Revealed: Akufo Addo Gov’t Linked To South Africa’s Apartheid Financiers

Between 2017 and 2019, the Akufo Addo administration has had several secret meetings at the Peduase Lodge with Brenthurst Foundation, a charity funded by the Oppenheimer Family, the South African industrial conglomerate known for exploiting South African blacks and funding bloody apartheid-era policies.

Whatsup News has gathered that the economic strategy of the Akufo Addo administration fondly touted by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia is mostly a parroting of a blueprint given the government by the Brenthurst Foundation. 

Famous of these coaching from the Oppenheimer Family is the much-bastardised “Ghana Beyond Aid” re-echoed by the Akufo Addo administration as soon as it assumed power in 2017, Whatsup News gathered.

The foundation also helps the Akufo Addo administration in its communications and propaganda machinery.

According to FactCheck Ghana, an online fact-checking platform, Between 7 and 9 April 2017, a government retreat was held at Peduase Lodge. The event was attended by President Akufo Addo, Vice President Bawumia and some selected Ministers of State, particularly the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.

The meeting was organised directly by President Akufo Addo and Olusegun Obasanjo, former Nigerian President and Chairman of the Brenthurst Foundation and a man on the payroll of the Oppenheimer Foundation.

According to FactCheck Ghana, Obasanjo and representatives of the brutal apartheid-era brutal exploiters co-presided over a key Ghana Government meeting that laid out the blueprint of how Ghana’s economy needs to be directed.

On 26 July 2017, the Brenthurst Foundation organized an event at the plush Kempinski Hotel in Accra, where President Akufo Addo launched a book called “Making Africa Work: A Handbook for Economic Success”. Incidentally, the book was by Brenthurst’s Greg Mills, Olusegun Obasanjo, Jeffrey Herbst and Dickie Davis. The book was promoted by Brenthurst as a “guide to running Africa’s economies”.

The Founder of the Brenthurst Foundation, South African mining tycoon Jonathan Oppenheimer, flew to Accra, especially for the event.

Again, on 21 January 2019, at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), Vice-President Bawumia launched another book published by the Oppenheimer-funded Brenthurst Foundation. Titled “Democracy Works: Rewiring Politics to Africa’s Advantage,” and authored by Brenthurst’s Greg Mills, Olusegun Obasanjo, Jeffrey Herbst and Tendai Biti, the book provides “lessons” on how African nations should organize elections and adopt policies from Western countries.

Bawumia praised the book as a “worthy addition to the growing body of works championing the spread of democracy in Africa” and explained how it provides lessons in enhancing democracy in Africa

According to a US State Department document released by WikiLeaks, Brenthurst provides “confidential policy advice” to African countries if only the Foundation works directly with the Office of the President in the respective African countries, and is invited by the President himself.

On 20 February 2017, a Brenthurst Foundation delegation, including Director Greg Mills and Chairman Olusegun Obasanjo, met with President Nana Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House. The Foundation presented the President with the results of its “fieldwork”. Vice-president Bawumia and Finance Minister Ofori-Atta also participated in the meeting.

After the meeting, the Oppenheimer Family’s PR firm, Sabi Strategy Group, was tasked to cook up an economic development project around “Ghana Beyond Aid”.

Sabi Strategy is a firm like Cambridge Analytica, the British data company accused of improperly harvesting and using personnel data for manipulating US voters. It has been used to run propaganda and buy local media.

For instance, in January 2018, the Africa Report wrote an article about how the Brenthurst Foundation sneakily funded Johannesburg-based Daily Maverick to reportedly pay students to purposefully write negative articles about several black South African businessmen in a reminiscence of an apartheid-styled psychological operation to put black business entrepreneurs down. 

This is not the first time the Akufo Addo administration has been linked to Western interests working to put down Africa’s development. 

A few months ago, independent investigative network, Open Source Investigations, revealed how the Akufo Addo administration was actively engaged with KRL International, a shadowy US lobby group to plan its political and economic strategies, despite the company being known widely as an economic “Hitman” actively sabotaging Ghana’s economy through international smear campaigns.

KRL operates by using fake news and propaganda, to undermine Ghana’s interest internationally, Open Source Investigations revealed.

Meanwhile, there are speculations that the Oppenheimer Family and the Brenthurst Foundation may have been part of the potpourri of financiers of the Akufo Addo campaign, given the fact that they have been known to finance several African politicians who are willing to serve their interests.

For instance, Africa Confidential and Africa Report have outlined how the Brenthurst Foundation, which is funded by the Oppenheimer family in South Africa has funded a number of politicians in Zambia and across Africa. 

The New York Times in a 1983 outline how the Oppenheimer exploited some 200,000 black South Africans to build their Anglo-American mining conglomerates.

“ ..his [Openheimers] companies have also been the world’s largest private employers of migrant labor under a harsh system of indenture that makes it impossible for roughly 80 percent of their quarter of a million black employees to establish a right of residence where they work or live with their families,” read the New York Times Articles titled “Oppenheimer Of South Africa”