Stefaans Brmmer
THE controversial Church of Scientology has bestowed a ”freedom medal” on Lawrence Anthony, KwaZulu-Natal businessman and confidant of Mangosuthu Buthelezi, shedding new light on the close links between the church and the Inkatha Freedom Party.
The Mail & Guardian reported in November 1994 that Anthony and Businesswise Management Consultants, a management consultancy then run by church member Alan Murray, helped the IFP reorganise its administration before the 1994 elections.
Murray downplayed the role the Church of Scientology in reorganising the management of the IFP, but the M&G showed that Businesswise was licensed by the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises (Wise) to ”disseminate administrative technology” developed by the founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard. And in October 1994 the IFP called for an inquiry into mental institutions – a pet cause of Scientologists, who oppose traditional psychological and psychiatric practices. Anthony and Murray both denied the initiative had originated with them, saying it had come from IFP branches.
But Impact, the magazine of the International Association of Scientologists (IAS), reported late last year that Anthony had been selected as one of four winners internationally of the 1996 IAS Freedom Medal ”for his work in helping his country with LRH tech [Scientology jargon for L Ron Hubbard technology]”.
The publication listed Anthony’s successes: ”As the administrative consultant of the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party, Lawrence assumed responsibility for the whole of that movement’s organisational structure. He explained LRH organisational basics and in 1994 LRH’s organising board was approved by the [IFP] central committee as the official management system for the party.”
Impact implies that Anthony had a strong hand in the IFP call for an inquiry into mental institutions: ”Lawrence, joining forces with the Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights [a Scientology body], then turned his attention to the root of apartheid – psychiatry.”