Public Protector’s cohort Steven Goodson, is not just anti-Jewish

NICOLA MILTZ

In his book, A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind he makes outrageous claims, placing Jews at the centre of the so-called “rot” that permeates international banking.

“A must-read book”, Mkhwebane wrote on her Facebook status, showing a photograph of the cover of Goodson’s book.

“The post was informing the friends about the book she will be reading. It was not promotion,” insisted Mkhwebane’s spokesman Cleopatra Mosana this week.

However, the Public Protector and Goodson have been in close talks. This emerged last week when Mkhwebane released her shock report into the apartheid-era Bankorp bailout in which she “inexplicably” demanded that the Constitution be amended to change the mandate of the Reserve Bank. 

Goodson is no stranger to controversy. Notorious for his anti-Semitic “banking conspiracy theories”, he has expressed his admiration for the social achievements of the Third Reich.

His racial aspersions are cast not only on Jews. In 2013 he was asked to give a historical overview of South Africa at a memorial service in Lancashire. He told his audience that Jews were responsible for all the financial ills of the world.

A YouTube video of this event shows him continually making use of phrases like the unwelcome “flood of Jews”, “the connivance of Jews”, “the unsound business practices of Jews”. The Rothschilds’ “malevolent banking empire” takes a persistent beating throughout.

Goodson said that when the ANC came to power “each Cabinet minister has a Jewish adviser who writes their speeches. A lot of these people can’t write their name. The black government is just a front. It is a puppet government”, he maintained.

Goodson claims in this talk that a manager told him: “These blacks are very good with theory. They will learn, pass their exams, but when it comes to the practical implementation, they are totally useless.”

He concludes his talk by painting a bleak picture of the future of South Africa, saying that the percentage of whites had declined and “by the end of the century there will be no white people. Whites are the cement keeping the country together. As they decline, everything is going to unravel.”

Goodson had spewed his “contentious views” to the Mail & Guardian in 2012, which included his admiring the economic policies of Hitler. He told of his belief that international bankers financed and manipulated the war against Hitler because they saw his model of state capitalism as “a threat to their usurious ways”, and that the Holocaust was “a fiction invented to extract vast amounts of compensation from the defeated Germans”.

In the M&G article, Goodson claimed the genocide of millions of Jews during the Second World War was a “huge lie”.

The M&G this week said Goodson and the Public Protector met on April 23 and two days later her Facebook page featured the cover of his book. Goodson, a former director at the Reserve Bank, served in his role for nine years until 2012, when it was believed he resigned because of his controversial views.

When the Jewish Report asked Mkhwebane whether it concerned her that the country’s Jewish community might find it disturbing that she appeared to publicly endorse Goodson’s book, her spokesman’s response was that the Public Protector “has a right to freedom of conscience, religion, thought, belief and opinion about any matter which she conducts in her private capacity”.

She said she would be meeting the Jewish Board of Deputies to address these “wrong perceptions” of her supposed endorsement of Goodson’s controversial book. 

Goodson was investigated by the Hawks in 2015 for breaching the Reserve Bank Act that year, after the publication of another book, “Inside the South African Reserve Bank – its origins and secrets exposed”.

Last week Mkhwebane instructed Parliament to change the Constitution, with wording she drafted unilaterally, to remove the Reserve Bank’s mandate to keep inflation under control. This sent shock waves throughout every financial crevice, including ratings agencies, causing the rand to plummet further. It took bankers by surprise.

The Reserve Bank this week tore into Mkhwebane, calling her attempt to rewrite the Constitution, “ill-informed and reckless”.

 According to the Mail & Guardian, Mkhwebane held no meetings with economists, central bankers or constitutional experts, in preparation for this report and instruction. And there is “no evidence” she consulted the Reserve Bank, Parliament, or any other body, about her proposed change.

Reports suggest she only had two meetings on the issue. One was with the department of State Security and the other with Goodson.

In a statement released this week, The South African Jewish Board of Deputies said it was “following up this matter” with Mkhwebane and would be meeting with her next month “to obtain clarification”.

The Board explained that Goodson’s book has as its central theme “that the system of international banking is and always has been, an unadulterated evil and that Jews, through their supposed underhanded, unscrupulous practices, have been guilty of foisting that evil on humanity at large”.

 Among other things, said the Board, “Goodson persistently justifies anti-Jewish persecution by attributing it to the alleged criminal behaviour of Jews themselves, blames Jews for instigating wars, revolutions and other such disasters and asserts that the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War, is a Jewish-spawned lie aimed at extorting reparations from Germany”.

Said the Board: “As we have stressed in our initial correspondence with the Public Protector, such thinking is typical of ultra-right-wing, white supremacist thinking the world over, and indeed, Goodson has been rapturously acclaimed in those circles.”

The Board says it takes statements, particularly by public representatives seriously, particularly those who appear to endorse anti-Semitic ideologies. The Board will raise this at its forthcoming meeting with the Public Protector, following which it will report back to the Jewish community about the outcomes and way forward.