White Malice: The CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa

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Her book Who Killed Hammarskjold? (2011), [7] [8] [9] about the death in 1961 of the then- United Nations Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, triggered a new UN investigation in 2015. [ citation needed] At the same time the CIA was worried about the Soviets getting their hands on the premium uranium mine in Katanga province, which has announced it was breaking away as well as South Kasai (where the civil war is still raging). But the CIA wanted to get rid of Nkrumah who had the idea to united Africa as a "United States of Africa" with everyone working together to improve their countries without ending up in the West or Red Camps. Spies in the Congo: The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb (UK); Spies in the Congo: America's Atomic Mission in World War II (USA)

Williams paints an exciting picture of the heady days of independence for Ghana quoting Nkrumah’s speech of “just sixteen words” at its independence ceremony: “At long last the battle has ended and Ghana our beloved country is free for ever.” Sadly Nkrumah’s vision of a United States of Africa was destroyed by the actions of the CIA on behalf of the “other” United States which had, through its defeat of British colonialism, been his early inspiration.Neocolonialism takes various forms, including the sponsorship of culture. This study of the CIA during the cold war reveals the story of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a CIA front based in Paris, which was active on five continents, including Africa. Among an astonishing breadth of activities, it subsidised conferences, cultural centres, books and magazines, including Encounter in London. “Soon enough”, exclaimed the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka in disgust, “we would discover that we had been dining, and with relish, with the original of that serpentine incarnation, the devil himself, romping in our postcolonial Garden of Eden and gorging on the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge!” Indigenous Healing and Medicinal Practices in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak in Tanzania: Interview with Dr Simon Mutebi A Special Issue of The Round Table, co-edited by Williams with Dr Mandy Banton (SAS) and Professor Elizabeth Shepherd (UCL) and with an introduction by all three editors

Since I don’t feel comfortable tanking the rating of this book just because I couldn’t get into it, (which is a shame, I was really interested in this subject!) I’m going to leave it alone, but I probably would have given it one or two stars. Williams is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. [8] Paper given at a conference organised in the House of Lords, London, by UNA Westminster on questions relating to Dag Hammarskjöld’s death. ACUNS (Academic Council on the United Nations System) at The Hague Institute of Global Justice: The UN at 70 All this is tied together by the interventions by the CIA and its predecessor, the Office for Strategic Services, often in cahoots with the British MI6. The detailed accounts offer insights into the secret operations then. The display of mindsets and their consequences do not require theory or analytical comment. The facts speak for themselves.

Williams writes in a scattered way, with plots and characters being introduced or returned to at inexplicable times, making the narrative and, more importantly, the larger message hard to follow. The overall feeling is being snowballed with facts and names. At times, Williams is good at clearly stating her conjecture for what is it. She is also good at pointing out distortions of or gaps in the historical record. At other points, however, she makes declarative statements without providing evidence. I'm generally inclined to believe her narrative but her occasional failure to provide support makes the book read like a polemic. Williams quotes (p. 77) a high-ranking CIA agent to illustrate the overall Western mindset. He declared in 1957: White Malice] offers an alternative story of national liberation, told from the perspective of ‘minor’ characters. … What emerges from these testimonies is not a picture of tragedy, romance or against-the-odds heroism, but a sober assessment of the tough and sometimes impossible choices facing left-wing anti-colonial activists who were under pressure from foreign enemies and foreign allies alike.’ — London Review of Books Investigating Hidden Voices in the Struggle for Independence in Northern Rhodesia, 1958-64, with particular focus on the Cha Cha Cha Uprisig of July-October 1961

It is clear that the CIA had been investigating ways of killing Lumumba for some time, including raiding the house in which he was sheltering in Stanleyville after Mobutu’s coup, or poisoning him with botulinum, to mimic the effects of diseases common in Congo. The latter was part of the operations of Stanley Gottlieb, a chemical specialist who worked with the CIA on a range of possible technologies for ‘assassination or incapacitation’, as well as even murkier technologies like mind-control drugs (p.506). It was Gottlieb who worked on the various toxins the CIA plotted to use against Castro. we had been dining, and with relish, with the original of that serpentine incarnation, the Devil himself, romping in our post-colonial Garden of Eden and gorging on the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge. A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.

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Then one night late in 2018 after my book Whiteness:The Original Sincame out, he interviewed me for a show he had on Anthony Cumia’s Compound Media network. Throughout the entire interview, he steadfastly denied that white people were getting slammed in the media. Last question he asked me was whether I thought Hitler got a bad rap in the press. I said of course he did. Before I was even given a chance to elaborate, he cut me off, ended the interview, and I never heard from him again. Dr Williams is a historian who seeks to investigate the role and the impacts of imperialism and neo-colonialism on the continent of Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries. Closely associated with this focus is the history of the United Nations. At the centre of these concerns is the contestation over the human and democratic rights of justice and freedom. Herresearch draws on a wide range of sources in different nations: primarily on archives, official and private; and also on oral testimony, media, and visual observation. As with Hammarskjöld’s death, there is no smoking gun – but the deftly sketched story gives us an unprecedented look into the murky underworld of Cold War geopolitics and the motivations of its major players.