A final report on Muldergate
" 'They say you are not telling the truth. I say, John, you know it is so. And you know that I know it is so. And you know that Connie Mulder knows it is so.' He shrugged and said, 'Yes, it is so.' And I said, 'But John, it can't go on like that. The thing will destroy you.' "
The "John" in that conversation was Balthazar Johannes Vorster, 63, Prime Minister of South Africa for twelve years and its President for the past nine months. The speaker was General Hendrik Van den Bergh, former head of the Bureau of State Security (BOSS); his testimony is included in the third and unsparing final report of a commission appointed to investigate corruption and legal irregularities in the government of John Vorster, who in 1977 led his National Party to the greatest electoral victory in its history.
Last week, after the release of the latest report on South Africa's "Muldergate" scandal, Vorster abruptly resigned as his country's head of state, his long political career ending in disgrace. Vorster's last official act as President was to receive the report that described his humiliation and led directly to his resignation.
The most important finding of the commission, headed by Supreme Court Justice Rudolph Erasmus, was that Vorster was fully aware of a covert operation by his former Minister of Information, Cornelius Mulder, to spend tens of millions of dollars in an illegal and secret effort to influence the news media. Retracting its own preliminary report that had exonerated Vorster, the commission concluded that he had lied in sworn testimony concerning his role in the whole affair. One witness testified that he had once asked Vorster whether the government itself was being blackmailed by Eschel Rhoodie, one of Mulder's key aides. "A thousand percent," Vorster is said to have replied. "He holds my ministers' political life in the hollow of his hand."
The Erasmus commission also provided a fascinating summary of what happened to the Muldergate millions. The commission charged that some $500,000 kept bobbing up in various bank accounts belonging to Rhoodie and two of his brothers; Rhoodie's salary as a senior civil servant never exceeded $1,350 a month. The commission also declared that $19 million in public funds went to L. Van Zyl Alberts, the publisher of a newspaper and a magazine that were, in reality, secretly funded government publications; the report implies that the publisher's use of the money points "to theft and fraud." Recounting previous charges that $10 million in government funds went to Michigan Publisher John McGoff in an unsuccessful attempt to take over the Washington Star in 1974, the commission charged that the South African government had never been able to account for $6.3 million of that sum. McGoff insisted that he had no South African backing in any of his business ventures.