It is a matter of record that I was convicted in May 1991 of organizing on January 27 1989, a shotgun attack upon the home of Eddie Funde, then Representative to Australia of the African National Congress (ANC).
For years now, I have noted the scoffing of the professional ‘antifa’ (anti-fascists) at my assertion that the case against me was a political police conspiracy. These antifa, who often assert the existence of state conspiracies and political police dirty tricks ops when they are playing at being anti-system lefties, seem quite happy with the idea that the same thing just didn’t operate against me. They use my conviction as proof of my utter perfidy. The mind boggles why they question nothing. Is it too hard? Or doesn’t my story ‘fit’ with the line they want to run?
Other players can get dirty too. Certain persons who have called themselves ‘patriots’ - and even ‘nationalists’ – have also run with the state script. In loading me with a garbage crime, they seek to slither away as ‘clean-skins’, ready to enter the political mainstream as normals who eschew any notion of violence, and as they put it, leaving me and those like me - in our squalid gutter. Such charm and such moral courage do they show.
A couple of years ago, I was interviewed by a journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald. When I told the bloke that the political policeman who ran the Funde case against me (orchestrated it?), fell at the ‘New South Wales Royal Commission Into The Police Service’ way back in 1997, it was clear that he knew. Certainly, he hated the idea that an anti racist hero could fall. Yet, he plain baulked when I told him that this officer, Superintendent Neville Ireland, just didn’t go down, but was pushed by my information given to Commission investigators. The Royal Commission showed that Ireland was a rorter of the informant’s fund, a perjurer, and a ‘protector’ of a sexually perverted Justice of the Supreme Court. I reminded the journalist how Ireland would pick the old pervert up from railway police offices after he’d been caught ‘flashing’ in public toilets – and take him home with no charge. He could see that I regarded Ireland as typical of the political police. I could see hatred on the face of this intrepid journalist. After all, Ireland had passed into anti racist folklore as the man who ‘got Jim’. Sadly, some of our more informed anti racists (sic) know the truth and conceal it, ‘Jim got Neville’.
Now it gets better, a lot better.
The Ignominious Fall Of Eddie Funde
I was in the dock at Sydney’s Central Local Court on December 4 1989, to hear Eddie Funde give evidence against me. Yes, he was home on January 27 1989. Yes, the house had been shot at and so forth. Yes, he headed the ANC in Australia. As he was leaving the court-room, I leaned out of the dock and said to him: “Mr. Funde, I had nothing to do with this attack upon you.” He nodded. He probably knew. The whole thing was bad theatre.
After the New World Order forces overturned the ‘white minority government’ in South Africa, Funde went on to become an important man in the ANC regime which took its place. He rose through the ranks of the South African Broadcasting Commission (SABC) to actually control it; he went on to become the Ambassador to Germany (2008 – 2010). After years of subtle attacks from anti corruption fighters in South Africa (Noseweek, July 2004), and after being implicated in the sheltering of a fraudster at the SABC who ran off with 2 million rand, Funde was accused in 2010 of a massive fraud – some 4 million rand misappropriated via contracts with private companies, courtesy of Sentech, the state owned signals controller in South Africa,. Funde was the central player in the fraud and received shares in a beneficiary company. The evidence seems compelling and Funde should end up in prison.
See the Mail And Guardian’s article:
Eddie Funde was, as I shall describe here in greater detail shortly, the darling of Australian liberal and leftist ‘anti-racists’ in the 1980’s and a lynchpin figure in the entire ‘anti racist movement’. When his house was shotgunned, he stepped up as a martyr of racist (sic) and fascist (sic) violence, the valiant fighter for a colour-blind South Africa – ad nauseum. I think the shotgun crime did him a favour. It was a funds-raising bonanza. If I had ever organized this nonsense attack upon Funde, it sure back-fired (pun intended).
We have come full circle. It can only leave the proverbial bad taste in the collective mouth of the anti racists, that it will ultimately become Funde’s turn to stand the dock, a sad representative of a regime mired in corruption and scandal (and I should add parenthetically, anti-white hatred).
I cannot say that I do not enjoy the schadenfreud. Essentially, the fall of Funde is indicative of the collapse of a myth. In the 1980’s, the ANC could do no wrong according to liberals and leftists. Its sullied status now – just makes my trial smell that little more odorous. The fall of Funde cannot reverse the verdict against me; but rather, it just takes the pseudo-moral blather out of the case.
That is important. As I write, I observe that the very history of the Funde shooting is being rewritten by the Slackbastard anarchist group via Wikipedia and other outlets and thanks to other anti racists with their toilet-wall Internet smearings and assorted public gossip-mongering. It is even said that I tried to assassinate the man! Assassinate? The prosecution case made no such claim. Yet, as time moves on and myths can be rewoven around the case – why not? And who would know?
It is the fall of Funde as a moral symbol (sic) that just brings the entire affair back to hard earth. To put it in the vernacular: Eddie Funde is revealed as a miserable grub, a parasite on his own people and party and a man unworthy of any attempt at statue-building. Bad luck for all the so-called anti racists / anti fascists and other state connected propagandists! Good luck for me and other comrades from those days of frame-up!
Witness Protection For State Perjurer
It should not be thought by the reader that I was convicted at my trial by any real evidence. Let’s be quite clear about that. There was certainly no confession. There was no scientific evidence. There was no civilian witness who could point the finger. All that the prosecution had was the evidence of two men who claimed to be my accomplices. They seriously contradicted themselves and they contradicted each other about key elements of the story line. The prosecution also had the stitch-the-case-together-evidence of the discredited Neville Ireland.I need not delay the reader by explaining why the guilty verdict issued forth; you can read all about that elsewhere.
Let’s go right to the current point: one of the main (‘accomplice’) witnesses was Jason Roderick Frost, now 44 yrs and by our report, not doing too well. Unlike his co-offender, Frost never wavered in the allegation that I had been involved in the crime even if he couldn’t get his story truly straight. For my part, I have often pondered over what his deal with Special Branch was and how it worked. What benefits did he receive for his evidence? I have exposed some of that in terms of the lenient sentencing on other offences and so forth, the sort of usual stuff, but the truth has the bizarre twist I would expect in any Australian political trial.
We have just learnt that Frost resides in New Zealand on Witness Protection. In 1997, Frost disappeared from view in Australia and appeared nowhere on any radar since until he was found recently living in New Zealand. It was an ‘accident’ that he was located. Nothing more on that will be said here, because the state’s agents observe whatever is said.
It is also reasonably clear from the disclosed circumstances that Frost is not finished with the world of police-work (if I can use such a phrase). It may be that he does some clandestine job for New Zealand’s police. IT probably involves the activities of so-called “youth gangs”.
Certainly, the Australian authorities, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the NSW Police, assisted him greatly to remove himself to New Zealand – new passport, new identity, housing, employment. That requires ‘pay-off’ and Frost may have been providing it. Perhaps long hours in a dull factory job set up for him was not rewarding enough for a man who had the bare bones of particular political knowledge? Perhaps undercover work pays a little better?
I have no doubt that the Australian state’s security, police and prosecutions’ agencies would say that Frost was removed to New Zealand to be protected ‘against’ me, against the possibility that I might do him harm. I could say in reply that Frost had to be protected ‘from’ me. His co-offender had already said things to me that contradicted the state version of the Funde crime. That’s a fact. The state could not afford that Frost ever blab things which might contradict the trial script. If I ever communicated with Frost, what might he say? As he said in trial evidence about his story: “bits and pieces come back to me” and “it was drummed into me at court” when being sentenced and so on. The telltale signs of scripting were clear then and the state could take no chances. Indeed, when Frost disappeared from view in Australia in 1997, the NSW Special Branch had just been dissolved amidst the findings of corruption by the Royal Commission. His protector, Neville Ireland, a man who had even obligingly driven Frost to weekend detention in the years 1989- 1991, could no longer look out for him. Other action was necessary.
Of course, being on Witness Protection does not prove that Frost was generally untruthful at my trial, anymore than Funde’s corruption can establish he was not a crime victim in the past. I must say too that Ireland’s proven corruption and bad character, while it undermines a part of the prosecution case, does not demonstrate that the evidence of my supposed accomplices was necessarily - perjury. It just suggests he could have scripted them and did other things to make the charges stick.
However, in the matter before us, we must read Frost’s history in reverse, right back to the point in March or April 1989 (and how we know that time-frame is a story for another time) when Ireland determined that Frost may have been the shooter in the Funde crime
In May-June 1989, Ireland proceeded very carefully, having three one-on-one meetings with Frost at his home discussing, well – something, several weeks prior to Frost’s formal statement which incriminated me. They had a couple of more-formal discussions “after court” where, according to Frost in fact, he was threatened with an “attempted murder” prosecution and according to Ireland, no such thing was said.
Frost was treated lightly and given 18 months periodic detention for the Funde crime. Two other sentences of three months gaol for other offences, were later converted to bonds on appeal. Years later, Frost was placed in public housing and it seems he was given assistance to obtain employment. Did he receive any money? Time will tell on that one.
The New Zealand transfer operation somewhat demonstrates the importance to the state of my Funde conviction. I have said for years that these convictions were important parts of the state’s anti racist drive at the time. The verdicts cannot be surrendered under any circumstances.
The compliant and subservient attitude of Jason Frost to the Special Branch may properly have a basis in the field of psychology. I have read Frost’s psychological reports tendered at the time of his sentencing on the Funde crime. The transferring of allegiances from one group to another has difficulties, but is consistent with the ‘type’ under review. A reward, care and official concern for his well-being, are operative factors. The likely current role of Frost in undercover work would have nascent origins in his suborning by Special Branch as a state witness. The final pattern of rewards shows that reward was present at the start, that the relationship was extraordinary at the start, that Frost would say anything at the start to gain acceptance and ensure his survival.
If Eddie Funde is ultimately labeled in history as a grub, then Jason Frost takes the award for pathos.
The ‘Anti Racist’ Network And The Saleam Prosecution
I have long concluded that my prosecution for the Funde crime was part of a tangled web of activities related to the 1980’s traitor class war from above against the Australian people, a class-war designed to internationalize (then globalize) the Australian economy but with victory achieved in the name of liberal myths such as openness, a Third-World-uplifting free trade system and anti racism. Essentially, I believe there was a political economy element in the prosecution and it is just no wonder that I ‘got mugged’ by the political police.
The frame against me was a long time in gestation. At the time of the Eddie Funde crime, I was the Chairman of Australian National Action (ANA), or as it was simply called - National Action. The organisation had, according to Prime Minister Bob Hawke, caused Australia a reputation problem in Asia. It had damaged investment and trade. He denounced it twice: first on Perth radio in October 1988 and again in Federal Parliament in March 1989.
In other words, National Action was doing its job. It was standing up for Australian independence. However, the inter-linkages of state anti racism (read: anti Australianism, read: whatever undermines the Australian identity and independent status, economically, politically etc) saw it embrace an anti South African policy in tandem with its commitment to economic and demographic Asianization. It was a two front war. The anti South Africa line enabled it to assemble an army of community fighters so it could create a pseudo moral climate conducive to Asianization. Brilliant stuff.
Unbeknownst to National Action, in 1988 Hawke privately asked Funde whether Australia should proceed on sanctions against South Africa without the support of Margaret Thatcher’s government. Funde urged him to enact sanctions. Clearly, Funde was part of the Australian government’s network for foreign policy decision making. He was considered a veritable diplomatic-person. Anyone who struck at Funde was striking at the Australian state.
In November 1988, it was announced too that the Human Right Commission would host a ‘National Inquiry Into Racist Violence’ after the lobbying efforts of innumerable anti racists, many of whom claimed to be “victims” of National Action violence (sic). The Inquiry was an example of anti racist McCarthyism and ran throughout 1989 whilst the Funde prosecution was incubated. It created the requisite pseudo moral atmosphere for repressive action. I have no doubt the things were linked and I have found one or two such links.
Consider John Brink, an anti apartheid activist whose house was firebombed in Sydney in mid 1984. The National Inquiry Into Racist Violence ‘witnesses’ ascribed that crime to National Action. Brink was originally a South African who had been chairman of the Liberal Party Pretoria Branch and a friend of Albert Luthuli, who had burnt his ‘pass’ on 26 March 1960 when ‘staying in the home of the Brinks His case became a sensation. Soon after, Brink went to prison for 93 days, going on a hunger strike and sharing a cell with Joe Slovo, later head of the South African Communist Party. He was a big fish in anti racism.
Then, there was another émigré, Colin Tatz, who had claimed to be a victim of anti-Semitism in 1940’s Johannesburg. After ‘watching friend after friend after friend go down like ten pin bowling pins on all sorts of extraordinary charges of treason’ (as he explained it) he left for Australia in 1961. In Canberra, Tatz became researcher for a short-lived Committee for Human Rights in South Africa. He sought to convince cabinet ministers that many émigrés deemed ‘communists’ under the South African 1951 Suppression of Communism Act were not communists, and a few such people were later granted entry. In 1984, his house in Sydney was shotgunned. This crime too was ascribed to National Action. Tatz was also a big fish in anti racism.
Essentially, it was a case of blame it on the Kellys. National Action was accused by various anti racists and anti fascists of the Brink and Tatz offences – among others. Eventually in 1989, it became payback time, with powerful forces pushing for a successful prosecution of those involved in the Funde crime. The idea that this crime could have been the work of an odd fellow like Jason Frost, just a bloke out on a lark, would never do. The Funde shooting had to be a dark racist plot and dark racists had to be found.
Of course, National Action did know that Funde had arrived in Australia with government support. He was assisted to arrive in Australia by high profile anti racists who were later very active against National Action in Adelaide.
I rely here (and as I have above) upon the informative article by an anti-nationalist, Peter Limb: The anti-apartheid movements in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. I will freely quote from it, paraphrase and adapt its information.
By 1981, Jim Gale, Irene Gale and others succeeded in transforming Campaign Against Racial Exploitation (CARE) into a pro-ANC body and the national office shifted to Adelaide. CARE emerged as the effective national centre, with the United Nations’ Special Committee on South Africa’s blessing, representing Australia internationally and active in the Asia–Pacific region on anti apartheid matters, hosting also major conferences on Namibia in 1985 and 1989. Its leaders increased pressure on government for an ANC office. Gale, who knew Foreign Minister Hayden through the ALP, bombarded him with pleas for assistance. Canberra was suspicious about linking openly with supposed liberation movements, but lobbying and visits by key ANC leaders, notably Mavis Nhlapo and Andrew Molotsane, swung the case. Sonwabo Edwin (Eddie) Funde arrived in Perth on 5 December 1983 as the ANC’s Chief Representative in Australasia and the Pacific and he opened a mission in Sydney in January 1984. He used the offices of Community Aid Abroad for a while and later took offices at Trades Hall; as early as that year, Funde was able to have some input into draft ALP national policy on South Africa.
Funde worked on a wide front and was successful in building broad networks of support. In his first week in Australia, he met liberal South African emigres and befriended NSW state parliamentarian Maurice Keane. On 10 December the African Liberation Trust Fund, aimed at financially aiding the office, was launched by prominent ALP, church, and union leaders Don Dunstan, Richard Wooton, and Cliff Dolan. By his second week, Funde had visited Melbourne and met ACTU and church leaders, federal and state ALP parliamentarians, and NGOs. Wide media publicity was secured. ANC Support groups came into being in Sydney and Melbourne. The following week Funde met Foreign Affairs officials, who reiterated conditions of acceptance for the opening of the ANC office: the ANC was ‘not granted a special privileged status’, and government would ‘not provide financial assistance’. Funde had to rely on donations from supporters.
Again, we can see the high-powered individuals rallying around Funde. I say again: anyone who struck at Funde was striking at the Australian state.
Eventually, later in the 1980’s, the Australian ANC Support Committee (ANCSC) based in Sydney brought together figures from church, union, women’s, media, business, and legal sectors as well as the ALP and Democrats. Former ACTU leader Cliff Dolan served as president, Helen McCue as secretary. McCue was central, but she was invisible to National Action.
McCue, who began as a United Nations worker oversaw the foundation of Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad (now Union Aid Abroad APHEDA) by the Australian Council of Trade Unions in 1984 and was able to channel funds from unions and the Australian government to agriculture, health, and vocational training projects in many countries in Africa. In other words, the support for ANC terrorism and anti white racism was channeled via non government structures (but with covert support).
Soon after, APHEDA meetings were held with Eddie Funde about how to get assistance for anti South African elements, in particular those refugees in Zambia and Tanzania associated with the so-called liberation movements. APHEDA focussed initially on refugees and liberation movements.
In 1988, after the discussions with Eddie Funde McCue made her first trip to Lusaka where she met with the exiled ANC leadership, in particular President Oliver Tambo and Treasurer-General Thomas Nkobi. With Nkobi, she mapped out a strategy for a program of support to the ANC.
I note that in September 1989, Tambo visited Australia and conferred in detail with Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. Was the Funde prosecution discussed between Evans and Tambo? Undoubtedly, it rated a line or two. The Australian state would prove its credentials by prosecuting a ‘racist leader’ (sic) for anti ANC violence. Yes, of course it was discussed. I was charged with the Funde crime two weeks later.
In March 1990 prior to going to South Africa, McCue suggested to Nkobi that the Australian Government, and in particular Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, would be keen to make a significant gesture of support to the just-released-from-prison Nelson Mandela at the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. McCue recommended the ANC ask for $20m of development assistance to support the so-called transition to democracy. Eddie Funde, Mohammad Tickly, Nkobi and McCue sat down in Lusaka and framed a development request. The Australian Government agreed to this proposal and Gareth Evans was able to make this announcement to Mandela when he first met him.
That took place in October 1990. I was due to face trial then, but the prosecution sought an adjournment lest I fail to get a fair trial, given Mandela’s presence in Australia. Such generosity. But it shows the close linkage of my trial and foreign policy considerations.
The Funde case was part of the rich tapestry of anti racist effort at the time, one organized aspect of it, something which highlighted their strategy. By 1989, there was a plethora of groups, all interwoven and at their peaks, integrated into state action. The nationalist magazine, Audacity, identified a number of anti racist organisations in the years around 1984-5, all of which were linked through to politicians and state players and broad community networks. National Action was alone in discussing anti racism as a community movement which required an activist response.
It has been said by one academic critic that the National Action made a major mistake in targeting the anti-apartheid movement; he said it was tangential to the basic nationalist message of the group and the ensuing struggle sidelined it. I disagree with that assessment. In point of fact, much of Australia’s anti-racism was expressed through the prism of the anti-apartheid movement. While National Action waged many campaigns in the community (chiefly around immigration, refugees and economic nationalist questions) it would invariably be the same gamers at anti apartheid who would organize against the group. In any case, National Action waged struggle against the anti apartheid movement.
Another academic said that National Action had a “considerable intelligence facility”. That was true. It collected considerable material on anti racists and similar dross and certainly identified many involved in the anti South Africa campaign. However, it is also true that it missed totally the shadowy and complex interactions between the anti racist movements and actual highly placed state players. It failed to identify the leaders of the movement at the highest levels and detail the actual support being rendered to the ANC by the state. In that regard, National Action failed to adequately understand the array of forces levied against it in 1988 – 1989, a factor which played a role in the defeat of the group before it could develop a mass influence.
The material advanced here tends to show that the Funde crime existed in a significant context. This too suggests that the verdicts against me will not be surrendered without legal bloodshed.
Endtime
Political trials must preserve their rectitude. They are showy things, where not only are convictions produced to imprison alleged villains, but great moral lessons supposedly demonstrated in action. In my case, the state wanted to show its cleverness and moral position to the public; it had solved a “terrorist” offence organized by a group of thugs who had terrorized Sydney for years, a crime aimed at an anti racist icon. To those of us in the movement of national resistance, we were supposed to become cowed. Our leaders were to be imprisoned (and hopefully broken) and the secret methods of the political police were there in enough relief to teach us how useless were our efforts and how shallow the commitment of some of our troops. The problem, for the organizers of political trials is not simply that the evidence must never come to be challenged, but that the moral quality of the prosecution’s actors never be exposed; they must never be seen as feet-of-clay, crooks, liars and manipulators. One by one, the witness-actors and the organizers of the trial, have fallen.
My task is to push the edifice right over. In New South Wales in the last thirty odd years, there have been a number of political trials – the Ananda Marga Three, the Croatian Six, the Hilton Bomb Trial and my trial. All were flawed exercises involving (in part) the same core actors in the Special Branch apparatus and in the police. All feature odd central witnesses who were paid off in some way or other to testify. The first three have been shattered in fact or in the court of public opinion. It is now my turn.
The troika in my case, Ireland, Funde and Frost, have lost their personal credibility. In the political trial scenario, what they lose, I gain.
I am resolved to move the affair on and break the convictions, not simply in my personal interest, but in the interest of the nationalist movement. For those who still insist I am the guilty one, I look forward at their ranting responses to this article.
