Illustrative image | Sources: Mathews Phosa. (Photo: Frennie Shivambu / Gallo Images) | Jacob Zuma. (Photo: Scott Eells / Bloomberg via Getty Images) | Muammar Gaddafi. (Photo: EPA) 
The late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi gave the ANC a “substantial” financial donation for its 2009 election campaign, says Mathews Phosa, who as ANC treasurer-general at the time helped to secure some of the money.
This raises questions about then president Jacob Zuma’s objectivity in mediation efforts to end the Libyan civil war in 2011.
Phosa confirms the donation in his memoir, Witness to Power, which has just been published. He also describes how Gaddafi’s political enemies felt Zuma had betrayed them in secret mediation talks in 2011. These enemies hinted, to this journalist, in 2015, that this might have been because Gaddafi had paid off Zuma and/or the ANC.
Phosa writes that the ANC has “repeatedly denied at the highest level” the speculation that Gaddafi had given the ANC money for the 2009 election campaign.
“But the truth is that the ANC did, under successive treasurers-general, receive donations from Gaddafi. I, for one, played a role in securing some of that money,” he writes.
He says that after Zuma was elected as ANC president at Polokwane in 2007, Gaddafi asked to meet him before the 2009 elections, when Zuma would become president. Phosa says he and other Zuma advisers flew to the Libyan capital, Tripoli, where Gaddafi agreed to make a “substantial, once-off contribution to the ANC’s 2009 campaign”.
Phosa relates how he was surprised to discover that Zuma’s nephew Khulubuse Zuma was also in the room when they met Gaddafi.
“Khulubuse was not on the flight with us, so his presence was unexpected. During a subsequent visit, I learnt that Khulubuse had met with one General Rahman with whom he was negotiating possible defence contracts between South Africa and Libya.
“Talk in Tripoli at that stage was that Khulubuse represented state-owned arms manufacturer Denel and the South African government in the discussions. Bashir Saleh, one of Gaddafi’s closest advisors, indicated to me that this was a source of discomfort for the Libyan negotiators.”
Asked for comment on Phosa’s claims, Mzwanele Manyi, the spokesperson of the JG Zuma Foundation, said, “President Zuma is very busy building the MK party, the last hope for South Africa. We don’t entertain such attention-seeking distractions.”
Khulubuse Zuma said: “I never represented any government entity. I never negotiated anything on behalf of government. I respect Mr Phosa; he is my elder. Otherwise, I do not have any other thing to say.”
ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri said: “We are not aware of any money being donated by Gaddafi to the ANC for its 2009 election campaign. There has been a long passage of time since then and the current generation of leaders were not in office at that time.”
Phosa describes Gaddafi’s efforts to persuade Zuma to help him secure a second term as chairperson of the African Union (AU). Gaddafi held the chair at the time, in 2009, but wanted a second term to advance his ambition to become the head of a continent-wide government.
The AU chair rotates every year to a different African region and it was southern Africa’s turn in 2010. The region had decided it should go to Malawi. Phosa said Gaddafi asked him and Zuma to persuade Malawi to stand down so he could keep the post. According to Phosa, Gaddafi even offered Zuma the job of foreign minister in his African government if he persuaded Malawi to back off.
But Phosa declined, telling Gaddafi he had offended the Malawian government by funding its opposition so it was unlikely to agree.
Mediation attempts
Phosa also sheds light on Zuma’s role in the efforts to end the civil war between Gaddafi and his opponents in 2011. Zuma was one of a panel of AU presidents who visited Libya twice that year on unsuccessful peace missions. Eventually, Gaddafi was toppled by his enemies in August 2011 and brutally murdered by them in October.
However, as Phosa describes in his book, Zuma was also engaged in secret, back-channel diplomacy of his own in Libya in 2011. Phosa says that UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan sent one of his deputies to South Africa to ask Zuma to meet Mahmoud Jibril, the chairperson of Libya’s National Transitional Council, which was heading the opposition to Gaddafi. Jibril was “de facto prime minister of the soon-to-be new Libyan government,” writes Phosa.
Zuma agreed to meet Jibril. Phosa said because of South Africa’s relations with Gaddafi, he had decided to run the meeting “as a typical undercover operation and informed neither Siyabonga Cwele nor Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, the ministers at the time of state security and international relations respectively”.
Phosa writes that Jibril met Zuma at his official residence, Genadendal, in Cape Town and told him that SA had pulled off a miracle with Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk and was a role model for Libya. He asked him to visit Gaddafi to initiate talks with him “so we don’t destroy our country and destroy one another”.
On Phosa’s advice, Zuma did travel to Tripoli to meet Gaddafi, with only his immediate advisers and without informing the minister of state security “or anyone else”.
“When he returned from the meeting, he reported that Gaddafi was not amenable to discussions with what he regarded as terrorists trying to overthrow his legitimate government. It was hugely disappointing,” writes Phosa.
He arranged another meeting with Jibril, this time in Pretoria, to report back to him. At the meeting, Jibril said it was perhaps time to involve the AU, and Zuma agreed.
He contacted the AU and that was when the ad hoc committee of five presidents was formed. They visited Gaddafi in Tripoli, “but returned empty-handed”.
Phosa then arranged another clandestine visit by Jibril, flying him from China to Durban to meet Zuma in a flat owned by Durban businessman Roy Moodley.
After long discussions, Zuma left the room to take a call and Jibril asked him, “‘Mathews, has Zuma changed?’ …. It seemed to Jibril that Zuma’s enthusiasm to offer assistance had waned since his trip to Tripoli, and that Gaddafi had somehow changed Zuma’s thinking. He was wondering what had happened and said that he did not trust Zuma any more.”
‘A traitor’
Phosa added that it became clear that Jibril and the NTC felt that the AU could not be trusted on the Libya issue.
“They were suspicious about how Gaddafi might have won them over… Jibril said to me: ‘Mathews, I think Zuma is a traitor and I will never come here again. He must have sold us to Gaddafi.’”
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In an interview with this journalist for the ISS in 2015, Jibril was more explicit about why he felt betrayed by Zuma. He said that at one of his earlier meetings with Zuma, he had found him sympathetic and accommodating.
Zuma had agreed that Gaddafi would have to give up power if outright war was to be avoided. Jibril said he had asked him if he and the AU presidential committee had made it clear to Gaddafi that he must stand down. The answer was that this was “implicit” in the AU peace plan. Jibril insisted that it should be made explicit to Gaddafi.
Zuma said would travel to Libya later, which he did on 31 May 2011.
However, when Jibril met Zuma in Durban, “I was surprised to hear from him that he wanted us to hand over our weapons and work with the current regime … to form a new government. Gaddafi would stay in power,” Jibril told ISS.
That was what made him believe that Zuma had betrayed him and the NTC. Jibril told me he suspected — but without proof — that Gaddafi had paid off Zuma to change his position. He added that Zuma’s government could now “make it up” to the Libyan people by returning to them the billions of dollars of money and gold bullion, which he said Gaddafi had stashed away in South Africa.
‘Gaddafi billions’
The “Gaddafi billions” have become the stuff of legend since then. As Phosa writes, it has become like the story of King Solomon’s Mine.
He relates that after the Libyan rebels took Tripoli in August 2011, he arranged for Zuma to speak on the phone with President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger about giving the Gaddafi family asylum if they needed it.
“Issoufou agreed and we passed a message to Gaddafi’s inner circle. We were happy to receive news that part of his family had arrived in Niger’s capital Niamey, but where was Gaddafi? We had lost contact with him and no one knew where he was. The next we heard, he had been captured and brutally murdered in his hometown of Sirte. It was 20 October 2011.
“Immediately, the rumour mill took charge. There were, among others, allegations that Zuma had sent SAA aeroplanes to evacuate Gaddafi and his family; that Gaddafi had sent a planeload of billions in cash and gold to South Africa; and that we had sent mercenaries to Tripoli to defend Gaddafi. I know for a fact that the first of these allegations is false. As for the others, I assumed that they were just rumours. Perhaps time will tell in the end.”
Phosa describes how he later met several delegations of Libyans and one supposedly from the US State Department, seeking the Gaddafi billions which were also rumoured to be in Eswatini. They were not found.
Jibril resigned as head of the NTC days after Gaddafi was killed and became leader of the largest party in the new parliament. He died of a heart attack, aggravated by Covid-19, in 202o. DM