Lobby anti-Mandela: operation blackwash de Ron Nixon

Ron Nixon du New York Times a récemment lancé un livre dans lequel il raconte l'histoire d'une campagne pour défendre l'Apartheid et limiter les retombées des sanctions contre le régime. Plusieurs noirs américains seront payés pour contribuer.

 "The U.S. campaign was part of the apartheid-era government’s worldwide propaganda push to improve its image, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Official estimates from the country’s Department of Information put annual spending on the campaign at about $100 million a year (in 1980s dollars), though the true amount might never be known. The lobbying effort targeting American blacks was not the largest, but it was one of the most significant, as Pretoria’s agents built up a network of proxies among black groups not just in the capital, but across the country—in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas.

 In a stunning example of the Washington influence game at its cynical worst, the U.S. campaign would involve hundreds of people, from church leaders to black newspaper owners, from black businessmen to executives at multinational corporations. Some were willing participants who were paid handsomely for their services. Others, like the black children delivering dolls to members of Congress, played a part unknowingly. The campaign even involved many prominent civil rights leaders, some of whom had once fought alongside Martin Luther King Jr. against racism and segregation in the United States.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/the-african-americans-who-lobbied-against-nelson-mandela-100858.html?hp=pm_1