There has been very little written about the South African secret intelligence, but revelations to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the culture of confessions that is so much part of the new South Africa, have now made one possible. James Sanders has been gathering classified documentation and interviewing ex-operatives since 1997, and from these he has been able to piece together an extraordinary and often unsavoury picture of BOSS's activities, both inside South Africa and overseas. Sanders reveals evidence, for instance, of state-sponsored murder not only designed to intimidate the ANC and reduce its effectiveness but also to allow hard men within the police and the armed forces to "let off steam". He reveals that, in the United States, Republican political candidates were assisted in elections against anti-Apartheid Democrats. He shows that South Africa supplied Argentina with weapons during the Falklands War and that Harold Wilson's surprising outbursts during the Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott affair, when he claimed that South African intelligence agents were trying to bring down his government, were based on hard evidence.
The Apartheid years were also the Cold War years, and as a result, while Western governments criticized the South African regime, they also gave it a great deal of practical support. Meanwhile, at operational level, BOSS had intimate links with counterparts in the CIA, British Intelligence, and other agencies worldwide. James Sanders' book not only provides an insight into a dark area of South Africa's past, it is also an important contribution to the international history of secret service.
- ISBN10 0719563267
- ISBN13 9780719563263
- Publish Date 28 August 2006 (first published 24 August 2006)
- Publish Status Transferred
- Out of Print 8 December 2005
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher John Murray Press
- Imprint John Murray Publishers Ltd
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 320
- Language English