White Malice (6) Nelson Mandela

These days Nelson Mandela is a hero in the United States, but at the time the CIA worked to undermine his activities and support the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Susan Williams records that the CIA helped with his arrest.

The life of Nelson Mandela was influenced by the CIA. Mandela was a target of the agency’s surveillance and covert operations directly to his arrest in 1962, after CIA agent Donald Rickard gave the apartheid government information about Mandela’s whereabouts and his disguise (White Malice p.474).

Susan Williams’s book is worth reading. I had already read about CIA nefarious activities in Central and South America, but I had not realised the extent of the harm it did in Africa.