Eschel Rhoodie

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eschel Mostert Rhoodie (born  July 11, 1933 in Caledon , Cape Province ; †  July 17, 1993 in Atlanta , Georgia ) was a South African journalist , author and politician , who served from 1972 to 1977 as State Secretary in the South African Ministry of Information. In this capacity, he was one of the most important actors in his home country's government in the field of political propaganda . Towards the end of the 1970s, he played a central role in a political scandal known as the Muldergate Affair over the exposure of covert propaganda measures at home and abroad. As a result, he was initially convicted of fraud and later acquitted on appeal, and emigrated to the USA in 1982 .

Life

Eschel Rhoodie was born in Caledon in 1933 as the son of a prison guard and received his doctorate from the University of Pretoria with a comparative thesis on the penal system in the countries of the Commonwealth of Nations . Professionally, he initially worked for an Afrikaans-language daily newspaper for a short time before he joined the South African Ministry of Information. After 15 years abroad for the ministry, including in Australia , the United States and the Netherlands , he took over the post of State Secretary in 1972. In the 1970s he traveled to Israel several times for talks that led to cooperation between the two countries in the arms sector and, in particular, to the development of the South African nuclear program supported by Israel . As State Secretary he was also significantly involved in information minister Cornelius Petrus Mulder's plans to use various propaganda measures to influence public opinion about apartheid at home and abroad.

These activities, which were approved by the then Prime Minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster and supported by funds from the budget of the Ministry of Defense, included bribing international news and press agencies, among other things, the attempt to buy up the daily newspaper Washington Star in the USA , as well as support or establishment of pro-government English-language newspapers in South Africa. The discovery of these secret measures of the Ministry of Information by the daily newspaper Rand Daily Mail led from 1977 to a political scandal known as the Muldergate affair , in the course of which, until 1979, Cornelius Petrus Mulder, among others, lost his political offices and was expelled from the National Party . Prime Minister Balthazar Johannes Vorster also resigned in 1979 from the office of President that he had assumed a year earlier. As a result of these events, the government appointed the Steyn Commission .

Eschel Rhoodie, who was accused of bribery and personal enrichment in connection with the activities of the information ministry, initially fled to Ecuador . After unsuccessfully applying for political asylum in Great Britain in 1979 , he went to France . There he was arrested and extradited to South Africa around three months later, where he was sentenced to six years in prison in October 1979 for fraud. After the appeal conviction was overturned the following year on the grounds that he acted only on orders, he immigrated to the United States in 1982. A year later he published a book about his view of the scandal, in which he portrayed various high-ranking government officials in the country as having participated in the activities of the Ministry of Information and presented himself as innocent. In addition, he subsequently worked as a consultant for South Africans who emigrated to the USA.

Eschel Rhoodie was married and had a daughter and a son. He died in Atlanta in 1993 of a heart attack during a tennis game.

Works (selection)

  • South-West: The last Frontier in Africa. New York and Johannesburg 1967
  • The Third Africa. Cape Town 1968
  • The paper curtain. Johannesburg 1969
  • The Real Information Scandal. Atlanta and Pretoria 1983; Edition in Afrikaans: The goods inligtingskandaal. Pretoria 1984
  • Discrimination in the Constitutions of the World: A Study of the Group Rights Problem. Columbus, GA 1984
  • PW Botha: The Last Betrayal. Melville 1989

literature

personal data
SURNAME Rhoodie, Eschel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rhoodie, Eschel Mostert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African journalist, author and politician during the apartheid period
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Caledon , Cape Province
DATE OF DEATH 17th July 1993
Place of death Atlanta , Georgia