Scandals shake the National Party
During its 30 years in power, South Africa's ruling National Party has been remarkably free of scandal. Not once, for example, has a high-ranking official been charged with misusing public funds. Last week that image of rectitude was shattered by the release of a 400-page report on an investigation being conducted by one of the country's most respected jurists. Confirming earlier newspaper accounts of widespread abuses in the Department of Information, an agency formerly controlled by one of South Africa's most powerful politicians, Supreme Court Justice Anton Mostert detailed alleged "improper application of taxpayers' money running into millions." Johannesburg's antigovernment Rand Daily Mail has dubbed the affair South Africa's "Watergate." Whether or not that proves to be the case, the judge's disclosures have shaken the six-week-old regime of Prune Minister Pieter W. Botha and could wreck the career of Minister of Plural Relations Cornelius P. Mulder, 53, who had been considered a leading candidate to become Prime Minister some day.
The alleged misdeeds center on a secret multimillion-dollar slush fund operated by the Department of Information when Mulder was Minister of the Interior and Information under former Prime Minister John Vorster. According to Mostert's report, some of the funds, intended for a covert campaign to secure favorable coverage for South African policies in the foreign and domestic press, were diverted to dubious business ventures and the personal pleasures of departmental officials. The main schemers were identified as the brothers Eschel and Deneys Rhoodie, who until a few months ago served as Secretary and Deputy Secretary, respectively, of the department. Witnesses told Mostert that the Rhoodies had illegally used government funds to subsidize an unprofitable South African newspaper, finance a $6 million movie that flopped at the box office, and traffic in diamonds. In addition, the Daily Mail has charged that the brothers conspired with a right-wing American publisher to try to buy the Washington Star. All of these activities, the press hinted, were known of and approved by Mulder—and perhaps other ministers as well.
When the story broke this summer, Vorster transferred control of the department to Foreign Minister Roelof F. ("Pik") Botha. He retired the Rhoodie brothers and ordered the former head of the Bureau of State Security to undertake a probe of the charges. Mostert was named as a one-man commission to look into possible violations of currency controls. After a heated meeting at which Prime Minister Botha urged Mostert to delay releasing the report, the judge declared, "I have endeavored to discover what particular interest of the state is furthered by suppression, albeit temporary, rather than disclosure of the evidence. I find none."