One of the outstanding mysteries of the twentieth century, and one
with huge political resonance, is the death of Dag Hammarskjold and
his UN team in a plane crash in central Africa in 1961. Just minutes
after midnight, his aircraft plunged into thick forest in the British
colony of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), abruptly ending his mission to
bring peace to the Congo. Across the world, many suspected sabotage,
accusing the multi-nationals and the governments of Britain, Belgium,
the USA and South Africa of involvement in the disaster. These
suspicions have never gone away. British High Commissioner Lord Alport
was waiting at the airport when the aircraft crashed nearby. He
bizarrely insisted to the airport management that Hammarskjold had
flown elsewhere - even though his aircraft was reported overhead. This
postponed a search for so long that the wreckage of the plane was not
found for fifteen hours. White mercenaries were at the airport that
night too, including the South African pilot Jerry Puren, whose
bombing of Congolese villages led, in his own words, to 'flaming huts
...destruction and death'. These soldiers of fortune were backed by
Sir Roy Welensky, Prime Minister of the Rhodesian Federation, who was
ready to stop at nothing to maintain white rule and thought the United
Nations was synonymous with the Nazis. The Rhodesian government
conducted an official inquiry, which blamed pilot error. But as this
book will show, it was a massive cover-up that suppressed and
dismissed a mass of crucial evidence, especially that of African
eye-witnesses. A subsequent UN inquiry was unable to rule out foul
play - but had no access to the evidence to show how and why. Now, for
the first time, this story can be told. Who Killed Hammarskjold
follows the author on her intriguing and often frightening journey of
research to Zambia, South Africa, the USA, Sweden, Norway, Britain,
France and Belgium, where she unearthed a mass of new and hitherto
secret documentary and photographic evidence. At the heart of this
book is Hammarskjold himself - a courageous and complex idealist, who
sought to shield the newly-independent nations of the world from the
predatory instincts of the Great Powers. It reveals that the conflict
in the Congo was driven not so much by internal divisions, as by the
Cold War and by the West's determination to keep real power from the
hands of the post-colonial governments of Africa. It shows, too, that
the British settlers of Rhodesia would maintain white minority rule at
all costs.
Les mer
The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780190257637
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter