The Wonga Coup (28 page)

One striking story involves the 14-year-old godson of a minister in Equatorial Guinea's cabinet. Amerada Hess leased property from the teenager, passing nearly $500,000 to him, until a local court ordered the payments to stop in 2003. Then Hess was questioned by the minister concerned who wanted to know why the payments were no longer coming. The minister immediately phoned up the judge, who promptly reversed the order, and the payments from Hess started up once more. The oil firm could have been in no doubt that it was behaving unethically – it even had a court order making that fact clear – yet the firm happily restarted payments.

There is no doubt that oil firms pay generous bribes to crooked rulers, and in return enjoy extremely profitable terms of business in Equatorial Guinea. The only losers are the ordinary people. Rather than deny it, the firms claim they
have no choice but to behave in this way. Equatorial Guinea is a tiny country. To do business there at all means signing deals with companies owned by members of the government. The only land to buy and the only properties to lease are owned by the extended ruling family. A representative of ExxonMobil told the Senate that ‘it may be virtually impossible to do business in such countries without doing business with a government official or a close relative of a government official.' And is it the concern of oil firms if the government fails to spend money to benefit ordinary people? Foreign firms obey the law, pay taxes and (sometimes) meet the conditions of their contracts. That is where their responsibility stops.

In fact, the firms were caught red-handed. Under no circumstances could they justify paying a teenage relative of the president large sums of cash. It was plain wrong to put money, supposedly for oil revenues, into the accounts of Obiang's wife or other relatives. (One oil industry consultant close to Equatorial Guinea told the
Financial Times
in September 2004 that the multinationals had been ‘stupid'. With greater care they could have hidden the beneficiaries of their payments. ‘You [pay to] a company if you are asked to do that,' he says. ‘You don't write it out to a name.')

As such they were conspiring with the crooked leaders of the country to defraud the people of Equatorial Guinea of revenues. And the firms seemed to admit as much. After the Senate report, and under threats of prosecution in the United States, the oil companies promised to change their behaviour in Equatorial Guinea. Some also adopted fig-leaf ‘social programmes' – for instance, helping to eradicate malaria on the island part of the country – to polish up smeared reputations.

Here is a microcosm of corruption in Africa as a whole, and
perhaps other parts of the developing world. In a country where democracy does not function, elections are not free, journalists are unable to investigate crooked leaders and the rule of law is not respected, there are no means to hold corrupt politicians or crooked businessmen – foreign or local – responsible. There is no chance that the powerful are going to regulate themselves. The local politicians seek out short-term gains from the resources they control: backhanders to stuff into bank accounts, flashy cars, assets held abroad. They have no serious interest in developing their countries, in part also because they may expect to flee into exile eventually or be put up in front of a firing squad. In turn the investors do not expect to remain in the country for long. Equatorial Guinea produces generous quantities of oil today, but this is no Saudi Arabia. A couple of decades from now the oil will be exhausted. Yet the oil firms have no incentive to develop the local economy, as they profit by extracting resources and exporting them, not by developing stable and growing local markets. Thus, for those with power, as in the many parts of Africa where extracting minerals and oil quickly is the main economic activity, the rationale is to make a quick buck and move on.

By 2006, with oil prices reaching $70 a barrel, two things became clear. Oil firms were struggling to find long-term supplies of oil and gas to replace that being sold and used. But, with high prices, they were making astounding profits measured in many tens of billions of dollars a year. Remote and repressive little countries, like Equatorial Guinea, prove profitable indeed.

‘We've been chained like wild animals.'

Nick du Toit

Crause Steyl rests his feet on the coffee table, puts his hands behind his head and chuckles. From the office of his aviation business in Bethlehem, South Africa, he ruminates on the good life of being a mercenary. He thinks it is a smart career choice. ‘I don't have perfect morals. I don't care too much what other people think. In essence, I think all men are mercenaries and all women are prostitutes. Men will kill for money and women will screw for money … For unattached people I'd recommend it. Given the opportunity, almost anyone would do a mercenary coup. If you have time on your hands, then why not? You need all sorts, not everyone carries a gun and shoots people.'

He has no regrets about the Wonga Coup. ‘If it had been successful we would have done it again! If I'd gone through life without trying these things I'd have been a civil servant serving somebody stupid.' From the start he had reckoned the risk of the plot was not too grave and the potential reward huge. The price of failure, at worst, was death or a couple of years in an African prison. He felt that was an acceptable gamble.

That is easy enough to say. But Steyl himself faced neither death nor prison. He got a rap on the knuckles in South Africa, admitted after many months that he had broken an anti-mercenary law and paid a fine. In contrast Mann, in July 2004, was found guilty of two charges by the court sitting in Chikurubi prison. He had tried to buy firearms with no end user certificate. (The court did not ask why ZDI had been ready to sell without seeing the same certificate.) Mann had also broken a repressive law, the Public Order and Security Act. His two assistants, Carlse and Horn, were found not guilty and were freed. They returned to South Africa where – like Steyl later – they went through a plea bargain process, admitted breaking the anti-mercenary law, paid small fines and carried on as before.

Most of the accused in Chikurubi prison, the black foot-soldiers and the white ‘team leaders', had pleaded guilty to immigration and aviation offences, as their lawyer Samukange advised. By September they had been behind bars for six months and awaited only sentencing. The men were chained together as usual, shackled hand and foot, doing what Piet Steyl and other visiting relatives now called the ‘Chikurubi soft shoe shuffle'. They were herded into the old hospital ward that served as a court while an armoured car trained a machine gun at their backs. Yet the atmosphere was hopeful. Most expected to get a fine and immediate deportation home. After all, the smaller fry said they knew of no coup plot, and had merely sat on a plane before they were arrested. They broke immigration rules only because the pilot taxied to the military side of Harare airport. They disembarked at gunpoint. Samukange said he was confident of their release.

But, to their shock, the magistrate handed down jail terms for all. The sentences clearly related to an act – plotting a coup – for
which none had been charged, tried or convicted. Samukange said later that the politicians had ordered an example to be made: ‘The magistrate told us, “I am under pressure to sentence your guys”, he called me to his office and said that. Political pressure, but he did not say from whom. He apologised to me and said he hoped I could find a way to reduce their sentences. But I was shocked when I heard the twelve-month sentence.' Most of the prisoners were told they would spend almost another year in Chikurubi prison as their six months on remand counted for nothing. To add insult to injury, they were fined, too: 2000 Zimbabwean dollars each, or thirty US cents.

The 727 pilot, Niel Steyl, and his co-pilot, Hendrik Hamman, landed sixteen-month terms. Piet said his brother paled visibly as sentencing was pronounced. His knees shook in his khaki shorts and he was ready to collapse. Mann sat unshaven, with long, tousled hair. ‘[H]e looked rather dishevelled – quite aloof from his present surrounding,' noted Piet. When a television camera focused on the former SAS officer, he mouthed silent but indecipherable words and appeared to write with his finger on his chest. Mann stood to hear his sentence: seven years for the two offences (later cut to four on appeal); he also forfeited the Boeing 727 and $180,000 in cash that were grabbed on the night of his arrest. The same month his seventh child was born in Britain.

Amanda Mann kept her usual silence. But the wives of the black footsoldiers were outspoken. Many had scraped together money, or used a one-off payment from a lawyer (acting for Mann), to visit their husbands during the trial. By September most were back in Pomfret, the asbestos town in the desert. They live in a decrepit area dubbed Esperensa, with overgrown gardens, cracked walls, gates hanging off hinges. Roads are named ‘Buffalo', ‘Carpenter' and ‘Carnation'.

Viviana Tchimuishi, wife of Eduardo, was desperate. ‘We depend on people who have pity, and on the churches. We get food parcels,' she explains. Her daughter, Cecilia, says: ‘We heard the sentence of my father on the radio. We were surprised. They told us they would come out now.' Tears appear in her eyes. She blames Mann and the financiers: ‘Those people put us into trouble. We are suffering because they put our father into problems.' She wants Mann punished. ‘I'm happy. Not to give him seven years, no, to give him death penalty. He deserves it.'

‘We had no idea about Equatorial Guinea until after the men were arrested,' declares Viviana. Then, using the past tense, she adds that her husband was a good person. ‘He didn't bug me. We always had food. He was a great person. When he was here the children were always studying. Now there is no money for school. It seems to me as if he already died. I don't know I'll see him again … It's just me. I'm mother and father to the children.' Neighbours are unsympathetic, blaming the men for what happened. ‘They were rushing for money,' says one.

Felicia Shapoda, wife of Bonifatius Matheus, had been in court in Harare for the sentencing and hoped to return with her husband. Instead he would spend a year more in jail. ‘I felt very bad because they are not guilty. Simon Mann, he was crying. I was feeling pity for him, I didn't understand what he had done.' She spent just five minutes with her husband, time only to give him some biscuits, cigarettes and milk.

The men in Zimbabwe had one consolation: they were not in Equatorial Guinea. The Malabo trial began late in August 2004. A conference centre on the edge of the capital became the
court, where du Toit and the others were kept handcuffed and in leg irons. Du Toit once called out: ‘We've been chained like wild animals … we've been tortured by police … we haven't done anything wrong … [if we had] we would have tried to run away.' Another group of Equatorial Guineans, including Severo Moto, were tried
in absentia
.

A feeble effort was made to follow legal process. An envoy from South Africa said Equatorial Guinea was under intense scrutiny, and asked for a decent trial and no torture. Lucie Bourthoumieux, a French lawyer working for the Equatorial Guinean government, argued the process was fair as the accused faced a civilian court. They were seen as terrorists, she says, and could have been caged, thrown before a military court or not tried at all, as Americans treat their suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay. But mistreatment elsewhere is no excuse for what happened in Malabo.

There were obvious problems. Amnesty International reported on a ‘trial with too many flaws'. Lawyers saw their clients only three days before proceedings began. Du Toit later told a television journalist: ‘I've seen a defence lawyer only once, he was only allowed a 40-minute interview with all of us. He came to the jail, he spoke to us very briefly and then the next time we saw him was in court and he was not allowed to speak to anybody. He was not allowed to visit us. He was not allowed to come and speak to us, give us advice or whatever.' The trial was in Spanish, with partial and often misleading interpretation. Only one of the presiding judges had practised law; two out of the three were Obiang's relatives. Complaints of torture were ignored. One defendant identified a man in court, saying he had inflicted torture, but was told it was the wrong place to raise such concerns.

The accused wore shorts, sandals and their irons. Du Toit,
in a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves, was kept apart from the others. At first he repeated his early confession of March, saying that none of the others were involved. Then as the trial began in earnest, at the end of August, two things happened. First, a text message circulated from a hitherto unknown group calling itself the ‘Military Committee for Liberation' and addressed to ‘Comrades in the Armed Forces'. It accused Obiang's brother, Armengol, of being part of the Wonga Coup and called the trial a ‘grisly farce'. Nobody knew who sent the message, but the government was startled by it. Mobile phones are known as useful tools against dictators. Popular uprisings in eastern Europe have been organised with cheap ones. This outburst startled officials who feared, as usual, another coup attempt, so the phone network was partly closed.

Then something else happened. In South Africa Mark Thatcher was arrested in connection with the plot, causing huge media excitement. The trial in Malabo was immediately suspended. Prosecutors said they would interview Thatcher and, perhaps, seek his extradition. Some thought this an excuse to stop the trial and find the mysterious military group ‘inside the palace' who were campaigning against Armengol. Somebody had faxed details of his involvement with du Toit's business to journalists in London. There were cracks in the government.

The trial in Malabo did not restart until November, by when much had changed. It became obvious that a media battle mattered as much as the legal ones in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Lebanon and Britain. Many incriminating details were leaked to the press, with journalists quick to publish any details they could. For the sake of the propaganda scrap, officials let du Toit speak to a BBC news crew in Black Beach in late September. He had grown thin and
changed his story, again. He accepted a coup was planned, but claimed he was not deeply involved in it. He had earlier confessed, he said, because he believed the prosecutors were after Moto and the financiers of the plot but would let him go (and the others on the ground).