The Jordan Harbinger Show - 761: Bradley Steyn | Undercover with Mandela's Spies Part Two

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Bradley Steyn (@bradley_steyn_) is an expert on risk mitigation, operational support, and racial injustice. He is the co-author of Undercover with Mandela's Spies: The Story of the Boy Who Crossed the Square, a memoir of his time as a double agent working for Nelson Mandela during the dying days of South African Apartheid. [This is part two of a two-part episode. Make sure to check out part one here!]  What We Discuss with Bradley Steyn: Bradley shares his observations as a white kid growing up in Apartheid-era South Africa. How, as a teenager, Bradley bore witness to the brutal Strijdom Square massacre, in which white supremacist Barend Hendrik Strydom calmly took the lives of eight People of Color and injured 16 with a 9mm pistol. The PTSD, nightmares, anger issues, and emotional distress Bradley was forced to cope with in the aftermath of this horrific experience — and still deals with more than three decades later. How Bradley was recruited for undercover duty by the feared security police of the Apartheid government while working as a bouncer at a Pretoria gay bar. What led to Bradley's dedication to the anti-Apartheid struggle and his service as a deep cover double agent within the Department of Intelligence and Security under the directive of Chris Hani's and Nelson Mandela's paramilitary wing, uMkhonto weSizwe. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/761 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course! Miss our interview with Freeway Rick Ross, the crack empire kingpin gone good? Catch up with episode 121: Freeway Rick Ross | Life in the Crack Lane here! Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show. This is about putting humanity first and learning from our mistakes. This precipice that it is with the Black Lives Matter movement that we learn from history and from the mistakes that have been made, elements of it is very reminiscent of apartheid security bureaucracy, if I could say that, from the police unions to the police forces and the way that they profile and handle black people, it's disgusting. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger.

On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists, entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional investigative journalist, former cult member, money laundering, experts, or music mogul. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show, welcome.

If you want to tell your friends about the show, thank you for doing that. Our episode starter packs are a great place to begin. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Topics like technology and futurism, disinformation and cyber warfare, persuasion and influence, investing in financial crimes, and more. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start, or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today is part two with Bradley Stein. If you haven't heard part one, go back and check it out.

It's just a few days ago. Bradley went undercover and was a spy in and from South Africa. Really interesting tale. Let's keep it going here with part two with Bradley Stein. So the taxi wars, this sort of sounds like, okay, it's the only way for a lot of black people in the country at this time to make any money, because it's one of the only sort of enterprises where they can operate. And then rival taxi cartels are beating up passengers and beating up the drivers or the others and even killing them, which is an interesting way to get business. Like all jokes aside, you could be riding in it. Imagine if you're riding in a lift and an Uber driver like cuts you off,

pulls you out of the car, beats your ass and says, don't ever take a lift again, always take an Uber, and then speeds off leaving you like bloodied in the road. That's kind of what we're talking about, right? Absolutely. 100%. And there's like, they're cutting, bombing, stabbing, shooting people on trains because they want them to not take the train

and then take private taxis to raise the profit margin. So again, think you're driving an Uber and they hijack your, bus and they say, don't ever take the bus, take a private, take Uber. Correct. This is crazy. Correct, yeah. What are you doing during this mess? Because you had a job or a role in these kind of situations.

So at that stage, the security police and Major Miller were in bed with the South African Black Taxi Association, SEPTA. And SEPTA had recently just assassinated the head of Codeta, which was a rival taxi organization. And Major Miller needed his asset protected and kept safe. We were tasked with protecting him and

that's when I got shot for the first time. The first time, okay. We got ambushed near the Golden Acre Center in Cape Town. Is that like a mall? Exactly. Exactly. So it's a mall that has a taxi rank outside and we were

driving in a secure convoy to go pick up the head of Saptor's daughter and we came under gunfire. But, you know, we hadn't received our R1 automatic rifles. We only had nine mills and 38s revolvers and... So handguns. Handguns with us. And we came into a contact situation and we lost my driver. My driver was shot. I took the principal, pulled him out of the... vehicle to get him into our backup vehicle and we were hiding behind the will well. We were taking fire from an AK-47.

So note yourself, never go to a gun battle against an AK-47 with a pistol. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the knife and the gunfight almost. Exactly. So my client tried to jump up, run away. He just panicked. He panicked. I had to grab him. I had a pistol whip him, hit him on the back of the head.

tell him to sit down. I had to sit on top of him. I still remember he ended up pissing his pants because of a giant wet patch. It was a terrifying situation, but we managed to get out. And then when we got back to a safe house, I remember my fingers were sticking together and I swore it some blood on my hands. And I looked up and I had part of a round lodged into my bicep. So it missed my hot only by a few inches. Wow. Yeah, that was pretty scary. So that was still working

for Major Andy Miller. After that, he instructed us to go and extract and go and kidnap or go and grab this guy. Right. Called Stephen Kamala. We'll get there

in a second. Okay. There is, by the way, for those who are listening, there is a twist in this plot. I'm not just interviewing terrible people now. you have a redemption. You say in the book, I can find multiple ways to justify it if I choose, but the fact is that project group, your thug bodyguard group,

was doing the donkey work of an organization that embraced racist, psychotic killers. So this is like, you're doing bad stuff, but you're still kind of a lost soul. And then soon after, Nelson Mandela gets out of prison, he's the ANC leader. A lot of people watching probably are too young to know, which is interesting, and a lot of people are very aware of who that is,

largely seen as a freedom fighter in South Africa. Tell me how you meet this guy, Kumalo. So Major Andy Miller, your boss in the Secret Police. Our boss in the security police gives us a dossier. Inside of this dossier is a profile of a guy called Stephen Kumalo, which is an alias. Stephen Kamalo is a highly trained operative of South African descent. he's had his training done by the KGB in Moscow.

He's currently in Lusaka, where all military operations take place outside South Africa. Is that in Angola? Zambia. Zambia, okay. So our orders are to try and track him down, find him, bring him in, and gather information with him. And figure out what the African National Congress's new push is,

because he's a highly placed secret asset. And, you know, he's highly placed with the KGB or with the former KGB. And he ends up, funnily enough, crossing a river and coming into South Africa with a pocketful of rough diamonds. We figure out where he is. We go kick the door down. the whole shack falls down as we kick the door down. So this is like made out of corrugated metals. Exactly.

It's a little shack, like a shanty town type. Exactly. It's made out of old bullboards and road signs and it's a shanty town shack. Kick the door down. His wife tries to scratch my eyes out. We grab him. There's a kid standing outside the door that hears the commotion with a panga that wants to try and... What's out of a machete?

A machete, exactly. You know, I remember shouting, fuck off because, you know, she's a young kid. Nobody needed to die that day. We just needed to get him in the van and take him to a safe house an hour north of Pretoria in a place called Wombards on a rural farm that the security police used for interrogations. So we grabbed him, we took him, he's sitting at a table, I'm waiting for Neil the beer to come into the office and I'm standing against the wall with my arms crossed and he said, Baba, I can see you. you're a big guy, you're a strong guy, I can see you can hurt me, I can see you want to hurt me,

you want to inflict pain on me. But before you do that, I want to tell you about the African National Congress's Freedom Charter and what it stands for, and that it includes you and your tribe because we see the white South Africans and the Afrikaners as part of one of the African tribes now. So the Freedom Charter stands for all South Africans. Something resonated within him. I don't know if it was, he reminded me of kind eyes, but all of a sudden the fog and all this confusion in my, from the PTSD from being so angry sort of. It was my coming to Jesus moment or when the penny dropped.

And I realized that, you know, this is not about the, for me it's never really been black danger. Because I grew up in an incredible liberal family. For me, it was about the communist threat, the Roi-Ghafar, red danger. And all of a sudden, my whole mindset changed. And I stepped out and I said to Neil, Neil, just come and listen to this for a second. And he said, you're not going soft on me, right? And I said, no, we need to be smart here. You need to come and listen to this.

And he told Neil as well. He said, our freedom charter is there to protect all South Africans. And that was a very, very powerful statement. And it's a very powerful document. And Neil and I stepped out again and we were like, what is happening here? And, you know, we were incredibly moved by the situation. So we decided to not beat him up, not torture him, not hurt him. I remember taking a knife and cutting myself and taking the blood and putting it on Kumalo's face.

we took some photos so that we could show the major. And we told the major that we had secured him as an asset for us and for the security police so that he would now become our informant and he would give us information. Neil and I at that stage decided that we would stay in communication with him, that we would have a weekly time that we would call him at an allocated pay phone and check in with each other. And if we needed to meet, we could meet covertly somewhere.

But in essence, that's when Neil and I decided to switch and become double agents. By the way, Afrikaans, sounds a little bit like you speak German, but you're just really drunk and everything is slurring.

Can you understand a little bit of German? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I can't quite a Dutch for speak, but not so few. Yeah, it's... I can speak a little bit of German, but not too much. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it sounds a little bit. But it's a Dutch, it's an ancient Dutch dialect. Yeah. Okay. So you meet him by kidnapping him. You met me by punching me in the face. I'm starting to wonder if this is how you make all of your friends. How did you meet your wife?

Did you run her over with your car? No, I picked her up in a bar. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, so now you're a double agent. In essence, yes. So this was an incredible stressful time in my life because, you know, if Major Miller found out or the security police found out,

it'd be very easy for them to put a nine muller back behind my ear and squeeze the trigger and kill us. Life is very cheap in Africa. You know, that could happen like that. And I wouldn't even know. I wouldn't even see it coming. So, you know, we had to play a very careful, balanced operation. Because every time we had come into contact with Major Miller now, You know, this guy was a highly trained intelligence operative.

You know, he could smell a rat a mile away. So, you know, we had to be incredibly careful. We had to make sure and rehearse everything before we said anything to him to make sure that we don't get caught in a lie. Because then it's tickets. He just, you know, like I said, he'd kill us. So he sent us on another op and he told us. And this made the stress even more because we thought he did this on purpose.

So there was a guy that he had told us to get into business with earlier, a guy that ran the Cape Flats and his name was Cyril Beaker. He is a very well-known guy in South Africa in the underground, in the underworld in South Africa. And the Cape Flats are like a dangerous area. A very dangerous area, yeah. Now, this guy basically ran a lot of the Cape Flats. He ran Cape Town for many years. He was assassinated a few years ago on a drive-by with the people that killed him

were sitting on the back of a motorbike, drove past him. I think they riddled the car with the Uzi and killed him. He's Serbian bodyguard at the time survived. But anyway, so Cyril was our dog handler, security partner. get us intel from the Cape Flats, etc. So we were told to go and do surveillance on a guy that had just done seven years on Robin Island for terrorism. Is that like an Alcatraz type place?

Exactly. Okay. 100%. So Robin Island is a maximum security prison just off the coast of Cape Town. And it sits in the shadow of Table Mountain, which is in the city of Cape Town. Is it still a prison? It's a museum now. Oh, okay.

So we went to. and did this surveillance operation in Cape Town in C-point, and we were sitting across the road. We saw these two guys, these two black guys, sitting across the road. I remember the one guy had a few fingers missing. There was a rumor that he lost these fingers building bombs. But, you know, these are very dangerous guys.

And another guy, Andre Lincoln was sitting there as well. All of a sudden, you know, they were sitting under this canopy of umbrellas, And then we saw this other guy walking towards them. And I recognized the gate of this guy and the body language of this guy. And as soon as he sat down and his head dropped from below the umbrellas, we saw it was Cyril. Our partner. Dog handler. Yeah.

Our dog handler. Our security. Our muscle, our hit man on the Cape Flats. So he sat down with these two A&C terrorists. And we were like, what the fuck is major militants? Sorry. Yeah, it's okay. What is Major Miller doing here?

Is he trying to set us up? Is he trying to get us killed? Does he know what's going on? Does he know what's happening? So now we need to get off the axe because if he makes us, well, we did. He'll kill us. Cyril will. Cyril will.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because he knows that we work for the security police. Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. But he's working with the. A and C.

The enemy, your enemy at that time. Exactly. So he doesn't know that you know that he's your enemy. Exactly. Okay, right. But if he sees you, then the jig is up and he'll shoot you or whatever. Exactly. You know, if your listeners know any South Africans and, you know, they aren't, they can

ask anybody about Cyril Beaker. He was one of the most notorious and dangerous people from South Africa. So, you know, we had to get off the X. We got out of there. We didn't panic, but we realized that, you know, this is a very, very dangerous game. We're playing out, you know, do we just get the hell out of there and go to England or, you know, come to the States or, you know, just is it too hot? But, you know, we wanted to sit it out for a while. So then Stephen Kamalo calls us and he says, okay, we need you to come and meet your new comrades and your new handlers in the

A&C and we said, okay, fine. I wonder who it's going to be. So we go to a wimpy bar, a wimpy restaurant. Is it like a wimpy place? Yeah. I think we have that here. Wimpy burger. I think so, yeah.

It's like a little burger joint. As soon as we get to the burger joint and we're about to walk through the door, I see those two A&C terrorists sitting at the table. I pull my nine-mill and Stephen Cormullo says, no, those are your comrades. Those are your new commanders. I was terrified. I thought this was set up and we were going to get taken out. Yikes.

So we sat at the table and obviously there was massive mistrust between all of us. You know, these guys, Jeremy had just done seven years hard time on Robin Island with Nelson Mandela, but Nelson Mandela was now in a different prison. Mandela hasn't been released yet at this stage. Oh, okay. Still not out. Yeah, sorry. At this stage, Mandela was not out yet.

So what ended up happening was is that, you know, we knew that we had to build trust with these guys. And now it was crisis time because I beg your part of, Mandela was. He was. Okay, I was going to say,

you wrote the book wrong, but I'm not going to tell you that later. No, no, no, no. Okay, I get it. Yeah, yeah, my bad. He was out already. Got it. And there was a sense

that the African National Congress was going to come into power and that the political landscape in South Africa was going to change. So the ANC's Department of Intelligence and Security, DIS, under Mekwantau, Siz, where the spear of the nation, the military wing, that's who we fell under now. So now we were double agents working for Mandela spy team. And their biggest priority right now was to try and figure out what they're doing for from a crisis damage control point of view. At the same time, Major Miller is also sending us to go clean up

and do damage control because there was a guy called Eugene de Kock who had a play, they call him prime evil. He was part of another security police intelligence, a unit similar to project group that was on a place called Flut Blas, where the Lecern, the grass grew this high because of the dismembered body parts that they used to plow into the fields. A very brutal guy and operational team. We had to go and take care of one of Eugene de Cox guys

because he was starting to speak to the Americans. And Miller heard about this, spoke to the Cox. So it was chaos within the intelligence community at that stage. So these like units are killing each other all the time. People are starting to panic. They're trying to sell stuff. They're trying to figure out, can we move to the United States? Can we go here?

Can we go there? Because the United States and their Nazi movement here were helping fund a lot of the organizations like World apartheid movement, Wham, etc. So, you know, there were alliances all over the place. What a mess. And this is what we call the Dirty War. So this is what I referred to in the book.

is the dirty wall, where we needed to go in and clean up. And one of the things they wanted us to do was get all and every bit of intel that we could from Major Miller's office. So Major Miller was also a bit of a piscat. He loved to drink. You know, he had the special draw and he had this bottle in his drawer. And I happened to see where he hit a key once. And we managed to break into his office. get this key and get into this filing cabinet. Okay. We get into this filing cabinet and we find a dossier within this filing cabinet of who are the African National Congress, Mandela's top guys,

that are assets of the National Party government. So you find out other spies. So we find out who the double agents are within the ANC. So we take this file and we make copies of it. We get out of there, we go and we start looking through this file. But this, the head of, he claims he's the head of military intelligence for the African National Congress, but he's not the head of military intelligence. But he's a high ranking official within the African National Congress.

This is going to put everybody's lives at danger and everybody at risk. So that brought us a massive amount of trust and friendship. with our two new handlers within the ANC. Because you just struck gold. We literally struck gold. Figuratively, literally. Figuratively, exactly. But now this entail is incredibly dangerous and incredibly harmful.

My publishers want to leave this part out of the book. Okay. But it's very important for me to say this at the precipice of where we are as a nation, South Africa, today. Because one of the people that's name was on this list was Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa, who was within the intelligence community in the South African Revolution. He was an Ascari, an impimpi, a double agent.

Really? The reason South Africa is burning today is because of him. So the world needs to know. that this man had sold his people out a long, long time ago already. He's a charmer, he's incredibly charismatic. He's a brilliant strategist. He became a president in South Africa. But, you know, it's sad for me all these years later to sort of see what happened in this revolution of these freedom fighters in South Africa

because all these years later, we see that the dream that Medeba had, that Nelson Mandela had of a free and fair society, where we treat each other with dignity, is not where we are in South Africa today. And that is because of the likes of Jacob Zuma and the damage he has created in the country. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show

with our guest, Bradley Stein. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these folks for the show, it's because of my network, and I don't like doing the schmoozy, gross, yuck it up thing. I really want to do things in a non-cringe down-to-earthaway, and I'm teaching you how to do the same thing in our course, which is also free, over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. It's all just practical exercises that'll make you a better connector, a better colleague,

a better peer, a better friend, takes less than six minutes a day. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. So, hey, come join us. You'll be in smart company. You can find the course at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And now, back to Bradley Stein. How did he end up not getting arrested or getting the boot out of the ANC? Like if there were documents say, hey, this guy's a double agent,

how come he made it this far? Because Jeremy Beery and Andre Lincoln gave this intelligence to our intelligence head, which was commander, comrade, Jonah Klala, who's unfortunately passed on now. But they decided at that stage it was best to not let anybody know about this. Oh, man. What a frigging guess. I know.

So it's a massive failure within the use of effective and actionable intelligence. And South Africa is burning today because of this. So that's one of the reasons why I want. to go back to my country and that's one of the reasons why I want to go stand side by side with General Jeremy Vieri and Andre Lincoln and Neil de Beer

and they fight against corruption and they fight against state capture in South Africa because this is not what the Freedom Charter set out for us and said it was going to set out for us. These guys were at the

tip of the spear of the Assegai, fighting for people's fundamental human rights, the likes of Chris Harni, Al-Shay Guevira, were so important to fighting for our people. And yet, these people were all pushed to the side. And the likes of Jacob Zuma came in and turned our country upside down. has promoted corruption, has been involved in cronyism and tenders and tenders, tenders meaning a government tenders giving massive government contracts to friends, families, and other corrupt people within the party. So this beautiful dream that we had of the Rainbow Nation, you know,

this beautiful kumbaya moment if you've seen Invictus of Morgan Freeman playing Mandela, and it's this great energy behind this is the hopes and the dreams which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can aspire to, you know, was completely destroyed by the likes of Jacob Zuma, who has now gone and destroyed our country. So it's, the world needs to know about this. Definitely. I mean, you say, Comrade and, and, you say, and things like that. Would you describe yourself as a communist or socialist? No, but that's, I have socialist ideals from the point of view of, I'm more like a Bernie Sanders type of ideals where, you know,

I want to place humanity first, more of a Trotskyan ideal, where it would have worked out better for the people of South Africa that were treat it so badly for hundreds and hundreds of years to at least give them a fair step up, giving them medical, giving them housing, giving them food, you know, just basic fundamental rights. I'm not saying that, you know, we need to take, make the Reserve Bank a peristatal, for instance. I'm not saying that communist or socialist ideals work 100%, but there are. elements to them where it serves humanity in a good way. What do you think about this farm seizures where they're sort of taking away the land from the white farmers and, I don't know, what are

they giving it, redistributing it? You're asking the good questions, Jordan, because those are really good questions. It's a very complicated dynamic because sure, the Dutch settlers came in and started farming and taking land to farm, etc. and finding opportunities, etc. But the wrong people are fighting today and wanting to get that land back because the land belonged to the Khoisan people, the Krikwa people, the indigenous people of South Africa.

The other tribes, you know, came from different places across Africa and migrated down south. You know, so it's, I just really, disappointed in how our beloved ANC, which I'm still a member of to this day, has let our people down and let the people of South Africa down because these guys that were on the ground fighting for our freedoms were, like I said, pushed aside and the people that were in exile eating lobster and caviar and London and raising money and doing good stuff, but just came back to

South Africa. And we're so used to that lavish lifestyle and, you know, have placed their needs before the needs of a poorest of people in South Africa. I need to just touch on how do these land seizures, etc., work and farm murders work, etc. And this is a very personal thing to me because when I was in South Africa with Annie Kastner and Adrian Hall who are documentary filmmakers documenting my story. My brother-in-law was murdered on our family farm. I made this little video afterwards and I showed this video of our beautiful farm and I said, this is a beautiful country, our beloved South Africa, but the reality is that our ANC government has failed to protect our people. And they really have. So now it's time that we really need to go and get control of the

situation. We need to make sure that our police protect our citizens. We need to make sure that our national security capabilities are of standard and, you know, so that we can protect our people, so that we can protect our tourists when they come to the country. Because I would love to go to South Africa, but I'm also like, is this a good idea? I'm a little bit more gutsy than my wife, obviously. It's like, it looks amazing. My friends tell me it's amazing. Even the non-South Africans, the ones that go on their tour, but I'm like, you know, they got beaches and places that don't have riots right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. And people have said to me, why would you take your family? Why would you go move back to this country? This precipice when this country,

on fire and it's burning currently in certain regions. For instance, Kwa Zulu Natal and Hautein, which is near the capital. It's because of the instigations by Jacob Zuma and people within the captured side of the African National Congress. So there's still hope for South Africa, but, you know, we need to go and, we need to go and fix it. shout out to our listeners. We have listeners in KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng or Chaoteng. Because I see it on there and I'm on our downloads and I'm always like,

oh, where are these places? Who's listening to us in these places? Cape Town, yeah, sure. Cape Town for sure, Gilbert for sure. But I don't know about those other places I'd never heard of. All right, so I want to get back to the story because there's even more interesting stuff here before we wrap. But you come back, you're copying these documents,

you find these intelligence documents and you come across a binder full of all the, basically all the bad shit you guys did, but none of the police cover, right? So they were going to set you up, it sounds like. Correct. So, you know, in essence, what we think Major Miller was doing was keeping this as he's ace up his sleeve in case, things went tits up, and he needed to throw us under the bus. Any brilliant strategists in the intelligence arena would use this form of tradecraft. Yeah.

But it was really concerning, but, you know, we managed to take it and replace it with pages from a telephone book. Do you think he noticed? Eventually, he did. And, you know, I think that's when, you know, ultimately we were chased out of the country and they try to kill us. Well, we'll get there in a second. So the ANC takes over, Mandela's inaugurated. Now your ANC friends who used to be state enemies are promoted or installed. in the security apparatus, which must have been a mess, right?

Because you got these apartheid old guard, and then in the office down the hall, you've got the guy they were chasing for 20 years who came back from Zambia or London or whatever, and they're in the same office on the same floor of sharing a secretary. That just, I don't understand how that would have worked. That's got to be fairly complex.

But your intelligence leads to foiling an assassination plot. So actually, that's before the inauguration, yes. So what Major Miller instructed... us to do was to take that cachet of weapons that we have found and give it to Wham, wildapartheid movement, you know, which is, again, the unit that is used for political assassinations and killings, etc. We go back to our handlers, Stephen Kumalo, Jeremy Vieri and Andre Lincoln, and ultimately they went to Jonah Klala and told them that, you know, this is the instructions, what should we do? Because I was terrified now because,

you know, these are going to go from somebody else to somebody else who's probably even more evil. You know, these guys were doing it for liberation and for freedom. These people are just doing it for complete hatred and they had an evil agenda. Not that I'm justifying, shooting a plane out of a sky, but, you know, so we came up with a plan to, you know, we came up with a plan to secretly mark certain weapons that we would hand over to them that would work. The others we kept aside, we had removed the firing pins, we had disassembled a lot of the components of it. So they told us to take it up to this farming Zierist, which is in this...

What's a Zierist? Like a farm? Sorry, Zerest is a town, a farming community in the beautiful Citrus Valley. this is where Quist Familin the head of WAM operated out of you know he had this

beautiful German shepherd that he named Blondie after out of Hecla's dog And you know Weird sandboys Yeah exactly These guys were Radicalized right wing

militant guys And that operated With the likes of The Aster Berghada Which is the Iron Brigade Of the AWB So we hand these weapons over to them, et cetera. You know, they like me.

We get on very well. There's a guy that was there, a guy by the name of Keith, Keith Conway, who I actually knew previously, and he knew of me because of the security work in the Cape and, you know, the cloak, well, the thuggery, etc., of project group. So Keith and I got on very well. Quist for Mieland, who Keith worked for, put a bug in his ear and said, hey, Bradley's a great asset. Why don't we use him?

So that's how I ended up infiltrating the world apartheid movement, and I ended up staying with them for about two years. Jeez. No, sorry, just over a year, rather. So basically, you're a thug who's undercover with the security branch police, who's also undercover as a double agent with the DIS, who's now an undercover agent with the World Apartight Movement. Well, they asked me to infiltrate the World Aramartite movement.

Right, right. But I'm just saying you have like three covered. Yeah. You know, it was a nightmare. Yeah. You know, it was incredibly stressful. And I also thrived on it. I thrived on the rush of the danger.

And it was a very stressful time, like I said. But, you know, I'm glad I was there. We found out about the poisoning plot for the township. We managed to avoid that happening. You know, we found out that just by chance that they were building a homemade rifle, sniper's rifle. I didn't know what it was for initially, but my mother had given me this Walkman cassette playing. I used to listen to my classical music or opera, whatever. I used to love all different types of music.

But what I'd use that cassette for was I'd let the music play and then I would tape my field notes into the recording of the tape recorder. For instance, they're building a rifle. They're planning a assassination. I don't know who it is yet. And then I'd put it in a dead drop. At that stage, Cyril Biko was across the border in Botswana, which is a different African country. right next to South Africa, and he'd come across the border

in the middle of the night, grab the cassette, and they would go and play the cassette, and that's how it would fill them in. I ended up, did finding out that they were planning to assassinate Mandela at his inauguration. Wow.

Yeah, so I gave that intel to Andre Lincoln, and Andre Lincoln and Jeremy Vieri, with our team, managed to thwart the assassination of Mandela at his inauguration. Wow. How did they do that just by? Oh, no, it was a hunt down to the minute.

You know, they found a sniper rifle in the security policeman's desk. He was in the government's security police and he had credentials to go to the inauguration. And that's why we had that ballistic bulletproof glass around Mediba, around Mandela at his inauguration. Yeah, I mean, you would have to, that's wild. That's a very close call. Yeah, no, but pretty much after that, I got a encrypted, well, we call it encrypted just because, you know, I got a covert message that I needed to go and meet with Andre Lincoln.

Right. And just like you said, he was now a brigadier in the South African police. He was appointed personally by Nelson Mandela. And he told me that Andy Miller, Major Miller, had found out that it was us that have sabotaged a few of these projects, that they wanted to take us out. And that they had actually got the young Americans, which is a gang, which is a notorious, very dangerous gang,

out of Polesmore Prison, which is the maximum security prison in Cape Town, to put a head out on us, on myself and Neil DeBear. So Neil DeBeer and I were, you know, in the crosses now and we had to get out of there. And the ANC helped us get out of the country and going to exile. So while these other comrades were coming back

from all these places in New York and London and Oslo, etc., we were passing each other like ships. So they were coming back from exile, and we just had to get the hell out of there. This is the Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest, Bradley Stein. We'll be right back. If you like this episode of the show, please do what other considerate listeners do, which is take a moment, take a look at the deals page,

see if you can support any of our sponsors. It helps keep the lights on around here. All of the deals, all the codes, all the special URLs. They're all in one place, Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals, or just go to the homepage and search for any sponsor using the search box on the website. That'll pop the code right up. And I really appreciate it in advance. It really does keep us going

and make it possible to continue creating these episodes week after week. Now, for the rest of my conversation with Bradley Stein. I think it's an interesting note that the most dangerous people and one of the most dangerous countries

during the most dangerous time are called the Americans. Just going to leave that there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, who's the most dangerous person in South Africa? Oh, these Americans. Well, there's another gang as well

and they called the sexy boys. That's a ridiculous name for me. No, but it's inside. It's... They got a branding issue. YouTube Cape Flats, gangsters. You'll see all these characters. I will definitely do that.

So last five minutes here, you almost got killed on the way out of the country. I mean, it's like this is like the part of the movie. That's the most exciting chase scene, you know. Yeah. Well, when I saw the guy pull up next to us and smiling, and I saw he's grilled with these teeth. And the next thing I saw, a desert eagle

pistol, a glimpse out of the corner of my eye, I thought that's the tickets, we did. These guys were going to kill us. And then I couldn't get my gun. My gun was stuck in my holster because I didn't have a combat,

hammer on my pistol instead. It's not a hammer got snagged. Hammer got snagged. And, yeah, saw my life flashed by me a few times. But, you know, one thing I do want to say, Jordan, is that in my business,

on my former business, you know, we don't talk about tradecraft, we don't talk about secrets, we don't talk about this stuff because there's a silent oath that we take as intelligence professionals and we don't talk about this stuff. But the story of these brave heroes, the likes of Jeremy Vieri and Andre Lincoln is the main reason why I decided to write this book can tell the story was because these guys are the unsung heroes of the liberation movement in South Africa, and today they're being marginalized and thrown to the wolves. Major General Vieri was a major general in the South African police up until a week ago, but because he's uncovering massive amounts of corruption within the South African government, as has a

Andre Lincoln, the captured corrupt part of the A&C, are so scared of them that they're just getting rid of them and throwing them under the bus. When you made it out of South Africa, there's a kind of an exciting scene in the book, and I'll let people maybe read the book to get this, but you basically run into a pub and escape by boat, and then you end up getting smuggled into Swaziland,

which is this weird landlocked country on your way out. I mean, it's just the whole thing reads like a spy-nob. in many ways, and I'm excited to see what you end up doing with it. So you're moving back there, which should be interesting. Gutsy move, man. Very pedestrian life you've lived. You might want to try breaking the mold sometime, you know? Yeah, maybe I should...

Not a lot of excitement. Yeah, maybe I should move up, Rathus move up here to the Bay Area and get a techie job or something. Yeah. Well, there's plenty of action around here now, unfortunately, as well. Not quite like South Africa, but thank you so much for coming on the show, man, and telling your story. Absolutely. I'm blessed to be in the situation to be able to tell the story. And like I said, this is about putting humanity first and learning from our mistakes. It's very, very

important that the United States at this precipice that it is with the Black Lives Matter movement that we learn from history and from the mistakes that have been made. it's very important because what I've seen happen here in the United States in the years that I've been here now, you know, is very reminiscent, elements of it is very reminiscent of apartheid security bureaucracy, if I could say that, from the police unions to the police forces and the way that they profile and handle black people. It's disgusting. So I don't know if you know. I was a. a Black Lives Matter March.

Yeah, you sent me a text telling me how you lost one of years. Well, so you're at a Black Lives Matter March. And what happened? So I was going to take my daughter to Black Lives Matter March, which happened in 2020, right? Yeah. Well, just did you have a mask on? That's the question, right? Yes, I did have a mask.

Okay. Yeah, so in 2020, I went to the Los Angeles Black Lives Matter March. going to take my daughter because I said to her, it's very important that we fight racism because we had just seen what happened to George Floyd and him getting the life squeezed out of him. So we were making posters and then at the very last minute, something in my gut said, don't take your kid. I ended up going to this Black Lives Matter March at Fairfax and third near the Grove in L.A. I basically, witnessed a guy called

Cedric Samson, who's the organizer in L.A. getting the life beat out of him. He got beat up and it just agitated the whole crowd. LAPD just started beating up people. And I was standing there. I was trying to reason with them saying, calm down, you know, just relax. You know, this is excessive.

You guys don't have to be so violent. They were literally beating that. hell out of people and I can send you a clip and show you. What I ended up happening is a black lady fell over and fell into this hedge in the Trader Joe's parking lot and they just started beating her up and climbing into her with batons. I couldn't stomach it anymore so I went in and I picked her up and I lifted her over a hedge and some other people pulled her over the hedge. I turned around and then I got hit over the chest. So I went back in. to the crowd.

And then it calmed down a little bit. And then I saw another chap walking by, black guy again, and he was on his cell phone. He had a big straw hat. And he was just walking by and they just started beating the hell out of him for no reason at all.

I leaned forward. I lunged forward. And I ended up getting shot with a rubber bullet. And I got shot in the genitalia and I ended up getting rushed to see the sign. and I ended up losing 45% of my left testicle.

Jeez, good thing you already have your kids. Exactly. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but... That's nasty. What good is half a testicle, though? Why not you take the whole thing out? Yeah, well, they had to, you know,

it had ruptured. The nerve endings were sticking out, so they had to fuse the nerve endings, and then sutured my testicle, and then suture up my scrotum. So, good, God. So how about, We leave, leave it at that.

Who's hungry? I'm hungry. You want to get some lunch? Let's get some lunch. Let's get some watcher. Yeah. Now, I've got some thoughts on this episode, but before we get into that,

here's what you should check out next on the Jordan Harbinger show. Tell me about the neighborhood where you grew up. South Central Massachusetts. Yeah. Well, most people play the game, Grand Theft Auto. Yeah.

So I'm sitting on the porch, and I don't know what I'm going to do, and my partner calls me, and he's like, man, I got the new thing. And it was cocaine. cocaine was really, really expensive then. Yeah. You know, a gram of cocaine back then was like $375.

Wow. So it was dozens of times more expensive back then than it is now. Like 300 times. Wow. And it's also the most expensive thing that you can fit in your hand. It costs that much money probably. Maybe you have watched. Yeah, absolutely.

At that time, they said cocaine was more expensive than gold. How much money are you talking about here? I probably was making about $55,000 off of a kilo. I think he made up around a billion dollars in the age. in LA. That's what I heard on the documentary. For two years, I made like $600 million. Not profit for me, but money that went through my hands. Before I started making a million every day, we was making $500 every day.

Before we were making $500. We made $400. Before he was making $4, we made $100. So you scaled up to a million dollars a day? Yeah, yeah. I had days that I went through $3 million in one day. How are you even counting that much money? Oh, you have money counters. Yeah. And you have a team of girls that sit there.

and they count money all day. You know, you have a house, and this house would have, like, a slot in the door, and people would just come in and drop duffel bags through the door. So I wanted to know what was the difference between real business and the cocaine business. And what did you find? There's none. For more of Freeway Rick's story as one of the biggest drug dealers of all time, including his ties to the CIA, check out episode 121 of the Jordan Harbinger show.

All right, like I told you, crazy amount of stories here. We had to sit on this interview for something like, I think it's even been over a year just because of security concerns and all these other crazy things going on over in his neck of the woods. He had to build a fence around his house. He had to get an alarm system. He had to build different government connections and make sure that his network in South Africa was solidified once again because he has since moved back down there. Just a really, I would say, kind of a gutsy move moving back to the country after coming out with this kind of stuff. I mean, It's just a massive, massive deal that the president of South Africa was actually a double agent for the apartheid regime.

First of all, that's massive. He's never said that anywhere else yet. So if you're in the media, you want more information on this. We can definitely make that happen. And I don't know if y'all remember this, but there was a news story a few years ago about a man in Los Angeles getting shot in the balls by LAPD with a pepper spray gun or something like that. He lost one of his testicles. Some y'all may have seen that on the news. That was Bradley Stein. He was in the front of the protests. The LAPD shot him in the balls.

So yeah, maybe you've heard of this guy before for all the wrong reasons. And we call him lefty now. No, we don't do that. But I would if I had the guts to do that. But remember, we did meet when he punched me in the face. And I'm not super keen on reliving that experience. But regardless of how many testicles the man has, he did spend his time with us on the show. And we thank him for that. Links to all things, Bradley Stein will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. transcripts are in the show notes videos are up on youtube advertisers deals discount codes that help support the show are all at jordan harbinger.com slash deals please consider supporting those who support this show i'm at jordan harbinger on twitter and instagram you can also connect with me on lincoln i find less kooky people tend to use lincoln these days i'm also teaching you how to connect with great people

and manage relationships using the same system software and tiny habits that i use every single day that's our six-minute networking course that course is free it's over a Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I want to teach you how to dig the well before you get thirsty. Build those relationships before you need them, not spend a ton of time doing it, not do it in a gross way. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to that course. Come join us.

You'll be in smart company. This show is created in association with Podcast 1. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. If you know somebody who loves wild stories like this is interested in South Africa, definitely share this episode with them. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show

with those you care about. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show, you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way.

Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not. The through line is always the same. Smart ideas you can actually use in real life. Something you should know has been featured in Apple's shows we love, and it's got thousands of five-star reviews because it's consistently interesting.

So if you want another show that scratches that I want to understand how people in the world really work, itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.