Deutschland 86

The enemies weren't always what they seem.

They were prepared to work and collaborate with one another

if it suited their interests.

And they were prepared to lie to us.

To tell us that they were never collaborating:

That they were involved in a war for our collective freedoms,

whoever "we" were at that point in history.

I think it's such a clear indication

of duplicity on all sides.

The world seemed straightforward in 1986.

It was divided into superpowers.

On the one hand were the Communists.

On the other, their enemies:

The capitalists.

But this was only half the truth.

Long live East Germany!

We've been duped. I think, as people across the world.

We were fed a particular history.

The Communists considered capitalism evil,

and were themselves considered evil.

But they had a secret.

A secret that made them

ever more similar to their enemies.

I came across this incredible story

of movement of weapons from East Germany

and this mysterious ship the Pia Vesta.

Where was it heading?

This is the story

of the 20th century's biggest lies.

It is the story

of the Cold War's secret relationships.

No morals! If the business is legitimate, do it.

It was always about business, never about politics.

SHADY BUSINESS UNDER THE IRON CURTAIN

Growing up as a young person

during the last years of the Apartheid regime,

and as a young white person during my school years,

I can recount having been exposed to

exactly the kind of propaganda.

The messages about this "red threat"

that was constantly being reinforced.

And the messaging of course was:

The Soviet Union was the evil empire

for Apartheid South Africa.

I'm Ronnie Kasrils,

born in Johannesburg, South Africa,

involved in the liberation struggle

against Apartheid all my adult life,

and I was a minister several times

in the democratic government,

first when Mr. Mandela was president in 1994.

And many portfolios through to 2008.

Well, what was Apartheid?

It was institutionalized racism.

Based on the control, exploitation,

and oppression of the black majority

by the white population,

which amounted to about ten percent of all the people.

When Sharpeville took place, this massacre,

I was 21 years old.

And it hit me with such a shock.

Black African people were protesting peacefully

against these documents...

these ID-documents that controlled their lives.

And 69 were killed on the spot

and another 250 were injured.

My idea of being part of public protests came to an end.

I became part of that armed struggle

and was involved initially in sabotage actions

against the regime in South Africa.

Against the visible signs of Apartheid

and the Apartheid institutions and offices.

We had no weapons ourselves.

Everything was monopolized by the white Apartheid regime.

An African in South Africa could not even own a gun.

We were able to turn to socialist countries

such as East Germany,

who were very prepared to provide us with

the training and weapons that we needed.

We had big training camps

in the forests and jungles in Angola.

And we were able to receive food, military clothing,

AK-47s,

and other such light weaponry, mortars,

and rocket propelled grenades.

And that would be delivered to us in ports

such as Dar es Salaam,

and particularly Luanda, Angola.

I would like to offer you the sincere greetings

and congratulations

of the workers of the German Democratic Republic.

The support we received in East Germany

was wholehearted.

And I want to say this: I was one of a few white people.

Most of our people were black.

And for them, to be trained

in a country by white officers who treated them as equals,

and very kindly, who didn't despise them.

To be waited on by German white women at the table,

people doing all the work in the kitchen,

doing the cleaning, it was a huge eye-opener.

But most important was our own theater of struggle.

We developed armed groups in South Africa,

so the struggle was really taken into

the heartland of the Apartheid state.

The fight against Apartheid

seemed an important mission for the socialist lands.

Simultaneously, the heads of the superpowers

began to hold talks about nuclear disarmament.

The President of the United States

shook the hand of the Soviet Union's head of state.

But good will didn't suffice in 1986,

and no agreement was reached.

The Cold War went cheerfully on.

The states in the south of Africa

had become the playground of the superpowers.

The CIA and other secret services

covertly supported the allies of the Apartheid regime.

The Soviets, the East Germans and the Cubans

supplied the other side.

But this wasn't the whole of the truth.

One would hear from time to time,

and it would usually be

projected in the western press,

that the Soviet Union or East Germany or China

has got some business deals going.

We didn't believe this.

We were sure that the boycott of South Africa was total

when it came from the socialist countries.

It appears that the decade of the 1980s,

just at the time that militarization was taking place,

that the weapon sanctions were starting to take effect

against Apartheid South Africa,

that there was a desire to look for new markets.

And the East Bloc was definitely

of great interest to the Apartheid government.

My colleagues and I,

we were working through the archives

the South African military intelligence had declassified.

We were sitting in one of the dusty rooms

and came across this incredible document

that spoke about a man by the name of Starckmann

whom I'd never heard of.

It was a meeting between South African

and French top intelligence officials.

And the South Africans had said that Starckmann

owed them approximately 20 million dollars.

The market for such deals was much smaller than today.

At that time there wasn't so much exchange

between the states.

There were always middlemen who did the deals.

THE MIDDLE MAN

At that time there were maybe ten of us.

That's all.

In 1986,

I was visited by people representing

a South African special army unit.

A pastor and army general who was accompanied by

a man from the realm of politics.

They wanted to buy weapons to send them to Angola.

The weapons in question were Soviet ones

which they believed could be bought in East Berlin.

FRIEDRICHSTRASSE STATION

I contacted a friend,

a German named Heinz Pollmann.

He was in contact with the IMES, which was part of the Stasi.

We met in a building on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin.

A car brought me across the border

and straight to the office.

I asked them about the goods that the South Africans wanted.

They explained to me

that they couldn't deliver this material to South Africa.

I told them that I no longer cared,

and that I would also buy other material,

and they said I could have everything I wanted.

We didn't discuss any further details,

but they were no idiots.

They knew exactly I was buying weapons from them

that were intended to fight Communists abroad.

East Berlin got about seven million.

The money was sent from South Africa

to a bank in Luxembourg.

Luxembourg sent the money to Spain,

because things were easier from there.

From Spain, we transferred it directly into

the National Bank in East Berlin.

One of our starting questions was not only to understand

how hardware was moved around the world,

but it was precisely to follow the money trail.

Those same bank accounts that were used to transfer money

to arms companies in France or Italy or the United Kingdom

or to the CIA and others,

were precisely the same bank accounts

that were being used to transfer monies

between Communist countries and Pretoria at the same time.

It's amazing because they would

almost wash this cash free of any ideology,