The Many Truths of Tokyo Sexwale Evelyn Grœnink ZAM, September 6, 2015 Based on the average track re- It is very easy to organise something cord of FIFA presidents so far, like a car accident to happen to them. Tokyo Sexwale seems the perfect And I called you to tell you that there candidate are people in the intelligence services Mosima Gabriel ’Tokyo’ Sexwale who don’t like what you are doing at once told a South African business ma- all. I thought I should warn you.” gazine that he achieved his present en- As I was still reeling from what ormous wealth -estimated at over US$ I was hearing, sitting on a plastic 200 million- by simply “striking it very chair in the Mvelaphanda kitchen - lucky” as soon as he started operating since for some reason we could not have a diamond mine in Angola : he had, he this conversation in his office-, Sexwale said, immediately hit a large diamond then proceeded to admonish me that I layer. For the rest, he humbly added, should never tell anybody about what he was just a “struggle veteran,” a close he just said. “Or we will no longer be comrade of legendary anti-apartheid friends.” freedom fighter Chris Hani and more or less -that is in the words of his friend, French oil and diamond tycoon Jean Yves Ollivier- a ’spiritual son’ of Nel- son Mandela (1). But we had never been The words ’anti-apartheid struggle’ friends and ’Nelson Mandela’ were not predo- minant in my mind, however, when, I had interviewed Sexwale in the one morning during the late nineties months before that about his close at his Mvelaphanda Diamonds head of- friendships, post-struggle, with foreign fice in Rosebank, Johannesburg, Tokyo oil-and-diamond tycoons and even Sexwale warned me against doing any arms dealers. I had asked him parti- further investigations into the murder cularly about his friendship with Alain of Chris Hani, who had been assassi- Guenon, a man whose name I had nated several years before, in 1993. “I encountered whilst investigating the know many journalists,” Sexwale told murders of ANC representative Dulcie me at that occasion in what seemed September in Paris in 1988 ; Namibian like an attempt at a fatherly tone of liberation movement SWAPO lawyer voice. “And I know that journalists Anton Lubowski in 1989 ; and now also don’t know how to protect themselves. Chris Hani (2). 1 2 Arms deals and foreign busi- of diamonds ; he had then helped set nessmen up a few returning exiles and former prisoners in houses and businesses in I had no hard evidence showing Boksburg, an (as it turned out later) that Guenon had killed anybody. But heavily military-intelligence monitored I had interviewed French foreign legion town to the south of Johannesburg. mercenaries and others who knew of Chris Hani and Tokyo Sexwale had him as a middleman between South been among the ANC people thus ’hel- African apartheid military intelligence ped.’ and French arms interests. I had es- According to ANC talk at the time tablished that Guenon had negotiated the two, Sexwale and Hani, had only arms deals between French businesses met for the first time during these and representatives of both the old days ; ANC politician Mondli Gungu- apartheid and the new governments in bele was overheard telling people that South Africa ; in the case of the new he had been the one who had introdu- ANC government, Tokyo Sexwale had ced them to one another. played a role. I also had testimonies from close associates of French-based anti-apartheid activist and ANC repre- Being ’open’ sentative Dulcie September that she When interviewing Tokyo Sexwale had firmly opposed French arms deals about these early days, I had asked him -particularly also when it came to such if his diamond interests had perhaps deals with the ANC- before she had also been helped along by Guenon. been murdered in 1988. Or by Vito Palazzolo, who had been I had also published about Gue- involved with the diamond company non’s short-lived friendship with An- Trans Hex before it was taken over ton Lubowski shortly before the latter by Sexwale. Or by Guenon’s very se- was assassinated a year later ; about nior friend oil-and-diamond-and arms Guenon’s diamond interests in Nami- tycoon Jean Yves Ollivier. Olivier was bia and Angola ; his Angolan mining and is a kingpin of the ’Francafri- partnership -according to UK based in- que’ power network in Africa, a ’per- vestigative agency Kroll- with Italian son of interest’ in France’s arms-for-oil- mafia money man Vito Palazzolo ; and for-money-for- French politicians ’An- about his close contacts with the South golagate’ scandal ; and ’godfather’ to African military intelligence unit that many an African dictator presiding in all likelihood supervised the Lu- over rich natural resources. It was bowski murder. just remarkable how Ollivier’s and To- I had then asked Sexwale about kyo’s friendship had developed simul- his own friendship with Guenon, who taneously with Tokyo’s ’luck’ in stri- had -posing as a French Socialist Party king diamonds. member and anti-apartheid supporter- In a previous interview, Sexwale infiltrated many in the ANC commu- had made no secret of his friendship nity in Johannesburg in the early ni- with Ollivier and neither had he denied neties. Guenon had become a close as- having been close to Alain Guenon. “I sociate of Winnie Mandela, impressing looked up to this man, he was an im- her and many around her with talk portant advisor,” he had told me. “I 3 am so shocked by what you are saying playing a political role in the local now. We never suspected that such a ANC and helping to enable the acqui- man could have links with the enemy.” sition of missile parts from French-led Sexwale was probably right that he arms company Advanced Electronics wouldn’t have known about the ’apar- and Engineering -where Guenon was a theid’ side of Guenon, at least initially. middleman- for the ANC in 1992, To- But the warning I received in the Mve- kyo Sexwale was appointed prime mi- laphanda kitchen meant at the very nister for the Gauteng province around least, that he wouldn’t want anybody Johannesburg in 1994, a position he else to know about that either, as much held for the next four years. During as he wouldn’t want anybody else to that time he became most famous for know that his ’lucky wealth’ might his promise to build no less than a have had something to do with his re- million houses at a rate of 150 000 markable friendships. Particularly not per year in the province. The plan when others, who had rejected discus- had been proposed to him by yet ano- sions with foreign businessmen in the ther foreign businessman : Bart Dorre- arms and diamond sectors, had ended stein of construction company Stocks up dead. “Yes, there were those who & Stocks, which had built the ’Lost refused to have any part in such discus- City’ addition to South Africa’s home- sions and those like me who were more land gambling-and-entertainent Val- open,” he had said to me in a previous halla Sun City and was now building interview, taken place just before that a gambling house in Namibia (where, strange morning in Rosebank. incidentally, mafia man Vito Palazzolo had earlier applied to obtain casino A million houses rights.) However, to build that many As far as Sexwale’s role in the anti- houses in so short a time was as im- apartheid struggle itself, there is no possible as it was bizarre. Additionally, doubt that he was once a firebrand, -even if by some miracle these houses ready to fight the regime that was op- were going to be built in time-, to ex- pressing him as a black person. He had pect one million penniless people to participated in the Black Conscious- then carry the cost in mortgage debts ness movement and gone into exile. He was asking for a credit crisis. The crazi- had received military engineering trai- ness of the endeavour gravely annoyed ning in the Soviet Union in 1975, af- realistic ANC leaders like JœSlovo, the ter which he had returned to South then national housing Minister, who Africa in 1976 with the instruction to was trying hard to implement more carry out a military operation against practical affordable housing strategies the apartheid regime. He had howe- for the countries’ poor majority. The ver been arrested before he had been fact that it was never carried out sur- able to carry out his instructions and prised no one. had then been in jail on Robben Island until he was freed in June 1990, four Legion d’Honneur months after Nelson Mandela. After the initial settling period Tokyo Sexwale was back in the li- back in Johannesburg and Boksburg, melight in 1995, when he was given 4 France’s prestigious ’Legion d’Hon- around a capacity for public presen- neur’ medal. Observers in that country tation, charm, charisma, and deal- never found out for which merits for making. But if FIFA wants a new pre- the French nation Sexwale was thus ho- sident to be a strong institutional ma- noured, but reckoned it must have had nager, capable of implementing pro- to do with his friendship with Jean- jects and practically sorting out the or- Yves Ollivier (It was from that time the ganisations’ troubled affairs, it should French secret service newsletter Africa maybe look elsewhere.