My Small Tribute to Nelson Mandela

Someone just shared this video on Unseat Harper and I thought I'd like to dedicate it to Nelson Mandela on his birthday. I just finished posting my in depth piece on his history with our current government, in particularly, with Stephen Harper.

I love Ella Fitzgerald and I'm sure he does too. I wanted to leave this day on a positive note.

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." - Nelson Mandela

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. MANDELA!

Why Do Neoconservatives Hate Nelson Mandela?

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

By the late 1960's, many western nations began to take up the cause of the black South Africans, speaking out against apartheid. Nelson Mandela's story was not yet widely known, but human rights violations were.

In 1978, the United Nations officially condemned South Africa at the World Conference Against Racism, sparking a movement to end the practice. But what it also sparked was a larger movement to keep the status quo, backed by some of the world's wealthiest citizens. Their motivation was protecting corporations who would lose massive profit if they had to start paying the black labour force of South Africa, a reasonable wage. (1)

By 1980, a campaign was launched to encourage trade sanctions, but then president Ronald Reagan, a man with strong ties to the corporate world, instead introduced a policy of "constructive engagement", which promoted simply "encouraging change in the apartheid system through a quiet dialogue with that country's white minority leaders". Naturally it failed, and after a dramatic surge of anti-apartheid protest and political activism in the United States, the Reagan Administration was forced to impose trade sanctions, though they were very moderate. (2)

An Unwelcome PR Campaign

In 1985, South African Ambassador to Canada, Glen Babb, was touring Canada to gain support for the continuation of Apartheid.

At the time, Anthony Panayi, now calling himself Tony Clement, was leading a group of radical right-wing students at the University of Toronto. They had successfully managed to take over the Young Progressive Conservatives and turn it into a vehicle for promoting neoconservative ideology. When Clement (Panayi) heard of Babb's tour he went to the student organizations on campus to see if they would sponsor a debate. They flatly refused, so Anthony simply created his own society, and invited the controversial ambassador, as a way "to ensure that that advocates of Apartheid were heard in this coun­try." (3)

However, when Babb arrived he was met with violent protest and during the debate divestment activist Lennox Farrell, made an impassioned, emotional plea against Apartheid, at one point shouting, "Children are dying!" The reaction of the Ambassador was simply to smirk, causing Farrel to lose his cool. He picked up the heavy wooden ceremonial mace lying on the center table, and tossed it at the Ambassador, narrowly missing his forehead, but striking the hand of another university official. The debate was immediately stopped and Farrel was taken away, though no charges were laid. (3)

Another debate was arranged and this time, though Babb was able to complete his talk, 300 protesters chanted outside the auditorium, while another group of protesters dressed as members of the Ku Klux Klan satirically rose up to applaud the ambassador whenever he paused during his presentation. At the end of the event, as his car whisked him out of the university, several other students shouted and threw snowballs. (4)

Let the Lobbying Begin

Angering university students was not the only controversy associated with Babb's tour. As a publicity stunt he arranged an invitation to visit the reserve of the Peguis in Manitoba. While there he pointed out the grim parallels between the practices of the two countries. He then arranged for “native” leaders to tour South Africa, courtesy of the South African Tourist Board, in August of 1987. This outraged other leaders who made it clear “that the Indian people of Canada will not go down in history as allies of racist fascism.” (1)

However, during his two-and-a-half year posting, Babb appeared on Canadian television more than 132 times and even more frequently on radio. He heavily lobbied politicians, journalists, intellectuals and universities in support of the Reagan Administration's policy of "constructive engagement" rather than sanctions or divestment. Babb referred to apartheid as a "benign policy" and a means of controlling "urbanization". (5) He also claimed that sanctions would harm South African blacks more than the white minority. (6) "Whether you shoot the zebra on the white stripe or the black stripe," he said, "you are going to kill the zebra." (7)

His efforts were successful, because while then prime minister Brian Mulroney originally supported sanctions, his party's position changed, with Joe Clark left to announce their new intentions, which were viewed as a "flip flop". You can watch the news clip here.

A More pro-Active Campaign:

One of the more aggressive champions of Apartheid within South Africa was Craig Michael Williamson, a man who went underground with the African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela, as part of a "Long Reach" operation, of what would be better described as "dirty tricks".

Williamson recruited journalists from around the world to help with a propaganda mission to discredit the ANC and gain support for the white African government. He found such a journalist in Canadian Peter Worthington.

The crudely racist, flamboyantly anti-communist and vividly right-wing journalism of Peter Worthington was a particularly prominent feature of this for anyone living in Toronto during these years, but those of us in the Canadian anti-apartheid network at the time were well aware of its broader reach. For example, a well-researched 1988 article in the western Canadian journal Briarpatch listed a host of right-wing and business-related groups hard at work defending apartheid: the Western Canadian Society of South Africa and the extremely well-connected Canadian-South African Society, for example. Indeed the husband of Canada’s then Governor-General, Jeanne Sauve, was actually a member of the latter until shamed into resigning in 1985. (1)

But there is something that Mr. Saul may not have realized about these pro-white South African groups. There was another one with strong ties to the Canadian-South African Society, called the Northern Foundation.

"‘The Northern Foundation was established in 1989, originally as a pro-South Africa group . . . lists among the founding members of the Foundation both William Gairdner and Stephen Harper ... " (8)

"... the Northern Foundation was the creation of a number of generally extreme right-wing conservatives, including Anne Hartmann (a director of REAL Women), Geoffrey Wasteneys (A long-standing member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), George Potter (also a member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), author Peter Brimelow, Link Byfield (son of Ted Byfield and himself publisher/president of Alberta Report), and Stephen Harper." (9)

Some of those names you may not recognize, but the last one on both lists seems to ring a bell, and he was then considered to be from the "extreme right-wing". The Northern Foundation also published a magazine:

"...The foundation's magazine carries a half-page ad in every issue for the Phoenix, a pro-white South Africa magazine, and regularly solicits support from members on special causes, from property rights to English language rights. Attacks on homosexuals and homosexual rights are frequent ..." (8)

But it gets better. These groups were operating within the Reform Party when Preston Manning and Stephen Harper were getting it up and running.

... Murray Dobbin has chronicled extensively the pro-white South Africa actions and sympathies of numerous people within the party, including Ted Byfield*** and Arthur Child. This support for white South Africa, a country whose political system was based on racial group affiliation, by many within the Reform party ... cannot be explained adequately unless one accepts the notion that many Reformers strongly identify with 'Anglo' culture ... (9)

And:

"There is good reason to believe that groups sympathetic to (white) South Africa have seen the [Reform] party as an ally, especially in the days when trade sanctions, strongly supported by Canada, were proving damaging to the South African economy and it's prestige. That was in 1988-89. And it was during his period in particular that a number of pro-South African groups organized efforts to undermine Canadian policy and to spread pro-South African literature across the country. All of these groups had some degree of contact with the South African embassy in Ottawa ... Key individuals in those organizations have also played and continue to play important roles in the Reform party.

... "Water's military background and his business connections got the attention of pro-South African activists long before he became external affairs spokesman for the Reform Party .. and that attention paid off ... Arthur Child the president of Burns Meats ... has openly supported South Africa for twenty years ... he is also on the board of Canadian-South African Society (CSAS) ... founded in 1979 and was involved says Child, in 'trying to counteract the anti-South African sentiment in Ottawa ... we distributed information on South Africa - mostly to MPs.

(CSAS) was founded to bring together Canadian and American subsidiary business interests in South Africa ...Their profit levels are high - often twice their returns in companies ventures in Canada - due to their ability to pay low wages and almost no benefits to black labour.' "Most of the thirty member board are from Ontario ... a few were from the west ... one of these was Norman Wallace of Saskatoon ... a founding member of the Reform party ... He set up Eagle Staff Import Export Ltd. to further business ties with South Africa. (8)

And of course this was the same Canadian-South African Society, mentioned in John Saul's article, (1) which included the husband of then Governor General Jeanne Sauve. But more importantly, through connections to the Northern Foundation and the Reform Party, included one Stephen Harper. Peter Worthington also belonged to the NF. (10)

Lights, Camera, Action

One of the projects that Craig Williamson had Worthington work on was a documentary film on Mandela's ANC: The red terrorist menace in South Africa - written by Peter Worthington, produced by Peter Worthington and starring Peter Worthington. (11)

It was a one-sided view of the conflict:

Worthington says. "It was done very quickly." He wrote the script one morning, then read it to camera that afternoon. And while he went about some interviews for his Reader's Digest piece (which in early March the magazine had neither received nor scheduled) a cameraman followed. The rest of the film was made up of file footage, some of it from the state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation. Most of the editing was done in South Africa, with only the final cut, made in Canada. Worthington had the finished product in his hands, having spent virtually nothing out of his pocket. "If it cost me anything, it cost me a cab ride," he says. (11)

Mainstream media outlets rejected it, but he managed to find a distributor:

That was handled by Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform*, a tight-wing organization based in Toronto. CFAR agreed to the task after Worthington's attempts to get his taped views aired on public television got nowhere, says Paul Fromm, CFAR's research director. And while the television producers were saying no, CFAR's members were nodding yes, snatching up 4,000 copies of the tape and its 12-page companion booklet in five months. Members of Parliament were each sent a copy ... (11)

But CFAR were not the only ones to offer the film to their members:

Meanwhile, Worthington was also circulating copies to his friends, and this was how it caught the attention of David Somerville, a former employee of Worthington's at The Toronto Sun. Somerville is president of the National Citizens' Coalition**, another rightwing pressure group in Toronto. He offered the tape to his membership, which numbers 36,000, at $12 apiece ("at cost"). The NCC sold 600-more than double what it expected. Somerville calls the video a "journalistic effort at setting the record straight on the ANC." (11)

Meanwhile in Etobicoke:

Another young man would also become a follower of Peter Worthington. Guy Giorno, who was chief of staff for Mike Harris and is now chief of staff for Stephen Harper, became a devotee after hearing him on a radio program in the early 1980's. He would eventually attend St. Michael's College, where according to Ted Schmidt, his name was bandied about, as a contributor to the right-wing Catholic Digest:

Reading Giorno's neo-con rants I used to wince - 'Nelson Mandela was espousing violence, unions have too much power, doctors should have the right to double bill', the list goes on. "How could they give a guy like this space in a Catholic paper?" I remember thinking ... [now] Giorno is one of the most powerful insiders in the Ontario Tory government. (12)

And he is now one of the most powerful insiders in the Harper government.

Aftermath

Fortunately, Nelson Mandela would be released and become the first black president of South Africa, and has been the recipient of more than 250 awards, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2001, the Canadian Parliament voted to make Nelson Mandela an honorary citizen. It would have passed unanimously, except for the vote of Harper MP Rob Anders, who refused by stating that Mandela was a communist and a terrorist. Rob Anders was a also a member of the National Citizens Coalition. I wonder if he still has his tape.

Stephen Harper has sued us several times, but one lawsuit launched in 2000, is aptly indexed Stephen Harper vs Canada.

I think that defines the neoconservative movement, because it goes against everything that Canadians stand for. We embrace men like Nelson Mandela. We embrace diversity and multiculturalism. We are proud of who we are and were never looking for this kind of radical change. Canadians are not moving to the right, as the Harper government would like to believe.

We are nice dammit, and recognize that a movement that would attack a man like Nelson Mandela, is not a movement we would support.

Some people tell me that Canadians, while they don't particularly like Stephen Harper, may go with devil they know. I have now made it my job to introduce Stephen Harper, the devil they may not know at all.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. MANDELA!

Footnotes:

*CFAR was allowed to sell memberships at the Reform Party convention.

**The National Citizens Coalition was started on the advice of Preston Manning's father: Ernest Manning, former premier of Alberta. Stephen Harper would eventually become president of the NCC and had been a member since 1980.

Sources:

1. Two fronts of anti-Apartheid struggle: South Africa and Canada, By John Saul, History Matters, Wed, May 13, 2009

2. South Africa: Why Constructive Engagement Failed, By Sanford J. Ungar and Peter Vale, Foreign Affairs Tuft University, Winter 1985/86

3. The Age of Dissent: Socialists, peaceniks, feminists, rabble-rousers: They came in search of an education. They left having taught the old school a thing or two, By Margaret Webb, University of Toronto Magazine, Spring 2002

4. Looking back at Carleton's divestment from South Africa, By Alroy Fonseca, January 22, 2010

5. "Apartheid on way out, Babb insists ", By Erica Rosenfeld, Globe and Mail, October 27, 1985

6. "Back Pretoria, envoy urges", Globe and Mail, November 18, 1985

7. "Envoy says South Africa hard done by, By Kevin Cox" Globe and Mail, October 17, 1985

8. Preston Manning and the Reform Party. By Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 100-107

9. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada. Author: Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 121

10. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper demonstrates continued ultra right wing affiliations by blocking pro social justice Toronto candidate, by Dr. Debra Chin, Canadian National

11. Raw footage, By David Stonehouse, Ryerson's Review of Journalism, Spring 1988

12. The Man Behind Mike, by Ted Schmidt, NOW Magazine, January 8-14, 1998

Why Stephen Harper Was so Wrong About Nelson Mandela

In 1989, Stephen Harper and several other known Right Wing Extremists formed an organization called the Northern Foundation. It was going to be the vanguard for an Anglo-Saxon movement, and encompassed many other groups like the Heritage Front, APEC and C-Far.

One of their first orders of business was to work with the white South African embassy in Ottawa, to try to keep Nelson Mandela in prison and ensure that Apartheid would be allowed to continue unchallenged.

Though Dr. Debra Chin in the Canadian refers to the Northern Foundation as a White Brotherhood, and in many ways I suppose it was, much of the reasoning behind the pro-Apartheid attitude was monetary. Corporate profits were higher when they could employ blacks. Sadly, it was just that simple.

However, watching this video, reminds me of the difference between Stephen Harper and Nelson Mandela. Mandela took a country that was divided and united it through a common interest. Stephen Harper took a country that was united and has constantly divided it for political gain.

During the parliamentary crisis he pit the West against the East and allowed horrendous attacks on Quebec to go unchecked. His latest fiasco with the gun registry, pit rural Canada against urban Canada.

Part of the neo-conservative theory is to look for hot button issues and milk them dry. Harper is very adept at finding these issues and bringing them to the forefront, while he stands back and watches the carnage. His governing has been one big attack ad.

Nelson Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize, but as Lawrence Martin stated in a column a few weeks ago

"The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama prompts a question. Where would the current Canadian Prime Minister finish in the Nobel committee's rankings?

Would our guy, Stephen Harper, be short-listed, middle-ranked, long-listed or worse?

If you guessed worse – as in the Nobel jurors wouldn't touch him with a barge poll – you've probably nailed it.

The Nobel priorities are disarmament, multilateralism, the extension of olive branches to adversaries etc. Those components were usually central to Canadian foreign policy.

But if you're partial to that kind of thing, don't look now. With the Conservatives' preference for a more confrontational approach, we've gone the other way. That long-time multilateralist image is fading fast. Now, it's Washington, where the new President reaches out, that is seen as having the global conscience.

It's a striking role reversal. Through the decades, we were the do-gooders, often trying to rein in the U.S. with calls for collective security. Now, the dove is in the other hand.

Is this who we are now?

Stephen Harper, the Northern Foundation and Nelson Mandela

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

The above video is an important one to play as the soundtrack for this story of Stephen Harper and the group he was a founding member of: The Northern Foundation. One of it's initial goals was to fight against the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the end of Apartheid and our government's economic sanctions imposed on the white South African government.

It would be two more years before Simple Plan's Mandela Day message would be realized, but it was well worth the wait. Mr. Mandela's name is now synonymous with racial struggles, though his 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, came at a hefty price.

Harper's Northern Foundation and the Roots of Reform

"‘The Northern Foundation was established in 1989, originally as a pro-South Africa group . . . lists among the founding members of the Foundation both William Gairdner and Stephen Harper ... " (1)

"... the Northern Foundation was the creation of a number of generally extreme right-wing conservatives, including Anne Hartmann (a director of REAL Women), Geoffrey Wasteneys (A long-standing member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), George Potter (also a member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), author Peter Brimelow, Link Byfield (son of Ted Byfield and himself publisher/president of Alberta Report), and Stephen Harper." (2)

So what exactly was meant by pro-South Africa group?

The following excerpts are from both Trevor Harrison's and Murray Dobbin's books as sourced at the bottom of the page, and provide the framework for the pro-Apartheid South Africa stand taken by the Reform Party and Harper's Northern Foundation. As Mr. Dobbin stated in his book, Stephen Harper and Preston Manning were always very careful not to write extremist views into their policies, but the people invited to both NF conferences and Reform conventions tell a different story.

"... the notion that some Reform members may have strong Anglo-Saxon nativist inclinations is supported by more than merely the background profiles of its leaders, members and supporters. It is supported also by the words of many of its ideological mentors who depict Canada as not only historically an Anglo-Saxon country but also part of a wider Anglo-Saxon culture that is in need of recognizing and re-establishing its heritage.

"Read for example Peter Brimelow's* words bemoaning the eclipse of Anglo-Saxon hegemony. 'At the end of the nineteenth century, belief in the superiority of the Anglo Saxon values ... (was) the most social norm in every English-speaking country ... For WASP supremacists everywhere, however, the twentieth century has been a most distressing experience.' (3)

And Again:

'The twentieth century has proved bitter. The values that are common to the English-speaking peoples are in a minority in the world, and on the defensive. Future historians might well be surprised that at this late date the English-speaking countries remain so self-absorbed, and despite their common ancestry, show so little conscious awareness of their common interests'.

"Voiced by some prominent Reform supporters, the notion of a 'common heritage' seems to encompass the white settler colonies of the former empire, including white South Africa. Consider, for example, Stan Water's** reluctance to criticize the slow pace of ending apartheid in South Africa: 'If history has any parallelism, you might find a very serious problem emerging in South Africa which may dwarf the objectionable features of the current administration ... I always ask Mr. (Foreign Affairs Minister) Joe Clark, if South Africa's going to change, what black Nation do you want it to imitate? Most of them are despotic...'

"Water's musings are not singular. Murray Dobbin has chronicled extensively the pro-white South Africa actions and sympathies of numerous people within the party, including Ted Byfield*** and Arthur Child. This support for white South Africa, a country whose political system was based on racial group affiliation, by many within the Reform party ... cannot be explained adequately unless one accepts the notion that many Reformers strongly identify with 'Anglo' culture. This identification is nowhere more strongly enunciated than in William D. Gairdner's**** Trouble With Canada" (3)

But Stan Water's views would not limited to South Africa:

"Water's views and his frankness in expressing them covered a wide range of issues. On the topic of despotic governments, he referred primarily to black African governments. And this commitment to democracy was qualified: 'South Africa should think twice before allowing majority rule because most black African countries live under tyranny ... If history has any parallelism, you might find a very serious problem emerging in South Africa which may dwarf the objectionable features of the current administration ... it may be impossible to transport our version of democracy to South Africa.' (4)

And of the Northern Foundation and Reform Party in general:

"It claims that common sense Canadians ... who appreciate Canada's British and Christian heritage and oppose forced bilingualism, destabilizing immigration policies and government promoted official multiculturalism. It adopts the National Citizens Coalition slogan "More freedom through less government.'

"...The foundation's magazine carries a half-page ad in every issue for the Phoenix, a pro-white South Africa magazine, and regularly solicits support from members on special causes, from property rights to English language rights. Attacks on homosexuals and homosexual rights are frequent ..."

"The South Africa Connection: There is good reason to believe that groups sympathetic to (white) South Africa have seen the party as an ally, especially in the days when trade sanctions, strongly supported by Canada, were proving damaging to the South African economy and it's prestige. That was in 1988-89. And it was during this period in particular that a number of pro-South African groups organized efforts to undermine Canadian policy and to spread pro-South African literature across the country. All of these groups had some degree of contact with the South African embassy in Ottawa ... Key individuals in those organizations have also played and continue to play important roles in the Reform party.

"It's not surprising that these individuals and the South Africa embassy would see Reform as a friendly party. Stan Water's frequent sympathetic references to (white) South Africa ... His attacks on Canada's giving aid to black African countries and his labelling of them as despotic, corrupt dictatorships cast Waters as a hero for the extreme right. William Gairdner, the man most often used as a key-note speaker by Preston Manning, is also an outspoken supporter of South Africa. In 'The Trouble With Canada', he repeatedly decries Canada's policy on South Africa and, like Waters, levels attacks on the "One party dictatorships of Black African countries...."

"Ted Byfield is also a prominent figure in the pro-south Africa community.... Byfield has also written for 'International Conservative Insight', a far-right foreign affairs magazine published by the Canadian Conservative Centre and featuring articles by South African ambassadors and many of Canada's far right-wing journalists - including Lubor Zink, Peter Brimelow, and Reform member Doug Collins of Vancouver.

"Water's military background and his business connections got the attention of pro-South African activists long before he became external affairs spokesman for the Reform Party .. and that attention paid off ... Arthur Child the president of Burns Meats ... has openly supported South Africa for twenty years ... he is also on the board of Canadian-South African Society (CSAS) ... founded in 1979 and was involved says Child, in 'trying to counteract the anti-South African sentiment in Ottawa ... we distributed information on South Africa - mostly to MPs.

"(CSAS) was founded to bring together Canadian and American subsidiary business interests in South Africa ...Their profit levels are high - often twice their returns in companies ventures in Canada - due to their ability to pay low wages and almost no benefits to black labour.' "Most of the thirty member board are from Ontario ... a few were from the west ... one of these was Norman Wallace of Saskatoon ... a founding member of the Reform party ... He set up Eagle Staff Import Export Ltd. to further business ties with South Africa.

"Wallace created considerable controversy in 1987 when he and others involved in a group called the Indian Business Development Association put up money for a South African tour for five Saskatchewan Indian leaders ... intended to give the Pretoria regime a public relations weapon - using aboriginal conditions in Canada to demonstrate the Canadian government's hypocrisy. But as active as he was, Wallace was not the most prominent South African supporter to join the Reform Party early on. That title belongs to Donovan Carter, a former television broadcaster in Calgary ... Carter was identified as a paid agent of the South African embassy by the program "The Fifth Estate" in November 1989. He was a member of the Calgary group called the Western Society of South Africa. He was also host of a TV show called 'South Africa Report'....

"... Carter discussed his work with Patrick Evans, the embassy's First Secretary and they decided that the most effective way to undermine Canadian policy was to set up "a friends of South Africa" front groups across the country ... his operation fell apart when two of his recruits from Winnipeg, Geoff Shaw and Ihor Wichacz, became increasingly worried about the tasks they were assigned and went public. At first they were simply engaged in letter writing campaigns .. using their own and other people's names in letters to the editor ... then they were asked to infiltrate anti-apartheid groups. Worried, they spoke to ... CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), who told them to go ahead.

[Reform Party member] Carter did not restrict himself to promoting South Africa in his work with front groups. Through him Shaw and Wichacz regularly received material from a whole range of right-wing groups, particularly from the U.S. Wichacz told 'The Fifth Estate'; 'I started getting a lot of right-wing revisionist literature, stuff concerning Lyndon Larouche ... literature that the Holocaust never happened. Literature, let's say, from Posse Comitatas ... ... Carter worked closely with Stan Waters after joining the party soon after its founding. 'I've been sending him certain intelligence reports that we get from England. I happen to be associated with the best intelligence group in the world'.

"Carter confirms that it was Stan Waters who wrote the rather cryptic foreign policy, which appeared in the 1989 Blue Book, and also confirms that it was inspired by Canada's policy towards black African states and South Africa: 'It most definitely was. I have letters from him saying that's what he thought'.

"There is little doubt that many pro-South Africa activists have found their way into the Reform Party. Some have gained prominence. Maurice Tugwell, a friend of Stan Waters, is former head of the Center for Conflict Studies ... An expert in counter-insurgency, he is also on the board of the Canadian-South African Society and an active member of the Reform Party. Angus Gunn, a Reform member in Vancouver, is president of the Canadian Buthelezi .. which has sent $ 100,000.00 to Buthelezi ... the Zulu chieftain ... a rival of Nelson Mandela ...

"Doug Collins is a member of Canadian Friends of South Africa ... and has written numerous sympathetic articles ... Collins is also a member of CFAR ... an extremist right-wing group founded by Paul Fromm. While Manning felt obliged to stop the candidacy of the outspoken Doug Collins (he wanted to run for the reform Party in 1988), he seems less concerned about Donovan Carter, a man whose activities - including organized spying for a foreign power - have been mostly clandestine and therefore not an embarrassment to the party." (5)

But despite Stephen Harper's Northern Foundation and the Reform Party, Nelson Mandela prevailed.

Footnotes:

*Peter Brimelow was also around during the early. Dubbed a paleoconservative, his book: The Patriot Game: National Dreams & Political Realities, was an inspiration to Stephen Harper and his firend John Weissenberger: “Brimelow’s book, that was a big influence at the time,” Weissenberger says. ... We both read it with great interest and discussed a lot of the points in it. Brimelow identified a number of areas of conflict within Canada that the current system was papering over, the Quebec question being the largest one. We were so impressed that we actually went to one bookstore and we said, ‘OK, we want to buy ten copies of this book, what deal will you give us?’ So we bought ten copies and gave them to all our friends.” (6)

**Stan Waters was a founding member of the Reform Party of Canada and the first elected senator, though he never served. He was seen as one of the [Reform] party's most popular early spokesmen and policy communicators, speaking at numerous party rallies and events from 1987 to 1991. (Wikipedia)

***Ted Byfield was not only an early Reform Party member but also the founder of the secretive Civitas Society, that now plays an integral role in the Reform-Alliance-Conservative movement.

****William Gairdner was not only an early Reform Party and Northern Foundation member, but his book the Trouble With Canada ".. helped lay the groundwork for Reform Party policy." (7) He is also a founding member of the Civitas Society.

Sources:

1. Preston Manning and the Reform Party. Author: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 100

2. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada. Author: Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 121

3. Harrison 1995. Pg 170-171

4. Dobbin. 1992 Pg. 93

5. Dobbin. 1992. Pg. 100-107

6. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada. by William Johnson, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3, 2005, Pg. 52

7. Dobbin, 1992, Pg. 165