South African Ruling Party Charges: Obama Attempting Regime Change, Confirming EIR Analyses

The South African ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has charged the United States with organizing in South Africa for regime change. This follows President Zuma’s State of the Nation Address on Feb. 11, in which he defended his policy of aligning with China and the BRICS, and pointed out that Chinese investment in South Africa means jobs.

EIR foresaw, in its July 25, 2014 issue, that the trans-Atlantic system would go to any length to stop South Africa from participating in the BRICS and from expanding its nuclear power production by building more plants. Subsequent analyses—published  in EIR on Jan. 16, 2015, and by LaRouche South Africa leader Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane on the News24 website in South Africa on June 24, 2015—provided increasing detail on some of the regime-change plans. The latter was so explosive, that someone (possibly from the U.S. side) caused it to be pulled within 24 hours.

Last Friday, Feb. 19, according to Independent Online, the ANC Secretary General, Gwede Mantashe, told a rally in Pretoria that “the ANC knew of regular meetings at the U.S embassy in Pretoria which were about ‘mobilisation for regime change.’ The ANC was also aware of a programme that involved taking young people to the U.S. for six weeks and on return, planting them ‘everywhere,’ including universities.”

The program Mantashe was referring to is the Mandela Washington Fellowship program, launched by Obama in 2014 at the time of his so-called African Leadership Summit in Washington.

According to News24, Mantashe charged that the meetings in the embassy took place daily.

“We will elevate this matter to a formal level,” ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said on Saturday.

U.S. Ambassador Patrick Gaspard responded with contemptuous tweets, notably including this one on Feb. 19: “I’m so disappointed as I always imagined that if I organized a coup it would look like Mardi Gras — food, music, dance.” Another of Gaspard’s tweets: “You get a coup d’état and you get a coup d’état and you get a coup d’état! Everybody gets a coup!!!!” According to Independent Online, “on Saturday, Weekend Argus tried to speak to Gaspard, but a U.S. embassy spokeswoman said his tweets sufficiently conveyed his response.”