FOREWORD

The author, Gerd Michael Müller, born in Zürich in 1962, traveled as a photo-journalist to more than 50 nations and lived in seven countries, including in the underground in South Africa during apartheid. In the 80 years he was a political activist at the youth riots in Zürich. Then he was involved in pioneering Wildlife & eco projects in Southern Africa and humanitarian projects elsewhere in the world. As early as 1993, Müller reported on the global climate change and in 1999 he founded the «Tourism & Environment Forum Switzerland». Through his humanitarian missions he got to know Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and other figures of light. His book is an exciting mixture of political thriller, crazy social stories and travel reports – the highlights of his adventurous, wild nomadic life for reportage photography .

(please note that translation corrections are still in progress and images will follow soon)

Senegal 86: Between the Fronts and in the World of Witches and Healers

Senegal is a world of spirits, witches, healers and soothsayers. Everything is very mystical. Curses are cast and people are bewitched, and somehow everyone is afraid of them. That’s why everyone wears a boubou, a lucky charm that is supposed to protect them. The dress cult is also legendary. The most beautiful, very colorful dresses and costumes are hawked in Dakar. The colorfully painted pirogues, the dugout canoes, line up on the beach in the hustle and bustle of fishermen and traders. As a means of transportation, there are minibuses that travel in all directions and stop wherever a passenger wants to get on or off. Dakar is an extremely vibrant metropolis. Day and night, because only from the evening hours the temperature is pleasant, while over noon it rises to 40 degrees. I was especially fascinated by the Silberschmid market. Here incredibly beautiful rings were made of horn, richly decorated with chased silver. Also exciting were the textiles and clothes for sale here. For the first time in my life, I chose the fabrics for my local color clothing myself, took them to the tailor and had the clothes tailored to my wishes and measurements.

In 1986, I was assigned as a station and tour manager first for three months in Senegal, then in Warsaw in Poland, i.e. in the then Eastern Bloc, and finally in London for another three months. During the first Resident Manager assignment in Senegal, there was a lull, as in Covid times, because „AIDS“ had just appeared on the radar and the medical community was still puzzling over where the virus came from and how it was transmitted. At first, it was thought to be transmitted by a fly from Africa, then monkey bites came into question. Therefore, there was not much going on in the „Club Aldiana“ near M’Bour. Also here in M’Bour, about four hours drive south along the coast, there was a magnificent fish market with bustling activity and magnificent pirogues. Here was also the „Club Aldiana“ where most of the guests stayed. But three times a week I drove up to the airport in Dakar with the vacation guests and brought the arriving guests down to the club. That was quite an adventurous trip each time.

Senegal is located on the Atlantic coast in the transition from the sparse vegetation of the Sahel in the north to the more fertile tropics in the south and is cut exactly east-west by a 300 kilometer deep gash that forms the territory of The Gambia. Thus, anyone wishing to enter Casamance from Dakar must inevitably pass through Gambia. This border between Gambia and Senegal makes it difficult to connect Senegal’s southwestern region of Casamance with the rest of the country. The most important people of Senegal are the Wolof and this is also the most common language among the many dialects. The Wolof founded several feudalistic kingdoms between the 15th and 19th centuries, and their traces are still visible in the country’s society today. Then there are the Serer, a Catholic peasant people in the center and west of Senegal, which is majority Islamic. The Djiola live in the south of the country, in Casamance, and are mainly rice farmers. The Mandinka, Bambara and Soninke are ethnic groups that have strong cross-border ties, especially to Mali. A multiethnic state, in other words. Due to the „AIDS“ crisis, which drastically reduced African tourism, I had time for a trip to the south of Senegal to the Casamance and also crossed Gambia. In a small town I rented a bungalow and walked around with my camera in the wilderness near the border and was suddenly stopped in the undergrowth by a troop of soldiers of the military of Guinea-Bissau and interrogated for hours. Since the commander spoke only Portuguese, it took me a while to learn that there was a conflict over the oil reserves in the border area between the two countries and I remembered a TV report a few days ago that exactly at that time the parties to the dispute were meeting in Geneva for negotiations. This was my lifeline and trump card, as a Swiss in this precarious situation. So I tried to make it clear to the commander that it would be extremely bad if they captured me and thus endangered the negotiations in Geneva. He understood and let me go unharmed thanks to my relatively generous donation. Relieved, I ran back to Casamance, that is, to Senegal. Once there, I had no more cash to pay the rent for the lodge. To do so, I had to travel a day’s journey away to Zuiginchor to change the traveler’s check. So I told the hotelier about the frontier experience and my donation, with the rent gone, and then ran exhausted to the bungalow to go to sleep first.

But it didn’t take long before two military jeeps drove up with a roar in front of the hut and eight soldiers got out, staring at their weapons. This time they were Senegalese soldiers, but that didn’t exactly reassure me. „You would have orders to escort me to the military governor,“ they said to me. „What’s going on now,“ I thought, trying to slow down the adrenaline rush. Half an hour later, I was sitting in front of the military commander, who questioned me about the border incident. He had been informed by the landlord and wanted to know more about it. „Shit“, I thought to myself, but today is an exhausting day, now the war diplomacy starts all over again. Now it’s a matter of playing everything down as much as possible and saying as little as possible, I thought to myself. I practiced this for a good four hours with the Senegalese commander, after which I was pretty exhausted. Two military interrogations in hostile countries in one day was a special test of endurance.

At the end of the mission in Senegal, which was overshadowed by the first AIDS and HIV cases, I invited my last guests in M’Bour to a Moorish cafe that also served Vielle Prune, a very fine plum brandy. An absolute rarity in Africa. My guests knew immediately which drink it was. With a smile, the man, who was a little over 50 years old, explained to me that he was the president of the board of the „Destillerie Willisau“ and that he produced and distributed this drink. So we were even more pleased about the next few drops and when the guest learned that I would be transferred to Warsaw, he said: „Oh, I know a very fine person and high-ranking politician, since we import the vodka from Poland“. So he wrote the name in question on a piece of paper and gave it to me for recommendation and contact. Thanks to this „liquor connection“ in Senegal, I had, without just suspecting it, drawn an ace for my next mission. as we are about to read after a contemporary discourse on Senegal as mna sees it today.

Senegal is a young, unemployed nation, with some 40 percent unemployed youth who fought a five-day violent protest in March 2021, attacking courts, police stations, city halls, pro-government media, politicians‘ homes and many francophone institutions. While young people are taking to the barricades against the corruption and incompetence of the government(s), almost half of the children do not attend school at all, and in remote regions as many as 70 % do. In terms of education policy, all governments have failed completely, including the French government. This is the basic problem. But the anger is also directed against the dependence on France, which is closely linked to France economically and also in terms of currency policy with the CFA. In the land of the „Teranga,“ which means hospitality in Wolof, there are almost 250 branches of French companies. For years, the corrupt politicians in Dakar have refused to give in to the repeated demands to finally end the neocolonial dependence. This is also the background of the Antiimperialist Pan-African Revolution (Frapp) of the activist Guy Marius Sagna.

Warsaw 86: In Pole Position Behind the Iron Curtain

Upon my arrival in Warsaw, where a „LOT“ commercial airliner had crashed 14 days earlier, killing about 140 people, I was able to speak with an elderly man who understood English and helped me with customs and immigration formalities for the 70 passengers from the West. When I thanked him for his help and asked his name, he replied, „My name is Henry Zwirko. That was the name on the piece of paper that the last guest in Senegal had given me. This could not be a coincidence, I thought intuitively, but at the same time I was busy with the passports and entry papers, which could probably drag on for hours, especially since I had arrived here in Warsaw as a newcomer behind the „Iron Curtain“ after a short briefing of a few hours in Switzerland. But the procedure was considerably shortened by the man who introduced himself as this Henry Zwirko, with a few gentle but firm words to the border official, and we were all able to pass. „OK,“ I thought to myself, the man is indeed promising. No wonder his influence reaches far, after all he is a Polish cabinet minister and his father a WW2 war hero. I already knew that much about him. But that I would meet this special man as soon as I arrived in Warsaw was quite eerie. In retrospect, my suspicions were confirmed that the Chairman of the Board had helped the meeting along a bit, thus opening the way for me into an extraordinarily closed world that many intelligence officers at the time, including our counterintelligence, would surely have envied.

In a very natural way, an excellent cooperation developed between Henry Zwirko and me. Since the official tourist exchange rate of Swiss francs and German marks was a good seven times higher than the black market rate offered in Warsaw, I soon got on the transfer bus once or twice a week with half a million zloty’s, which Henry got for me, with which we picked up the new guests from Zurich. And during the transfer from the airport to the hotels, I told the guests how laborious and dangerous the illegal exchange was and offered, as a good tour guide during the ride to the city center

to change 200 francs for each guest at a good rate. Business went like clockwork and the bus driver and the local guides always got off easy and then looked the other way at the right moment. And so I worked my way into the depths of corruption, complicity and planned economy and soon had money like hay or millions of zloty’s expressed in local currency.

Only, there was nothing to buy! Nothing at all, except booze and venal sex on every corner, outside the tourist hotels it was very dull, except for a few very secret places for the elite where all the goodies like a Chateau Briand or tartar and fresh juices were dished up. I was only three times in this illustrious place meant for Poland’s elite. But once, President Wojciech Jaruselski (the one-eyed man who defied the Russians) sat at one of the next tables with his entourage. For me, it was almost as if I had arrived in the Kremlin! Some years later I had an unexpected meeting with Gorbachev’s Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in the sauna of a famous Medical Wellness Hotel with an outstanding sleep diagnostic center in Vorarlberg. Fortunately, or as chance would have it, I had a Russian-speaking Ukrainian woman with me as a photo model, so we were able to exchange a few words with him together. Obviously, the Russian Foreign Minister was plagued by insomnia symptoms! Probably due to the foreign policy tensions, because things were not going well for the Russians. But back to Warsaw; less than two weeks after my arrival in Warsaw and a first round trip in Poland to Krakow and Zakopane, the body specialists and forensic experts from abroad arrived to investigate the plane crash three weeks ago. As a result, our entire tour group, always around 50 to 70 people, was kicked out of the only middle-class hotel, the „Forum“ in Warsaw, from one hour to the next. From then on, we had to make do with lousy, run-down hotels for the next 14 days, sometimes sharing a hotel room in threes or a double bed in twos. It was a lot like being in the military. But the 90 percent male guests took it relatively calmly, „after all, we are in the Eastern Bloc here.“ And they were well provided for and genuinely satisfied with the crates of vodka and champagne that I had brought up for crisis management. Most of them were only here for a „tourist attraction“ anyway. Warsaw was the Bangkok of Europe at that time and the female supply abundantly salacious available in the hotel bar. Whole peasant associations and sales representatives with „black commission coffers“ came here from Switzerland to have a little fun behind the Iron Curtain.

Only for this I had absolutely no time and muse! Deprived of my own box and in addition daily on the search for new accommodations, the transfers, the complicated gasoline procurement on the black market and other bureaucratic hurdles kept me on the go. It was especially difficult to keep getting gas for my work trips and transfers. I slept in the car with the driver for the first five days, then shared a sagging double bed for a few nights with a Swiss executive on business in Poland. That gave me the rest. When the socialist gypsy life became too much for me, I had the local guests kicked out of the hotels with the bundles of dollar grease available, by putting double or triple the room rate on the table. As time went by, some things went like clockwork and as the icing on the cake, I rented one of the most beautiful and expensive luxury suites in the only 5-star hotel in Warsaw, at that time the „Victoria“ Hotel right on the main square. From this state guest suite, I was able to follow the papal visit of the Polish pontiff Karol Józef Wojtyła from my window better than any other camera team. By the way, I saw Pontifatius Wojtyła again in Cuba in 1993, when the Polish pope paid a visit to the Caribbean island and Fidel Castro. There, too, I was at the forefront of the papal procession Tam Tam.

If I had time to myself, I would bring up the unemployed girls in the lobby and from the hotel bar, because my suite also included a piano player in the salon between the two wings. And there was plenty of room in my suite with two bedrooms and a salon. Suddenly I was bored more often and had half a private brothel as guests. The three months in Poland were unforgettable and much more exciting than the time in Senegal. With a young Polish student, who knew a few words of English, my horses ran away. I drove with her into the forest to a stud farm where we borrowed two stallions and dashed through the beautiful woods at a hell of a pace. Well, to be more precise, I simply had no other choice. She galloped off and my horse raced after her. There was no more brake pedal. The hanging branches brushed and whipped us all the time around the face, so that we performed the infernal ride bent low until the place when her horse braked sharply, whereupon my stallion also pulled even with an emergency brake and we both landed elegantly, almost virtuosically after a Salto Mortale in the bushes. After all, I still had the bridle under control and had made it several kilometers at a stretched canter through Poland’s wild forests in my third riding lesson. Simply terrific! Wild, uninhibitedly impetuous was also the sex we had before we remounted and trotted back with the horses unharmed. Unfortunately, it was very difficult to get in touch with the local population, to communicate with them and to participate in their lives, because of the language communication. That left me with only the pretty hostesses at the hotel whose language I understood. But now it’s on to London, says the fax from the „Imholz“ tour guide headquarters in Zurich.

London 87: First contacts with „ANC“ exiles

Having arrived and settled in London, after an industrial accident involving an Italian tour guide who was working here without a residence permit and whom I then visited in prison, I also met „ANC“ exiles who had fled the racist apartheid regime. UN sanctions had just come into force and the South African regime was pilloried. Since the brother of one of our London tour guides lived in South Africa, a few of our tour guide crew wanted to travel to the Cape of Good Hope in turbulent times and then roam the Okavango Delta in Botswana. This sounded promising and was put into practice after our assignment in London ended, but before that I returned to Switzerland to exchange information from London with „ANC“ exiles and with the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAB) and to establish further contacts in the South African underground. Thus well equipped for the South Africa mission, departure in November 1989 was fast approaching. But let’s flash back briefly to what had happened in South Africa over the previous decade.

In 1950, when the South African government divided its people into races (Population Registration Act 35), Swiss banks paid the first loans of 35 million francs. Then, when the government banned mixed marriages (Prohibition of Mixed Marriage Act), another 85 million francs flowed to the Appartheid state, which by 1983 had expropriated over three and a half million blacks and deported them to „homelands.“ And so 87 percent of the country suddenly belonged to the 16 percent whites. On June 26, 1955, the ANC, together with other black organizations, adopted the Freedom Charter and proclaimed that South Africa belonged to all the people who lived here. On March 21, 1960, the first massacre occurs in Sharpville, where 69 people are shot by police and another 180 are seriously injured. The government declares a state of emergency and enacts more and more new laws to keep the blacks in check. In 1962, Nelson Mandela is arrested. The UN General Assembly then recommends breaking off relations with South Africa, and in 1963 the UN Security Council follows up with an arms embargo. Switzerland decides on an export ban, but no sanctions. Nevertheless, 35 mm guns from „Oerlikon Bührle“ and PC-Pilatus Porter are delivered to South Africa.

In 1967, almost 700,000 blacks were arrested within a year for allegedly violating passport laws. Spending on internal security already amounted to 17 percent of the gross national product. When the British decided to suspend the gold trade for two weeks in March 1968, Switzerland stepped into the breach. Now South Africa’s wealth was flowing into the gold trading metropolis of Switzerland in rough quantities. „SBG“, „SKA“ and „SBV“ secure three quarters of the worldwide gold trade. One year later, the „Bührle Affair“ bursts. The Oerlikon arms manufacturer had supplied weapons worth 52.7 million Swiss francs to South Africa via France. In 1973, the „UN“ General Assembly decides to expel South Africa with „Resolution 3068“ and to classify apartheid as a „crime against humanity“, meanwhile the bonds of the three Swiss banks have already risen to 2.2 billion Swiss francs. While every second child under the age of five dies in the homelands, the white masters at the Cape and the „Zurich Gold Coast“ are doing better and better. „Oerlikon Bührle“ has evaded sanctions several times. I remember that as an apprentice in the export department, I simply had to issue export permits, freight documents and letters of credit to „Oerlikon Bührle“ Holding in Spain or in Italy.

In 1979, a massacre took place in Soweto, when on June 16, 15,000 students protested against being taught in Africaans from then on. 575 people died in the uprising, which lasted for months. Swiss banks doubled their lending. In 1980, the „World Alliance of Reformed Churches“ declared apartheid a heresy. This left Switzerland and the Swiss secret service cold. Peter Reggli initiated the exchange of pilots with South African fighter pilots, but the Federal Council was not informed until 1986. The amount of loans granted by Swiss banks to the apartheid regime quadrupled. Year after year by 100 percent. As a result of the international ostracism of the apartheid regime, Switzerland profited from the contemptuous, racist policy of the whites at the Cape. The „ILO“ called on the global corporations to withdraw from South Africa and criticized the „SBG“ in particular as a sanction-breaker. Nevertheless, in 1985 the South African regime receives another 75 million Swiss francs in loans from Swiss banks at its free disposal. In 1986, a state of emergency is imposed on the heavily indebted country, more than 10,000 people are arrested, 1800 perished. „Peace became a threat to public security,“ says Archbishop Desmond Tutu when the church newspaper, the New Nation, was closed.

In 1987, when the United States wanted to punish companies that did not comply with the sanctions, South Africa’s President Peter Botha and his foreign minister came to Zurich to meet with „SBG“ Deputy Director Georg Meyer and the board of the „Association Switzerland-South Africa“, where they were given on the spot an „Order of Good Hope“ and another 70 million. And in 1989, thanks to Robert Jeker, South Africa’s regime also got a breather on the repayment of the outstanding loans of eight billion Swiss francs. This was the situation at the time that prompted me to go underground in South Africa. There was another small twist of fate that strengthened my resolve. Like so many activists, I wrote a letter to the then „SGB“ (now „UBS“), which was very active in South Africa at that time and supported the apartheid regime, informing the bank that I was closing my account in protest against the financial policy and the „SBG“ commitment and asking them to transfer the balance to another account. This was also done with an inhospitable instruction letter from „UBS“. On my new account, however, 5000 francs more arrived by mistake. This was like a sign from above that I was on the right path and that the mission was approved and endorsed „from above“. So I applied for a „loose leaflet“ visa, which was stamped on a piece of paper and not in the passport, so that there was no outlawed entry in the passport, which would have led to travel restrictions due to the sanctions, and I flew to Johannesburg. I had contacts with ANC exiles first in London and then in Switzerland, and was equipped with some contacts in Soweto and elsewhere in the land of the white masters, with whom the Swiss government, financial sector and mining industry still maintained good contacts. 

The Swiss secret service served Wouter Basson alias „Doctor Death“.

Switzerland’s political, military and arms industry relations with South Africa were at their most intense in the 1980s, when the enforcement of South Africa’s policy of racial segregation (apartheid) was at its strongest and accompanied by serious human rights violations and the open use of violence. Swiss industry was engaged in large-scale undermining of the arms embargo imposed by the UN on South Africa. It violated even the Swiss-defined rules on arms exports, although they were far narrower than those of the UN. The administration was aware of many illegal and semi-legal transactions. This was also true of intelligence cooperation between Switzerland and South Africa. The exchange of intelligence information directly contributed to the initiation of arms deals, the fight against apartheid opponents, and political propaganda in favor of the South African government. In the darkest days of apartheid in South Africa: in the 1980s, Peter Regli, then head of the Air Force, organized a secret exchange of military pilots with South Africa. According to former South African intelligence chief Chris Thirion, the Swiss and South African services had been exchanging information on chemical weapons for years. At the time, Wouter Basson was head of South Africa’s chemical weapons program. The South African media gave him the nickname „Doctor Death.“ He headed „Operation Coast,“ a top-secret and lethal apartheid government program to test on political opponents and black Africans.

All this is recorded in a classified report by Professor Schweizer and in the study „With the Apartheid Government Against Communism“ by Peter Hug. So, in early 1988, Wouter Basson and South African General Lothar Neethling met in Bern with representatives of the Spiez AC Laboratory. According to Basson, the meeting was arranged by Jürg Jacomet. The ominous arms dealer was Regli’s „agent in South Africa.“ In 1991, a year after the fall of the apartheid regime, Basson and Neethling paid another visit to Bern, this time directly to Regli’s office. In 1992, Jacomet helped Basson procure half a ton of „Mandrax,“ an extremely toxic paralytic. It was a deal that threaded Regli. Two years later, Regli could count on Jacomet’s support in buying two Russian SA-18 surface-to-air missiles in return. „Operation Coast“ was called off in 1992. The parliamentary reappraisal of this problematic relationship began far too late and was only triggered by media reports.

The Federal Council was blind on both eyes and hardly informed about Regli’s close ties with South Africa. The truth came to light bit by bit. Only one member of the Federal Council knew about Regli’s deals, according to the parliamentary inquiry of 2003, namely Kaspar Villiger. But Professor Schweizer, who also questioned Villiger, doubted the former FDP Federal Councilor’s willingness to cooperate, saying, „Certainly he did not tell me everything.“ For the professor emeritus, the case of Regli and South Africa is not closed even if Regli’s relations with South Africa are officially closed and led to his rehabilitation in 2007. Erroneous, isn’t it? Despite clear contacts, problematic contacts, private dealings and several breaches of competence, no direct involvement in „Project Coast“ could be proven against him, even if Regli had admitted, in the presence of his lawyer, that he had met Wouter Basson, the head of the chemical weapons program, at least six times and had discussed confidential matters with him. So Regli had knowledge of this doctor’s criminal research, Schweizer says. But these well-documented findings have so far remained inconsequential for him. That was because Regli had destroyed all files and memos about his visits in September 1999. A few months before he was forced into early retirement by the Federal Council because of the ongoing investigation, Regli was transferred to the army archives. There he took the opportunity to destroy all documents related to his activities in South Africa. Ironically, he invoked data protection, his personal rights and the „Fichenskandal“ of the Federal Police at the time. The destruction of files was a typical Swiss idiosyncrasy from the 1970s to the 1990s, say intelligence historians. Files were shredded especially about cooperation with foreign intelligence services, if anything was put in writing at all, he says. „The intelligence services in the U.S., Germany and England didn’t do that to this extent.“

About the „Cryptoleaks“. „SRF-Rundschau“, „ZDF“ and the „Washington Post“ had shown that the Zug export company „Crypto AG“ had sold manipulated encryption devices in the service of the American and German secret services over many years. Crypto AG“ is only the tip of the iceberg. The entire Swiss intelligence service in the 1990s was characterized by arrogance, intrigue and informal relations with Western and illustrious intelligence services. There was a small circle of insiders at the top who, unsupervised by the Federal Council and parliament, cultivated personal exchanges with American, South African or Israeli spies. Thanks to the 280-page document called „Minerva“ it was proved that the „BND“ and the „CIA“ had a secret alliance between 1970 and 1993 to spy on about 100 countries. The proceedings against „Crypto AG“ also had to be discontinued without result. Various names from the bourgeois camp have appeared in the media. The secret CIA report „Minerva“ named, for example, the Zug FDP parliamentarian Georg Stucky, a member of the board of directors of „Crypto AG“ and former Federal Councillor Kaspar Villiger as confidants. The „Bühler affair“ who was arrested in 1992 while selling encryption equipment to the Iranian Ministry of Defense. The sales representative was suspected of espionage and served nine months in an Iranian prison. The Bühler case forced the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland to conduct an investigation into „Crypto AG“. This erroneously concluded that there had been no manipulation of equipment. However, several sources from the „NDB“ environment testify how closely the ex-chief of the Strategic Intelligence Service worked with the Americans. They called him „the prompter“ with close ties to the then „CIA“ director William H. Webster, the Israeli intelligence service „Mossad“ or the South African intelligence service – all protagonists from the „Club de Berne“. The military intelligence service „SND“ scored with the satellite interception system „Onyx“ in Leuk, Zimmerwald and Heimenschwand. With this system, Switzerland was able to intercept all data transmissions via fax, e-mail or telephone according to search criteria without any restrictions. There was also the „Service for Analysis and Prevention“ (DAP). This was founded after the „Fichen Affair“ in 1989 and was based at the Federal Department of Justice and Police.

Swiss industry was also one of the pillars of the secret South African nuclear weapons program. The „Gebrüder Sulzer AG“ and the „VAT Haag“ supplied important components for the South African uranium enrichment, which provided the necessary fissile material for the six atomic bombs produced by South Africa. Thus, Switzerland was undoubtedly a supporter of the apartheid government in more ways than one. How did this come about? Due to its distance from the UN, a tendency toward racist ideas remained politically effective after 1945, which was replaced by an equally unreflective anti-communism from the end of the 1970s. In the climate of the Cold War, any criticism of this was stifled with the argument that the anti-communist bulwark at the Cape had to be preserved. For in both Angola and Mocambique, communism was spreading with the help of the Cubans. The limited insight into the Swiss Federal Archives and those of the „Vorort des Schweizerischen Handels- und Industrievereins“ show that Switzerland maintained very close military, intelligence, armament industrial and nuclear relations with South Africa during the apartheid era. Also, as early as the beginning of the 1960s, Switzerland received the heads of the administration, the army and the business community, as well as high-ranking delegations from the South African armed forces. The Military Department in Bern and the Swiss diplomatic mission in South Africa actively assisted in the initiation and handling of arms deals, and the Swiss army made its firing and weapons ranges available to the private arms industry so that it could demonstrate its products to South African procurement delegations.

From Switzerland’s point of view, there was no reason to take any coercive measures against the South African government. It was only due to the clumsy information policy of the Federal Council and the arrogant attitude of „Oerlikon-Bührle“ that the Swiss government was forced to stop arms exports to South Africa in December 1963 for domestic political reasons. But this stop was conceived as temporary. There was still no sign of any political will to enforce an export ban. After the 1963 „halt on arms exports“ to South Africa, the political will remained pervasive in Switzerland’s authoritative circles to support the South African government in expanding its armed forces and arms industrial base. Human rights issues were never raised in these circles. From 1965, a South African military attaché was accredited in Switzerland. In 1966, the then Chief of Staff of the Swiss Army, Paul Gygli, and Colonel Helmut von Frisching of the „Subgroup Intelligence and Defense (UNA) established „cordial contacts“ with the head of the „South African Army, General Charles Alan Fraser. At Gygli’s suggestion, a South African military mission traveled to Switzerland to learn about the Swiss Army’s recruitment and training system in view of South Africa’s armed forces reform. Of particular interest to South Africa’s military intelligence was the way the Swiss Army fought so-called „subversives“ within the framework of „psychological warfare.“

No sooner had the South African government, with the support of the U.S. intelligence agency „CIA,“ established the notorious „Bureau of State Security“ (BOSS) as a civilian intelligence service in 1969 than its no less notorious chief, General Hendrik Van Bergh, maintained personal contacts with representatives of the partner services in Switzerland. In 1974, the „BOSS“ division „Z-Squad“ carried out from Switzerland one of the first extrajudicial killings of a black opposition figure ordered by the South African government. Beginning in 1972, the military intelligence services of Switzerland and South Africa also established a close exchange of information at the behest of then UNA chief Brigadier Colonel Carl Weidenmann. In 1974, Brigadier Friedrich Günther-Benz made two trips to South Africa and, in a widely circulated report, left no doubt as to his support for South African government policy. In 1975, the Chief of the Intelligence Division in the UNA, Colonel Peter Hoffet, together with his wife and daughter, were guests of the South African military attaché for three days.

Macabre arms deals and nuclear deals covered by the Swiss political felt

Against this background, it is hardly surprising that „Oerlikon-Bührle“ did not feel bound by the arms export ban of 1963 and in 1964/1965 not only illegally delivered the 30 Oerlikon 35-mm guns affected by the export ban to South Africa, but also in 1965 an additional 90 guns for 52.7 million Swiss francs and – via Italy – 45 Superfledermaus fire control units for 54 million Swiss francs to South Africa. Even after part of this illegal business became known in the course of the Bührle scandal of November 1968 – the illegal delivery of guns and ammunition to South Africa – it simply continued! The last 16 guns were shipped to South Africa via the port of Genoa in 1969, a fact that was known to the Swiss authorities but never became the subject of the criminal investigations then underway. „They consistently practiced negligent cluelessness, active acquiescence and complicity, which made the illegal dealings of „Oerlikon-Bührle“ possible in the first place,“ wrote the study’s author, Peter Hug. Moreover, as new documents from South Africa prove for the first time, the illegal arms business with the apartheid state went far beyond the „Oerlikon-Bührle Group.

Hispano Suiza (Suisse) SA in Geneva also illegally supplied 20 mm guns to South Africa on a large scale. This was based on a 1967 supply contract for 126 Hispano 20 mm guns, ammunition and the transfer of licensing rights worth over CHF 21 million. In 1969, a decision by the Federal Council ruled out extending the criminal investigation beyond „OerlikonBührle AG“ by political means. With the support of the then Defense Minister Giulio Andreotti and intelligence chief General Egidio Viggiani, „Contraves Italiana“ in Rome and „Oerlikon Italiana“ in Milan also circumvented the Italian arms export ban to South Africa on a large scale. „The Swiss authorities supported the undermining of the arms embargo via subsidiaries and partner companies in neighboring states by not requiring end-user certificates for the supply of components from Switzerland, so that they could be shipped on from there to South Africa without any problems,“ Peter Huber recorded in his report reviewing the dark chapter in Switzerland’s relations with the sanctioned apartheid state. .

The most important loophole was Switzerland’s refusal to implement UN Resolution 182 (1963) of December 4, 1963, which called on all states to stop the sale and delivery of equipment and material used in South Africa for the manufacture and maintenance of weapons and ammunition. It was not until 1996 that Switzerland made the transfer of licensing rights for the manufacture of armaments abroad subject to a licensing requirement. The „Lyttelton Engineering Works“ in Pretoria manufactured barrels for the 35-mm Oerlikon gun from 1964 and entire guns from the early 1970s. Pretoria Metal Pressings produced Oerlikon 30-mm and 35-mm ammunition from 1964 onwards on the basis of license agreements with the machine tool factory Oerlikon Bührle, and African Explosives and Chemical Industries produced the necessary propellants. From 1967, South Africa also manufactured the 20-mm gun barrels and ammunition of „Hispano Suiza“ under license.  Around 1964, Plessey (South Africa) Ltd. entered the production of Contraves Mosquito anti-tank missiles, although this licensed production could not be fully clarified. This also applies to the production of „Tavaro“ fuze components by the „Instrument Manufacturing Corp of South Africa“ in Plumstead near Cape Town. In 1972, „Gretag AG“ Regensdorf concluded a license agreement in South Africa for the manufacture of its cipher instruments. In 1974, the subsidiary of „Wild Heerbrugg AG“ in the St. Gallen Rhine Valley, „Wild South Africa“ in Johannesburg, entered into the manufacture of optical equipment for the South African armed forces. All these license transfers were accompanied by subcontracting and technical consulting services. None of this was covered by the wide-meshed provisions of Swiss war material export regulations. No voices were ever raised, either in industry or by the authorities, against the use of these loopholes.

The 1977 UN military and nuclear sanctions and Switzerland In the early 1970s, the United Nations initiated an intensive discussion process on the extent to which international economic relations affected the human rights situation. Some UN bodies went very far in claiming that any economic, political and cultural activity in South Africa contributed to the maintenance of apartheid policies. By denying that there was a link between direct investment in South Africa and reciprocal trade and financial relations and the human rights situation in South Africa, Swiss foreign policy took an extreme position. And at that time, as a 16 year old, I was suddenly involved in world affairs, since I did my commercial training at „Oerlikon Bührle“ in Zurich from 1975 to 1978 and worked in the export department for six months, writing out all the export papers, export licenses, letters of credit, etc. and remembering how I stumbled to export certain armaments through the subsidiaries in Italy and Spain and simply put their address as exporter.

After the political uncertainty caused by the Soweto massacre in 1976 and the subsequent wave of repression inside and outside South Africa again left little trace on the Swiss government, Switzerland found itself increasingly isolated at the international level. As the social base of resistance in South Africa broadened in the early 1980s and the South African government’s repression became harsher and militarized, Switzerland moved even closer to South Africa. All other states joined the call for more or less extensive sanctions. With its categorical no, Switzerland had become very lonely in the UN system. At the same time, the ranks of the administration were closing. Thus, across all departments, an immune and strongly ideologized attitude toward concrete changes became established, which was unable to react in a differentiated manner to the broad spectrum of the UN-South Africa discussion. The domestic counterpart to this rigid stance was a hardening of the fronts along the left-right divide. The matter-of-factness with which all important federal offices and their associated associations and institutions supported the policy of positioning Switzerland outside the overwhelming majority of UN member states on the South Africa question may come as a surprise today. However, this very self-evident fact confirms that consensus and blindness were widespread and entrenched across the spectrum. Despite resistance from the federal police, the South African medical doctor also met with the Swiss chief medical officer in 1980; other meetings followed. While the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1977 and Military Protocol in 1979 were still taking a stand against the exchange of air and air force officers between the two countries, Air Force Chief Arthur Moll initiated a turnaround in 1980. He met the South African air force chief at the air show in Farn-borough and, to the astonishment of his partner, invited him to Switzerland a few days later for an official visit. The basis was the secret protection agreement concluded in 1983. This gave the South African military pilots an insight into secret methods of combat management and technical details of the Swiss Air Force. The pilot exchange continued throughout the 1980s. In addition to the military-technical level, the political level must also be considered. As social conflicts within South Africa intensified and international pressure on South Africa increased, the South African armed forces massively expanded their propaganda activities during the 1980s.

In order to implement their so-called „Comops“ projects, the armed forces and especially the military intelligence service spared neither money nor contacts up to and including violent right-wing extremist forces. In Switzerland, the South African military attaché and other contacts built up contacts with sometimes colorful figures on the extreme right of the political spectrum, including Jürg Meister, editor-in-chief of „Intern-Informationen,“ published by Karl Friedrich Grau. As can be seen from the documents of South Africa’s military intelligence service, the latter attached great importance to contacts with people such as the Zurich „subversive hunter“ Ernst Cincera, the head of the Swiss Institute for Eastern Studies, Peter Sager, and the president of the Southern Africa Working Group, Christoph Blocher. Comops“ operations in Switzerland involved attempts to press television, radio and print media.

Protests by the „anti-apartheid movement of Switzerland went unheard. More questions than answers are raised by a long series of unsolved cases in which the federal police and other investigative bodies received strong indications of crimes and breaches of sanctions, but, out of consideration for the South African government and its prominent friends in Switzerland, shied away from exploiting the information obtained in court. In the case of an armaments company in eastern Switzerland that concluded large-scale arms trafficking deals with South Africa, the federal police were content to recommend to the company’s top management that one of the clumsily operating employees be removed from circulation and that the trafficking be handled more discreetly. The cooperation of the federal „Pulverfabrik Wimmis“ with the leading South African manufacturer of ammunition and propellant powder „Somchem“ went very far. In 1979, „Wimmis“ provided „Somchem“ via „Oerlikon-Bührle AG“ with a production license for propellant powder for 20-mm and 35-mm ammunition, trained „Somchem“ engineers in top-secret facilities in „Wimmis“, and stayed at „Somchem“ several times for weeks with its top personnel, including the director and the chief chemist, in order to solve problems that arose in the license production and the other production of military explosives. „Oerlikon-Bührle“ provided technical and management assistance on a large scale for the further development of the 35-mm anti-aircraft system within the framework of the „Sleeve“ and „Skavot“ projects. Numerous top-secret deals could be proven in the 1980s, which South Africa handled with the support of military intelligence in Switzerland, including the projects „Floor“, „Jansalie“, „Algebra“, „Fargo“ and „Nack“ from the Army, the projects „Divorce“ and „Finial“ from the South African Air Force for airfield navigation and a project to solve problems with Mirage aircraft. Furthermore, the „Aquila“ project, which concerned the procurement of equipment in the Geneva area, the „Janitor“ project, which served to set up a civil-military airspace surveillance system, or the „Alexandri“ and „Bessie“ projects, which the South African fleet handled in Switzerland in the 1980s.

On April 16, 2003, the Swiss Federal Council had every reason to stop the inspection of South Africa files in Switzerland. For there are many in Switzerland who, out of deep political conviction, supported the apartheid government in South Africa and made a lot of money from the business with it, which was contrary to international law. This pitch-black, racist attitude and close to war crimes Swiss past was only insufficiently processed until today and had no legal consequences for any of the involved. Everything was discreetly and neatly swept under the table and any co-responsibility was rejected. Yet we are dealing with an equally racist Nazi doctrine and the most evil human rights crimes.

This was the starting point for me to get a picture of the situation and the living conditions of the black population in South Africa under the apartheid regime.