But alarm about the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is not one of them.
Around every major news event, conspiracy theories are bound to emerge to explain what really happened, and who was involved.
This was true of the alleged suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, the American millionaire and convicted child molester, in an American prison, with some suggesting his death could be blamed on his apparently having ‘dirt’ on a number of prominent people. These included Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom, former United States (US) president Bill Clinton, and the incumbent, Donald Trump, among others, who all, the claims went, had allegedly joined Epstein in molesting young girls. The theory that Bill and Hillary Clinton had been behind his death was explained as having been a means to cover up Bill’s involvement in Epstein’s alleged global paedophile ring. This goes along with claims that the Clintons have had nearly 150 people killed over the course of the last few decades, a claim that has been thoroughly debunked.
The US is arguably the spiritual home of the conspiracy theory. From the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963 (either by American intelligence services, Cuban dissidents, the Soviets, or aliens) and the American moon landing of 50 years ago to the mind control experiments by the American government through MKUltra, conspiracies abound in the American consciousness.
A whole cottage industry of conspiracy grew around Trump’s predecessor as president, Barack Obama. Claims ranged from within the realms of the vaguely possible (that Obama had actually been born in Kenya, thus making him ineligible to be President) to the fantastic (that he had been teleported to Mars in the 1980s as part of a secret American government experiment to explore the Red Planet).
But conspiracy theories are not restricted only to the US. We at the southern tip of Africa are not immune to conspiracy theories. One of the more exotic ones that I have come across is that in the 1980s the South African Air Force shot down an Unidentified Flying Object, or UFO, over the Kalahari Desert. The two alien pilots, the fabulous account went, were captured alive and spirited away to Pretoria. Cynics might say this is not so far-fetched – creatures from another world would not look out of place in the cheap seats at Loftus or at some of the more interesting drinking establishments in our capital.
More seriously, though, in Apartheid’s Friends: The Rise and Fall of South Africa’s Secret Service, James Sanders touches on a theory that Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd was murdered on the orders of his cabinet colleagues. This was, the idea went, because Verwoerd was planning to partition the country more comprehensively, and would have created far more viable states for black South Africans than the laughable, unsustainable Bantustans the country ended up with. Sanders gives this theory short shrift, which makes sense, given what we know about Verwoerd and his assassin, Dmitri Tsafendas (who killed Verwoerd because he was mad or because he was deeply opposed to apartheid, depending on who you believe).
And let’s not forget the Vela incident, a flash detected by an American spy satellite in the south Atlantic in 1979. The incident, named for the type of satellite that recorded it, was imagined to have been a joint nuclear test between South Africa and Israel.
In the field of nuclear conspiracies, there is also the case of the Helderberg, the South African Airways plane that crashed on its way home from Taiwan in 1987, with the loss of all on board. One of the causes of the crash, some suggested, was ‘red mercury’, a substance said to have a possible ingredient in the manufacture of nuclear weapons, and which was being smuggled into the country by the South African government.
More recently there have been claims that Nelson Mandela was actually a US Central Intelligence Agency asset, or that he was controlled by the Oppenheimers, or by the Illuminati (that shady cabal which allegedly controls the globe). Another recent conspiracy theory is that genocide is being perpetrated against whites. Notwithstanding the brutality of many farm murders (and rhetoric by some of our politicians), there is scant evidence of any co-ordinated effort to bring about the extinction of white South Africans. And our research shows that in the main South Africans like each other. South Africans of different races are more likely to have a braai together than to burn one another to death.
Even the world of South African sports is not immune, with theories ranging from the supposed poisoning of the All Blacks the night before the 1995 Rugby World Cup Final to the death of Hansie Cronje, apparently at the hand of a shady betting syndicate (the latter, according to Clive Rice, a former South African cricket captain).
Of course, the thing about conspiracies is that some are true. The MKUltra project did exist and resulted in the death or injury of a number of people, whose minds were broken through experiments that used powerful hallucinogenic drugs. It is also true that during Prohibition in the US, when booze was banned in that country, alcohol was poisoned by the government. And it is true that the American government did try to develop technology to control the weather in the 1950s.
Believing in conspiracies is comforting. It is easier to believe that there is a shadowy force behind everything that happens, rather than that we live in an uncaring and random universe, where everything that happens is due to the roll of some cosmic die. But, as mentioned, some conspiracies are true. And South Africans would do well to believe in one theory in particular, which some will dismiss out of hand as a conspiracy. That is the National Democratic Revolution.
Some would have you believe that the NDR – the strategy of the ANC to move this country to socialism and, ultimately, communism – is no more than the figment of a fevered imagination. But one need only read the ANC’s own policy documents or listen to speeches by senior figures in the party to dispel that. And recent policy proposals, such as Expropriation without Compensation and the National Health Insurance, are blows targeted at the liberty of all South Africans.
Conspiracy theories are fun to read about, but all South Africans must be aware that the threat to the prosperity of everyone in this country in the form of the NDR is not one of them.
Marius Roodt is head of campaigns at the Institute of Race Relations.
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