The Wonga Coup (23 page)

After four hours of flying they neared Bamako, capital of Mali. Steyl decided to pretend they were from a local airport. The plane dropped to 2200 metres (8000 feet) and the pilot announced they were completing a local flight from an airstrip with no tower. Steyl forgets where they claimed to be from – ‘I'm not sure where, maybe Timbuktu' – but they landed and bought fuel. They spent an hour on the ground, anxious to make up time, reckoning they were some four hours behind the agreed schedule: ‘So now we confirm with Jo'burg that the coup is in progress. But also we don't want to wait on the ground too long. This is a hot place. We try to establish the situation. [I] phone a mystery number for James Kershaw to ask what's happening. I use a secret number that Simon gave me. I say, “James, we've landed. What's next? Shall we go on?” Unfortunately James is not a military man, he's an accountant. He appears calm but clueless. His reply is “Fuck, I don't know, we have problems”'. Next Steyl contacted his brother Niel, the pilot of the plane in Harare. Niel sounded worried and explained he had no idea what was happening. ‘He asked if I knew where Simon was. He'd seen him earlier in the evening but he'd disappeared for hours.'

Another man recalls that Sargoso stood alone at Bamako airport and used a satellite phone. He did not trust the others. The men stretched their legs by the runway and waited. A
couple of Malian guards lingered nearby. Wales tried telling them jokes in French. Eventually he persuaded the soldiers, with a $100 bill, to slip back into the gloom. Then Sargoso called out. There were problems in Harare. Steyl got the same message from his brother in Harare: ‘Then, the very next minute, I got an SMS. He said: “We are all being arrested”.'

In Harare the junior ZDI official, Mutize, was unaware of the sting. At first there had been no plan to arrest Mann and the rest. But word had come from South Africa, perhaps that same day. Zimbabwean officials later claimed they planned to detain Mann anyway as he lacked an end user certificate for the weapons. But that notion was cooked up after the event. Probably Mann could have collected his guns in February, no questions asked. But by March, a few weeks on, South Africa had shared the intelligence provided by Morgan and other sources. There lay the difference between possible success and utter failure.

When officials demanded to look inside the 727, Mann admitted over sixty passengers were aboard and reportedly offered a $10,000 ‘gift' if they looked away. They refused. Mutize took Mann, Carlse and Horn to the parachute hangar, where they opened the crates. ‘It was during the inspection that suddenly we were surrounded by armed men in civilian clothes,' recalls Mutize. ‘I was confronted by the men who demanded to see the Government of Zimbabwe Authorisation Papers. I showed them the quotation and referred further questions to my superior, Colonel Tshinga Dube.' At that moment plain clothes police and soldiers stormed into the hangar, ordering Mann and the others to stand still. The men were handcuffed and dragged away to vehicles parked outside the hangar. Mann, Horn and Carlse were promptly bundled into separate cars and driven away. Mutize, recognised as a worker for ZDI, was soon freed.

Armed officials barged on to the plane. Niel Steyl says he, like most of the others on board, was asleep when they stormed in up the back entrance. Troops with AK-47s ran up the aisle, seized control and forced the passengers and crew off at gunpoint. Steyl was slow to catch on. ‘I thought maybe we would be taken to a hotel, I never thought I'd be arrested until we were outside and I was handcuffed to the flight engineer [Ken Pain]. Then I thought, OK, it's a problem, maybe a couple of days.' Kashama Mazanga was also asleep, in the passenger section. ‘When I looked up there was just a big barrel of a gun touching me and someone saying, “Don't move.”' He was startled and pushed out of the plane into the warm, dark air. ‘You just feel somebody grabbing you and throw you on the ground and cuff you with leg irons. From there to the truck.' Ken Pain, the flight engineer, was in shock: ‘You just go cold … wonder what comes next …'

Niel Steyl calls the arrest an ‘abduction', though the plane was evidently in Zimbabwean territory. Another man did not believe what was happening: ‘I was one of the last to be arrested. I woke with a barrel of a gun in my face. I thought at first it was a joke. Some of the men were in military jackets on top of civilian clothes.' It was unclear whether the officials were soldiers or police. He was told to stand while his hands were cuffed behind his back. The arresting men shouted, in English, ‘No funny jokes or we are going to shoot you.' As the hired gun stumbled down from the American-registered plane, a bright light was flashed into his face. He saw almost nothing, but on the side of a police car he read the word Zimbabwe. The men were made to lie, face down, on the tarmac and then were bundled into two army trucks, thirty or so men in each.

Jonathan Samukange, an urbane lawyer, arrived promptly.
He says he was contacted by a lawyer in South Africa within a couple of hours of the plane landing in Zimbabwe, though the timing is suspicious. He was asked to act for Mann and the others. Investigators scrabbled over the Boeing 727. No weapons were on board, but they found military-related material in the Carry All bags and copies of various contracts – for the YKA mining company in Congo, and for the PANAC aviation group in Equatorial Guinea – that Mann hoped to use as a cover. They also found bags containing cash. One had some $30,000 in it to pay for aircraft expenses such as fuel and landing fees. Another, apparently Mann's, contained nearly $100,000. They also found a map of Malabo, with the pizza restaurant marked, the one du Toit had given to Harry Carlse.

Late that evening du Toit was preparing to drive to the airport in Malabo when Crause Steyl phoned. ‘When I speak to him he says “I was just about to get my boys ready.” But I tell him there is something wrong in Harare. I suggest he should go somewhere else. I say, “I'd seriously consider going elsewhere.”' Du Toit had the option, with two planes at the airport and a couple of fishing trawlers at his disposal, but he refused. ‘In his mind, he didn't do anything wrong. In his legalistic way,' suggests Steyl. Du Toit thought he knew the élite in Malabo well enough and explained, ‘It is not necessary to leave.' In that, as with many other things, he was wrong.

Du Toit probably heard the obvious advice from others, too: get out while you can. He was near the airport. Two men on the mainland could have crossed to Cameroon. But he chose to lie low instead, as he had done after the February coup attempt. Perhaps he did not realise how seriously the mission
was broken this time. Those in Mali – Moto, Steyl, Wales and others – did not yet know the plot was over. They hoped it might be tried again a few days later. Even some in Harare, like Niel Steyl, thought they faced jail for a night or two at worst. And du Toit did not want to abandon his jealously guarded business, nor be caught while fleeing. Finally he might have hoped that his highly placed friends, notably the president's brother Armengol, would offer protection. For whatever reasons, du Toit called his men and told them to go home to their beds.

The team in Mali, at least, made a wise choice. Moto took the news of his aborted trip well enough. ‘Moto was pissed off, but OK. He had thought this was the moment he'd long been waiting for …' But in the middle of the night it still seemed possible to resurrect the plot one more time. Standing on the edge of the runway, they held a short and heated debate on what to do next. They gathered around a map, prodding at possible destinations. Steyl wanted to fly on to South Africa, perhaps going by Namibia. Moto and his aides preferred Europe, perhaps Malta. The men were irritable and hungry for sleep. Karim Fallaha also wanted to return to Europe. They chose what they knew best, the Canary Islands, a part of Spain. ‘At least we know it. We'll get shit, but less shit to manage in Spain than elsewhere,' recalls Steyl.

Some aboard the King Air may not have realised it, but they came close to death soon after leaving Bamako. Steyl says the small plane rose into the darkness and told the control tower it was going to Sao Tome to the south. But with the lights off it turned and headed in the opposite direction, towards the Canaries. ‘And as we are taking off, voom, just above our heads, passes a 727.' Africa has by far the worst air safety record in the world, in part because of reckless pilots like these.
Steyl believes it was a commercial airliner also heading for the Canaries, and it passed within metres of the smaller craft. ‘Mid-air collisions over Africa, yeah, it wasn't a good thing. But in extraordinary circumstances you have to do this.'

They landed just before dawn at the larger airport on Gran Canaria, because the smaller airstrip, at Club Aeroport, has no lights. They were detained, locked in a basement interrogation room and told to wait three hours. The ‘tired and drunk' staff at the airport were suspicious. Steyl had no passport and they noticed the plane had left the night before without a flight plan. But then a Spaniard in a crisp suit appeared. He spoke to Moto for fifteen minutes, then told everybody they were free to go.

Back in Pretoria, Kershaw panicked. The project was in tatters, and he had no idea what to do. Distraught, he phoned his friend Morgan, who told him to get every document relevant to the coup, pack it into his car and race several hundred kilometres south to Morgan's house. If Kershaw confessed all to the South Africans, he might avoid arrest. He drove through the night, reaching Morgan's home at dawn.

Johann Steyl – brother of Crause and Niel – was also disturbed in the middle of the night. Johann, yet another ex-pilot for Executive Outcomes, had known vaguely of the plot. Woken from his bed, he took a rushed call from Niel in Harare. Niel, now realising his plight, begged for a lawyer, just having time to add: ‘I am going to be in Harare for a long time.' Johann called others in the family and said his brothers had been caught while ‘flying a mercenary force to somewhere in Africa to overthrow some incredibly bad dictator'.

‘In this game of crooks, who do you trust?'

Jonathan Samukange

By the morning of Monday 8 March the plot was over. But the misery of the plotters had just begun. Reaction to the coup attempt was fierce and furious in Malabo. Just as soldiers took to the streets in 1973 after the abandoned ‘dogs of war' coup attempt, the mood darkened in 2004. Many innocent people were promptly rounded up. Equatorial Guinea draws large numbers of foreign workers – especially traders from Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana and Nigeria – to keep the economy moving. After the failed coup, many were intimidated and attacked. On 13 March Obiang said the coup plotters planned to turn ‘our city into a blood bath'. He told his people to suspect all outsiders and ordered ‘operation clean-up' to expel illegal immigrants. Rich foreigners, notably South Africans who had the misfortune to be in Malabo at the time, were put under hotel arrest. Gangs of xenophobic youths threatened migrant workers in the street, demanding their papers. Many ordinary people were chased from the country. A senior official later told the ruling party's newspaper,
Ebano
, that citizens should beware of foreigners and ‘commandos', who ‘are more highly trained than an ordinary military officer … [and] were going
to come into Equatorial Guinea under the effects of drugs, and so they were not going to have pity on anyone. Therefore, as Attorney General, I call on the population to be vigilant with foreigners, regardless of colour, because the target is the wealth of Equatorial Guinea, the oil.'

For du Toit and the others, it was the start of ten miserable days. That Monday morning, at 8 a.m., a local business partner told du Toit to show himself at the central police station to ‘see about his passport'. He dutifully appeared and was pushed into a cell. Mark Schmidt, the youngest of du Toit's team, shared a house with the Armenian pilots. Shortly after du Toit's arrest, uniformed men surrounded their house and dragged away the Armenians. ‘I didn't think anything about it. I thought that's just the way they handle transport problems around here,' he told a journalist later. But it was soon his turn. ‘Suddenly there was military everywhere. It was so scary. The soldiers were reeking of alcohol and they were threatening us with weapons. They threw me down and put a gun to my head. I thought I was going to die right there,' said Schmidt.

Heavily armed gangs of soldiers snatched six of du Toit's team in Malabo (du Toit himself, Allerson, Boonzaier, Cardoso, Domingos, Schmidt), six Armenians, plus the German (Merz). Their hands cuffed tightly behind their backs, they were herded into a single cell in the dreaded Black Beach prison. The room was large, some 20 metres by 4 metres (60 feet by 12 feet), but 200 other foreigners – African traders rounded up from the streets – were already there. Allerson was pulled aside and thrown into solitary confinement. Police ransacked their homes in Malabo, stealing phones, money, televisions, music players and other goods. They found no weapons. That evening police on the mainland part of the country pulled two others – Abel Augusto and Americo Ribeiro – from their beds.
Handcuffed, they were brought to Malabo, as officials stole their satellite phones, money and other property. Later several Equatorial Guineans were also grabbed.

Abel Augusto describes conditions in Black Beach: ‘Some of the guys were crying, begging for them to loosen the cuffs. Every time you turned, even a little bit, the cuffs tightened more. They'd just say “Too tight?” Then they'd tighten it some more.' For ten days they were beaten. Interrogation was the worst. While interrogators demanded answers they held a flame to the sole of a prisoner's foot. Oddly, the foreign prisoners were given takeaway food in the first week in jail. ‘The food never tasted like anything because you were being beaten while eating,' said Augusto. The men would crouch on the floor and eat without using their hands. ‘They'd say, “Eat!” So you eat and then, boom! They beat you, kick your plate over. Then they'd say, “Eat!” And it happens again and again,' said Augusto. The men learned to do everything staring at the ground. Eye contact with guards was seen as defiance and punished immediately. ‘With your hands cuffed behind your back constantly, you can't do most things. Not even use the toilet. I had to wipe Bones's [Boonzaier] bum for him,' one prisoner later told a South African journalist.