Dutch government support”.
http://www.anc.org.za/un/conference/sbosgra.html
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