Book launch: ‘Apartheid Guns and Money’ by Hennie van Vuuren at Ballito Junction

Researcher, anti-corruption activist and author, Hennie van Vuuren, is making his way to Ballito on Tuesday, June 13 for the launch of his latest book, ‘Apartheid Guns and Money – A tale of profit‘.

In over 600 pages, this meticulously researched book finally lifts the lid on some of the darkest secrets of apartheid’s economic crimes, weaving together a treasure trove of newly declassified documents and eyewitness accounts.

This is an exposé of the machinery created in defence of apartheid and in support of sanctions busting and the people who profited: heads of states, arms dealers, aristocrats, plutocrats, senators, bankers, spies, journalists and members of secret lobby groups.

In creating the apartheid arms money machine they were complicit in a crime against humanity. Whistleblowers were assassinated and ordinary people suffered. Finally, this network of profit is revealed.

In forging its future, a new generation of South Africans need to grapple with the baffling silence regarding apartheid-era economic crime and ask difficult questions of those who profited from it.

This book provides the evidence and the motivation to do so.

“van Vuuren shows that the struggle against corruption is indeed a human rights struggle and that, as we know from South Africa’s own history, it can be won. But it must be fought for.” – Jacob Dlamini, author of Askari.

The launch will be held at Exclusive Books at the Ballito Junction at 5.30pm for 6pm.

About the author 

van Vuuren is a researcher and anti-corruption activist.

He is Director of Open Secrets, a non-profit working on private sector accountability for economic crime and related human rights violations. He is a past fellow of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa and Director at the Institute for Security Studies.

van Vuuren is active in the Right2Know Campaign and is the co-author (with Paul Holden) of the book The Devil in the Detail: How the Arms Deal Changed Everything (2011).