Al Mayadeen English

  • Ar
  • Es
  • x
Al Mayadeen English

Slogan

  • News
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Sports
    • Arts&Culture
    • Health
    • Miscellaneous
    • Technology
    • Environment
  • Articles
    • Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Blog
    • Features
  • Videos
    • NewsFeed
    • Video Features
    • Explainers
    • TV
    • Digital Series
  • Infographs
  • In Pictures
  • • LIVE
News
  • Politics
  • Economy
  • Sports
  • Arts&Culture
  • Health
  • Miscellaneous
  • Technology
  • Environment
Articles
  • Opinion
  • Analysis
  • Blog
  • Features
Videos
  • NewsFeed
  • Video Features
  • Explainers
  • TV
  • Digital Series
Infographs
In Pictures
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Asia-Pacific
  • Europe
  • Latin America
  • MENA
  • Palestine
  • US & Canada
BREAKING
Palestinian websites: Initial reports of a tough security incident the occupation army is facing in Khan Younis, south of the Gaza Strip
Israeli media: The Israeli army detected a missile launch from Yemen
Al Mayadeen's correspondent from Revolution Square in Tehran: Processions from Bahrain, Iraq, and other Arab nations are in attendance
Iranians gather at Tehran’s Revolution Square for the funeral of martyrs of Israeli aggression
Maduro: I call on the Jews to stop the war madness practiced by the Zionist regime led by Netanyahu
Maduro: Every day, 100 people are killed in Palestine, and the West is watching and is complicit
Iran's representative to the United Nations, in a letter to Guterres and the Security Council: The threat of America and the Zionist entity to assassinate the Supreme Leader is state terrorism.
Washington to the Security Council: The goal was to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment capacity and prevent the threat of Tehran obtaining and using a nuclear weapon
Lebanese Health Ministry: 1 woman martyred, 11 wounded in Israeli strike on residential apartment in Nabatieh, South Lebanon.
Al Mayadeen's correspondent: Four civilians injured in Israeli strike that targeted house in Nabatieh al-Fawqa, South Lebanon.

The CIA's betrayal that led to arrest of Nelson Mandela: Time

  • By Al Mayadeen English
  • Source: The Time
  • 27 Feb 2023 22:28
  • 2 Shares
8 Min Read

Time magazine highlights the links between the United States notorious CIA and Black South African revolutionary Nelson Mandela's arrest in 1962.

  • x
  • The CIA's betrayal that led to arrest of Nelson Mandela: Time
     The CIA called Mandela a "probable Communist" that gave impetus to anti-apartheid protests, describing him as an "able organizer who reportedly has ample funds at his disposal"

Was the CIA involved in the arrest of prominent anti-apartheid activist and African leader-to-be Nelson Mandela in 1962, collaborating with the White supremacist state against a figure striving for Black liberation? According to Time magazine, that might exactly be the case.

According to the report, Mandela, a cautious revolutionary who had been underground for years and was using an alias, David Motsamayi, was stopped by a South African policeman whom he had never met as he was with White communist Cecil Williams, a member of the African National Congress.

The man pulled out an arrest warrant and asked Mandela to introduce himself, and he did, using his alias. The officer responded by saying: "Agh, you are Nelson Mandela, and this is Cecil Williams, and I am arresting you," the revolutionary said later on, noting that despite the policeman not having seen either of them before, he knew exactly who they were, though Mandela had drastically changed since his last public appearance; he even grew a beard.

Time said the small detail and various others that emerged over time have caused suspicion over the past few decades about the United States' involvement in Mandela's arrest, which saw the South African revolutionary getting imprisoned for 27 years.

Reports have come out alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency tipped off South Africa about Mandela's whereabouts ahead of his arrest, with many pointing out that his arrest, which took place on August 5, 1962, was at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis between the Soviet Union and the United States, and seeing the US intelligence community believed that Mandela and the African National Congress were covert Soviet allies, Washington sought to undermine Moscow's standing in Africa, pushing it to collaborate with Pretoria.

Mandela, as per the article's author, Richard Stengel, did not care about who was behind his arrest. "I have no evidence either way, so I can't make a judgment -and I didn't even try to find out. The truth is, he just didn't really care. He was under arrest and now the battle was in a new arena. He only ever had one direction: forward," he quoted him as saying.

The Johannesburg Star printed a news story that quoted a "retired senior police officer" as saying that the South African police had been tipped off to Mandela’s whereabouts by an American diplomat at the US consulate in Durban, whom the author of the article published in 1986 accused of being "the CIA operative for that region."

In 1990, a similar new story came out, this time by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It alleged that a retired US intelligence official said that hours after Mandela's arrest 27 years ago, a senior CIA operative walked into his office and revealed that "We have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. They have picked him up. It is one of our greatest coups."

The article further quoted former intelligence officials as saying the CIA saw that Mandela and the ANC posed a threat to the stability of the South African government at a time when Washington had signed an agreement with Pretoria, with South Africa being highly important for the US as a key source of uranium and other minerals, as well as a key ally for the West against the Soviet Union amid strong ties between the USSR and various newly-formed African states that had very close ties to the West.

Furthermore, Stengel cited an interview given by retired CIA officer Donald Rickard in 2016 to British film director John Irvin, in which he admitted to having tipped off the South African police about Mandela, revealing that he had been operating as an undercover State Department vice-consul in Durban, a "cauldron" of anti-apartheid action.

Finally, Stengel mentioned how the CIA declassified apartheid South Africa-related documents in 2017 in response to a general Freedom of Information request, which dated back to 1961-1962, the same time that Mandela was arrested and sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to overthrow the state. The author then said that he found relevant mentions of Mandela that had never been published by any new organization.

Related News

Cuba denounces US-backed nomination of Rosa Maria Paya to IACHR

US Senate blocks resolution limiting military action against Iran

Read next: 'Israel' beating Palestinian mourners evokes apartheid: Tutu fdn.

One of the relevant mentions in question was in a declassified CIA document marked "SECRET", dating back to May 25, 1961. The CIA called Mandela a "probable Communist" that gave impetus to anti-apartheid protests, describing him as an "able organizer who reportedly has ample funds at his disposal, [he] seems to have revitalized the ‘Congress movement,’ the Communist-dominated multiracial groups which had been moribund since the banning last year of the African National Congress."

The other mention in question came in a memo marked "SECRET" from the CIA dating back to February 1962, just months before Mandela was arrested. The CIA highlighted Mandela's role as "the head of the ANC guerrilla movement", and underlined that he was no longer in South Africa.

"Mandela, who lived undercover in South Africa and Basutoland after the failure of the general strike he called last May, has left the country..." the memo read, with the rest of the sentence being blacked out. The author argued that this was the first piece of evidence that the CIA was tracking Mandela and knew he was not in South Africa.

Stengel said he tried to get the CIA to confirm or deny the speculation, but his attempts were fruitless, though given the benefit of the doubt, there are mountains of evidence suggesting that the CIA was involved in Mandela's arrest, especially with the enmity between the United States and the Soviet Union, to whom Washington saw Mandela as an ally, and the growing role of the CIA in the international arena at the time as an aspiring, somewhat newly-created intelligence agency that sought to weed out any pro-Soviet activity, or any activity believed to be harmful to Washington's interests, anywhere it could.

Read next: Intercept: Obama relates, CIA orchestrated Indonesia's 1965 massacres

Mandela's effect on this world cannot be denied, and he was one of the most renowned activists when it comes to Black liberation, as he was the first Black South African President after the country was dominated by its White minority. He is a Nobel Prize laureate due to his efforts toward ending the apartheid system in his country.

He was a political activist early on, joining the African National Congress in 1944 when he helped form the ANC Youth League, and just eight years later, he founded Mandela and Tambo, South Africa's first black-owned law firm, alongside Oliver Tambo, the President-to-be of the African National Congress.

He had departed from his country before his arrest, traveling throughout Africa and going to England, seeking support for the Black armed struggle against the apartheid regime. 

On June 11, 1964, Mandela and seven others were convicted and sentenced to life in prison, narrowly escaping the death sentence, for conspiring to overthrow the South African apartheid government.

He was released from prison on February 11, 1990, by the government of President Frederik Willem de Klerk, with whom Mandela led the African National Congress through negotiations to abolish apartheid in South Africa.

Years later, Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first democratically elected President on May 10, 1994, before stepping down in 1999, and he continued his political life from the sidelines until his death in 2013.

Check out: The life of the apartheid fighter Nelson Mandela

  • United States
  • Soviet Union
  • Cuban missile crisis
  • Apartheid
  • South Africa
  • nelson mandela
  • CIA

Most Read

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends a protest following the US attacks on nuclear sites in Iran, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, June 22, 2025. (AP)

Iran declares victory as ceasefire forces Israeli retreat

  • Politics
  • 24 Jun 2025
Israeli workers survey the site where a missile launched from Iran struck in Haifa on Sunday, June 22, 2025. (AP)

True Promise 3, wave 20: 40 missiles launched, Kheibar-Shekan in first

  • Politics
  • 22 Jun 2025
Iran launches strikes on Israeli targets, despite alleged ceasefire

Iran victorious as ceasefire with 'Israel' takes effect

  • Politics
  • 24 Jun 2025
Iranian worshippers carry their country's flags in a protest to condemn Israeli attacks on multiple cities across Iran, after the Friday prayers ceremony in Tehran, Iran, Friday, June 20, 2025. (AP)

Iran warns of NPT withdrawal, Strait of Hormuz closure after US attack

  • Politics
  • 22 Jun 2025

Coverage

All
The Ummah's Martyrs

Read Next

All
Israeli occupation soldiers search for settlers amid the rubble of buildings destroyed by an Iranian missile strike in Bat Yam, central occupied Palestine, on Sunday, June 15, 2025 (AP)
Politics

Iran missile strike flattens Bat Yam, displaces 2,000 settlers

Palestinian fighters from the Islamic Jihad militant group riding on a truck with weaponry on display take part in an anti-Israel parade marking the 36th anniversary of the movement's founding, in Gaza City, Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023 (AP)
Politics

Palestinian Resistance attacks Israeli forces in Khan Younis, Jabalia

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stands waiting to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for the talks at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Monday, June 23, 2025 (AP)
Politics

Iran suspends IAEA cooperation, Araghchi blames Grossi for attacks

The commander of the Quds Force's Palestine Unit, Brigadier General Mohammad Said Izadi (Illustrated by Mahdi Rtail for Al Mayadeen English)
Politics

Who was Mohammad Said Izadi, head of the Quds Force's Palestine Unit?

Al Mayadeen English

Al Mayadeen is an Arab Independent Media Satellite Channel.

All Rights Reserved

  • x
  • Privacy Policy
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Authors
Android
iOS