Cameron Duodu
LETTER FROM THE NORTH
I was extremely upset when I read the report by Anthony Sampson, author of the amazingly brilliant biography of Nelson Mandela, that it had been alleged in a forthcoming book that Mandela “was recruited as an ‘agent of influence’ by British intelligence”.
It is also alleged that Mandela visited MI6 in Britain to thank them for their help in foiling assassination attempts.
Denying the accusation, Mandela told Sampson: “I never visited the headquarters of any intelligence service.”
The allegations are made in the book, MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations by Stephen Dorril, a lecturer at Huddersfield University in Britain, to be published soon.
An African-American friend commented shrewdly that the allegation is being made because: “They don’t want the children of black people to have any heroes.”
According to Sampson, the South African government described the allegations as “false and nonsensical” and that they emanated from “shadowy right-wing forces”. They had been “repeatedly made in a futile attempt to tarnish” Mandela’s “image.”
The question is, who are these right- wing forces and why have they selected perhaps the greatest reputation in the 20th-century world politics as their target for a demolition job?
The trouble with these shadowy figures is that they are so cowardly that they hardly ever emerge into the daylight. They just smear the target and go away.
Those who pass on the information provided by such sources therefore bear a great deal of personal responsibility. If Dorril was an intelligent writer, his first query to himself should have been: “Why are they telling me this?”
Of course, like all the narcissistic self-publicists who populate the Western media, he would probably think it was because “they” liked him. But if he has read any John le Carr novels, he would immediately have torpedoed that notion. Shadowy sources are denuded of emotion. They play games whose objectives are only known to themselves.
They use anyone who is gullible enough to believe that his objectives coincide with theirs, without first ascertaining what theirs is.
Dorril may have thought that his informers merely wanted to glorify MI6. But, in fact, he could be a mere pawn in a game whose true objective is to sabotage the attempts being made in the West to bring Colonel Moammar Gadaffi of Libya in from “the cold”. Or to torpedo the peace process in Northern Ireland. Or the talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Additionally, someone simply wants to punish Mandela for remaining true to his conscience and refusing to ostracise the Palestinians or Gadaffi. Or to try and shut him up about Northern Ireland. It’s all very murky, isn’t it?
One reason why the target of a smear operation is put in a lose-lose situation is this: if the target denies the allegation, the automatic response from most people would be, “He would, wouldn’t he?”
A second reason is this: the bigger a lie is, the more people are likely to accept it. The classic case cited in proof of this theory is the “Zinoviev Letter” – a forged letter allegedly from the former Soviet Union which surfaced in Britain at a sensitive moment to suggest that there was political collusion between some British politicians and the Soviets. Once the letter was published – even though it was in a conservative newspaper – it was accepted by many people as genuine.
For all these reasons, even though as a journalist I hate the libel laws, I think Mandela should sue Dorril and his publishers if they go ahead with the wicked allegation against him. The point is that this is no small fry they are targeting, but a man who means a lot to a millions of people all over the world. To deliberately go ahead with an allegation of this sort, despite Mandela’s denials, would be most reprehensible.
It would also be, in my opinion, quite stupid. In the same way that Mandela can’t fully win because you can never quite prove a negative (that is, “MI6 never recruited me”), and also because there is something intelligence agencies call “an unconscious agent”, it would be equally difficult for Dorril to obtain proof of his allegation.
Even if he were in possession of the MI6 file on Mandela, how could he authenticate it in court? Would the registrar of MI6 files come and give evidence for him? If the allegation was made verbally, would the informer take off his cloak of secrecy and come into the witness box to repeat it there? If he did, would he not be guilty of a crime under the Official Secrets Act?
And yet the law of libel offers only one effective defence: truth. If the allegation can be proved to be true, then it can be published; the defence is called justification, or “fair comment in a matter of public interest. But even so, Mandela would have to think carefully before he sued.
For one thing, the cost of libel proceedings in Britain is scandalously prohibitive. For another, the defence would welcome an opportunity to dissect him in the witness box, fishing for any actions in his past which could possibly help sustain their allegation. Some of the libel experts in Britain can reduce grown men to tears through cross- examination – recently, Mohammed al-Fayed went through such an ordeal and came out of it probably hating the sight of the damages he won.
Mandela has suffered enough in his life. It would therefore be nice if Dorril and his publishers withdrew their allegations and left him in peace to try and save the poor people of Burundi and elsewhere from the murderous idiocies of their governments.