George W Bush’s second term as United States President is good news for Africa, says Tony Leon, Democratic Alliance leader. He bases this judgement on the views of a notorious diamond merchant allegedly linked to supporting undemocratic and corrupt regimes in Africa.
In his article Reflections on the American Election (which we publish this week on page 38 under the headline ”The ANC has the strategy and tactics of Bush’s Republicans”), Leon explains how he met Maurice Tempelsman, president of Lazar Kaplan International, the US’s largest diamond manufacturer, in New York for lunch, and described him as ”Africa’s best friend” who thinks that Bush has ”driven a strong, principled and effective pro-Africa policy”.
He said Tempelsman cited the Bush administration’s strong commitment to funding the fight against HIV/Aids, peace-making in Sudan and support for the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act.
But Tempelsman, most renowned as a former companion to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, appears to be far from qualified to know what is best for Africa. Over many years, books and media articles have alleged that he is a front man for the CIA and diamond mining conglomerate De Beers. If true, this position would have allowed him to promote US foreign policy decisions that allegedly favoured access to and control of African diamond fields.
This led to the US covertly supporting undemocratic and corrupt regimes in Africa to the detriment of the African people, according to author and film-maker Janine Roberts, who has done extensive research into diamond mining and De Beers.
The Mail & Guardian reported on Tempelsman in 2000 when the South African government requested that De Beers explain its ties with the president of Lazar Kaplan International. At the time Tempelsman’s relationship with De Beers came under scrutiny because it was believed that he had helped the diamond giant tie up exclusive deals with African countries such as the former Zaire.
The South African diamond board was in possession of a briefing document that cited declassified US files. It claimed that De Beers and the Oppenheimers used Tempelsman as an intermediary and ”fixer”, attempting to manipulate for profit the Cold War in Africa.
The M&G reported at the time that the documents said: ”Tempelsman was needed as an intermediary by De Beers because the US government could not [and cannot] directly do business with a cartel illegal in the USA as a price-fixing conspiracy.” The document says he worked closely with the CIA, and suggests that he or his employees had a hand in shaping various African governments to make them more amenable to De Beers.
But Leon scoffs at what he calls ”speculation and unsubstantiated rumour”, which ”has the effect of confusing fact with fiction”. Leon maintains that Tempelsman is ”Africa’s best friend” because ”among many other contributions to the continent, he currently serves as chairman emeritus of the Corporate Council on Africa — the leading US business corporation on Africa — and is deeply involved with numerous other projects — which have seen millions of dollars spent on Africa’s development”.
When questioned on the nature of his association with the diamond merchant, Leon said: ”I do not wish to be cross-examined on what was essentially a private lunch with Mr Tempelsman”.
Leon said he is not the only politician linked to Tempelsman, who is an ”extremely well known public figure” and who has met with both President Thabo Mbeki and former president Nelson Mandela — ”not to mention myriad other key international figureheads from [former US president] Bill Clinton to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan — certainly my meeting with him was completely unexceptional”.
Numerous published books and articles, as well as a submission to a 2001 US congressional hearing, have said Tempelsman is alleged to have had direct input into the destabilisation of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Rwanda and Ghana.
According to Cynthia McKinney, a former congresswoman who chaired the hearing, ”Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington, DC”: ”He earned his stripes with Western powers in the overthrow of Ghana’s first elected president, Kwame Nkrumah, and the CIA-backed assassination of Congo’s first-elected president, Patrice Lumumba.”
Leon said he was not aware of any of the allegations against Tempelsman and ”he has never been approached by the DA for funding and nor has he ever, to the best of my knowledge, made a contribution to the DA. Certainly, I never did and never have approached Mr Tempelsman in this regard.”
At the time of going to press Tempelsman had not responded to a request for comment.