Declassified: Apartheid Profits Pals with Pinochet

[Judi Lynn]

OPEN SECRETS
 SOUTH AFRICA
 28 NOV 2017 12:00 (SOUTH AFRICA)

The Declassified series, based on the book Apartheid Guns and Money, has aimed to expose the way many countries around the world were duplicitous when it came to apartheid. They publicly condemned South Africa, but kept the back door open through clandestine military intelligence links, usually for the sake of profit for them and their corporations. When it came to Pinochet’s Chile, however, there was no need to hide. Despite their many differences, the two regimes were bound by their mutual pariah status in the international community, and their commitment to brutality and human rights abuses at home.

Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile in 1973 through a CIA-backed coup, ordered by President Nixon. Pinochet deposed democratically elected President Salvador Allende and embarked on 17 bloody years of military rule. Pinochet’s rule would become defined by extrajudicial killings, torture, repression and corruption. It should come as no surprise, then, that apartheid South Africa found a close ally in this regime.

Pinochet’s rise was key to the relationship with apartheid officials. Recently declassified documents show that when a referendum threatened to end Pinochet’s rule in 1988, the South African ambassador in Santiago considered the potential impact of a progressive government in Chile. He wrote that in the event that “the so-called skunk status of the two countries is left out of the equation”, there is very little that would bind them together. Located far away from each other, the countries did not share strategic interests “other than strong anti-communism and the problem of Cuban-supported terrorism”.

. . .

Despite this, during the 1970s and 1980s, apartheid South Africa collaborated extensively with the Pinochet regime on the weapons trade and intelligence sharing. Beyond a biannual intelligence conference, the apartheid regime saw its relationship with Chile as a gateway to a lucrative South American arms market. In 1986, Adriaan Vlok, then South Africa’s deputy minister for defence and of law and order, travelled to Chile to attend the Feria Internacional del Aire (FIDA) arms fair. Vlok, who would later gain notiority as PW Botha’s Minister of “Law and Order”, was accompanied by a delegation from the state-owned arms company, Armscor. Their itinerary included cocktail parties, visits to military shipyards and meetings with many high-ranking officials.

More:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-28-declassified-apartheid-profits-pals-with-pinochet/#.WhydqkqnHIU