The Wonga Coup (35 page)

Calil's version of events sounded less than convincing and Mann repeatedly contradicted it. It failed to explain why those involved endured the enormous logistical inconvenience, twice, of having some one hundred people travel at the same time, separately from the Canary Islands and from southern Africa, in secret, if the intention was merely to gather somewhere safe for more training and preparation. Nor did it explain why rumours of a coup were rife in Malabo itself and why Moto had boasted that his takeover was imminent. Nor was it clear why du Toit had planned to be at Malabo airport on the night when Mann and the others were on the move.

With Mann back in Britain and the South African plotters also back home, a few questions remained about the Wonga Coup. For those interested in international politics, a burning question is whether more light might be shed by Mann and others on the role of various countries – notably Spain, the United States, South Africa and Britain – in supporting Mann's coup attempt. The Spanish seemed most active in support of the plot: Mann said that he expected that, if the coup succeeded, the Spanish would offer de facto diplomatic recognition to the new government within twenty-four hours and 3,000 Spanish Guardia Civil would be placed at his disposal. The South
Africans, too, says Mann, knew about his plot and led him to believe that they supported it.

Next was the question of whether Scotland Yard had enough evidence for an anti-terrorism prosecution to be launched in Britain against those who backed Mann. Although Mann had repeatedly said in Equatorial Guinea that he would serve as a witness, it remained to be seen whether he would stick to that line back in Britain. In any case, Mann's testimony alone would probably not be sufficient for such a case to succeed, so prosecutions would depend on what other compelling evidence could be shown in court.

Last was the question of what Mann would do next. In the month after his return, aside from issuing a few pictures and anodyne statements, he kept quiet. Rumours swirled that he was writing a book, working on a film script, that he had accepted hush money from powerful sources or that he feared for his life. In one interview just before his release he had admitted that ‘there are probably some people around who would be quite happy to hear that I'd died. And so security is an issue.'

Does Mann regret the whole affair? He has said that he was wrong to push ahead in March 2004, once he realised that it was almost certainly compromised. He thought that there was a good chance that he, and presumably many others, would be killed. But he says that he lacked the ‘moral courage' or the ‘strength' to call off the plot at the last minute. He has also sounded, at times, like a spokesman for Obiang, saying that the old despot is ‘benevolent' and that he is sorry now for trying to depose or kill him. Yet, in all, he sounds like a man who is sorry that he failed, and he regrets the pain that followed. But that is not quite the same as conceding that it was wrong to try in the first place.

Many would continue to sympathise with Mann and the
coup-plotters, because they welcomed the idea of overthrowing Obiang – or other despotic rulers, such as Mugabe in Zimbabwe. When I speak in public about the Wonga Coup it is often put to me that the plotters should have been praised for what they tried to do. Even well-respected academics, notably the development economist Paul Collier, have come out in favour of the occasional coup as means to improve the lives of ordinary people in repressive countries. Collier suggested that in Zimbabwe, Burma and the like ‘coups should be encouraged because they are likely to lead to improved governance. (It's hard to imagine things getting much worse.)'

The Collier argument is deeply flawed, however. It does not recognise a host of problems with coups. If they are attempted but fail, as in the Wonga Coup, they provide dictators with even more excuses to crack down on any opposition and to resist peaceful criticism at home or abroad. If they succeed they are as likely to lead to further repression by a new regime, successive changes of power through military means or, worst of all, full-scale internal conflict. Africa is peppered with dreadful examples – many much worse than Zimbabwe or Equatorial Guinea – where military attempts to seize power produced wars and state collapse, for example in Somalia, Congo or Sierra Leone. The weakness and illegitimacy of state institutions (courts, laws and the like) go a long way to explain why so many ordinary Africans remain poor and weak. Bad national leaders, such as Obiang, are certainly much to blame for this. But using violence to kick them out is no solution: coups simply weaken those institutions even more and make it more likely that more violence and upheaval will follow later.

London, December 2009

The first I heard of the detention in Zimbabwe of an American plane packed full of mercenaries was on Monday 8 March 2004. We foreign correspondents in Johannesburg had no idea if the story was true, and at first excited rumours suggested the hired guns had tried a coup in Zimbabwe itself. Gradually the evidence of a plot in Equatorial Guinea emerged as du Toit and the others were arrested in Malabo. Still, it was unclear whether this story should be treated as a joke or as something more serious. The putsch in Sao Tome a year earlier had soon blown over, but this one had an extra element: the involvement of a British aristocrat and ex-SAS officer, Simon Mann.

In the months that followed, all sorts of confusing claims and counter-claims were published. There were early rumours of Mark Thatcher's role. Many thought western intelligence agencies were behind the plot. And there was the lure of Africa's oil to consider. I met Johann Smith a few days after the coup plot collapsed, and he pointed to unnamed oil companies that were eager to profit from Equatorial Guinea's oil production. He outlined the nature of the regime in Malabo, but argued that Moto would have been no better. From there, following a path well beaten by other reporters, I drove seven hours through the fringes of the Kalahari desert to the dusty ex-military base of Pomfret to meet relatives of some of the men detained in Zimbabwe. I heard their bitterness towards
Mann and the coup plot leaders. The former asbestos-mining town turned military base was a wretched place and I saw no reason why anyone should mourn its removal. But it was an intriguing spot, too. In the previous years I had travelled to Angola several times and here I found families speaking Portuguese, braiding their hair, eating food and listening to west African music as if this were a little bit of Angola picked up and dropped in South Africa.

Thanks to Barnaby Phillips I crossed paths with Nigel Morgan at the Butcher Shop and Grill in Johannesburg, the plotters' favourite restaurant. Though it is hard to understand how and why Morgan behaved the way he did towards his friends, he has been generous to a fault with me and proved hugely enjoyable company. Over the course of a year Morgan described – in varying detail, and occasionally with different interpretations – his version of what happened. He also introduced me to some characters involved in or connected to the plot. As important, he provided me with a thick file of documents, newspaper clippings and his own intelligence reports, which have proved invaluable.

Late in 2004 I set off for Equatorial Guinea with a colleague from the
Guardian
. We intended to cover the trial of Nick du Toit and report on the expanding oil industry in the region. We flew to Douala, the foetid commercial port in Cameroon, where we expected to take a small plane to Malabo. But fate – or more accurately, furious Equatorial Guinean officials – intervened. We were hauled aside by an angry immigration man; scowling diplomats told us that British journalists were no longer welcome. It seemed that too many had written that Obiang likes eating human testicles. We were booted out and left to sweat for a week in Cameroon, within spitting distance of Malabo. Over the next year I repeatedly called ministers, ambassadors and
close contacts of the Equatorial Guinea government in Malabo, London and Pretoria. I spent several hours in conversation with a hostile ambassador in London begging for a visa. But I was ultimately told by one diplomat, in most undiplomatic language, that ‘British journalists have fucked us over too many times', so I would never be allowed into Malabo.

After Malabo the hardest place to conduct interviews was Harare, Zimbabwe's capital. In my day job as the
Economist
's man in southern Africa I frequently travelled clandestinely to Harare and other parts of Zimbabwe, though British journalists have been denounced as imperial monsters and I have been personally accused of being a spy. But to my delight, early in 2005, Zimbabwean officials let me visit to report on the parliamentary elections. I took the chance to apply to see Simon Mann (he refused) in Chikurubi prison, conducted long interviews with his Zimbabwean lawyers and several others involved, and visited some of the places where Mann had been. Most notable, a senior member of Zimbabwe's ruling party agreed to discuss the coup plot with me.

Other research in South Africa proved far easier. The Steyl family – Crause and Niel, who were involved in the plot, as well as their brother Piet – were especially frank. South African prosecutors and defence lawyers, members of the intelligence fraternity, journalists who covered various aspects of the cases and many others were generous with their time and material. Johann Smith also submitted to at least half a dozen long interviews and provided thick folders of his intelligence reports and other documents. Several of those who were jailed and released gave me interviews, short or long, about their experiences before, during and after the plot. Hours spent lingering in and beside court rooms in Cape Town and Pretoria, long
evenings teasing apart the story with friends in Johannesburg, and the useful testimonies given to me by mercenaries in Durban and elsewhere are all appreciated.

In Paris Henry Page was kind enough to explain events from his perspective and to provide me with yet more documents and material relevant to the case. Another lawyer, Lucie Bourthoumieux, was similarly helpful. On Mann's side, his London lawyer, Anthony Kerman, was forthright and opinionated.

Others were notably helpful. Mark Thatcher agreed to be interviewed three times by me for the purposes of this book, once in Johannesburg and twice in London, and provided much illuminating material as well as the odd (jocular?) threat to rearrange my teeth or have me walking on stumps if I portrayed him in an unpleasant light. Greg Wales, a thirsty man, volunteered for two long meetings in two London wine bars where he was startlingly frank about his role. Wales sent me some documents he had written and admitted authorship of others. I also acquired a manuscript copy of a novel he had written about an ‘exciting coup attempt' in an oil rich west African country. His fictional sex addict hero flits between luxurious hotels in Johannesburg, London, Washington and the sweaty capital of the target country, a place that sounds very much like Equatorial Guinea. Under the comical working title ‘Coups and Robbers', an early version portrayed the Wonga Coup from his point of view. He described Moto and how ‘Simon's job was to provide him with a good enough guard force to keep him alive on his return to his ravaged country'. It was later given a less jolly title – ‘Power and Terrain' – and was packed with quotations from a Chinese philosopher suggesting it is always wise to ‘take a state intact'. I am grateful for his help.

Wales was perhaps trying to imitate Frederick Forsyth. Forsyth also kindly granted me three interviews, by phone, when we discussed coup plots present and past. But several of those involved in – or thought to be connected to – the latter-day events turned down requests for meetings or interviews. Ely Calil, Severo Moto, Jeffrey Archer and David Tremain all failed to respond to requests for meetings or simply rebuffed them. In Madrid some representatives of the Spanish government were helpful, but many phone calls were not returned by those who might have cast a clearer light on that country's role.

Others – diplomats, oil experts, journalists, friends, Africa experts, academics, politicians and writers – have been generous with their time, advice and suggestions. Anthony Goldman in London was particularly kind with books, documents and discussion of events. The investigative journalist Paul Lashmar spent many long hours tracing phone calls between plotters, and kindly provided me with an invaluable summary.

In addition to interviews, much of the information in this book is drawn from documents produced by the plotters, from intelligence reports and from material provided by fellow journalists. A list of some primary sources is set out below, along with a selected bibliography. There are several television productions and documentaries relating to this coup attempt, some of which are also listed below. Many publications followed the coup attempt far more closely than did the
Economist
, and I have also benefited greatly from the many newspaper articles – and thus thousands of hours of research by others – relating to this story.

In addition to everyone who gave interviews I would like to thank several people for their time, hospitality and help. My
thanks are due first and foremost to Anne, my wife, who read chapters, put up with endless discussions and gave me advice. Many friends, colleagues and relatives have been extremely generous. There is little space to list them all here, but you know who you are. Clive Priddle and all at Public Affairs, and Daniel Crewe, Andrew Franklin and all at Profile Books have been a delight to work with. Will Lippincott, my agent in the United States, got the ball rolling in the first place and invested huge energy and enthusiasm in the project. Julian Alexander, my agent in Britain, was as helpful on this side of the Atlantic. Thanks, too, to Bill Emmott, John Micklethwait and several others at the
Economist
for their support. Phil Kenny did a great job with the maps. In addition, thanks to Jo Wright, Catherine Moulton and others at the BBC who recruited me, briefly, as a consultant. Both Simon Robinson and Heidi Holland in Johannesburg read large parts of the manuscript and gave helpful comments, while Heidi has been the most inspiring friend one could hope to have. Errors and misunderstandings, of course, are my responsibility alone.