The Wonga Coup

by Adam Roberts

  A British journalist who visited Macias in jail wrote of him ‘cowering in the corner of his cell, crumpled and pathetic … But those eyes still had that maniacal stare that had sent countless thousands to their death.’ A mixed military and civilian tribunal was set up in the largest available building in Malabo, the dilapidated El Marfil cinema, and an estimated 1500 people packed the cinema in awed silence. Frederick Forsyth, who keeps an eye on events in the country, says Macias was put in a cage hung from the ceiling. A handful of close (though mostly unimportant) colleagues joined him to face charges of genocide, mass murder, treason and embezzlement. Prosecutors said it was the first time the head of a genocidal regime, anywhere, had been brought to court.

  The chief defendant sat impassively in a casual, shortsleeved shirt as the examining magistrate promised evidence of at least 500 assassinations ordered by the dictator. The court heard an ever-lengthening list of horrors. Some 200 civil servants had been jailed by superiors who wanted their wives as mistresses. One of the accused, the boss of the infamous Playa Negra – Black Beach – prison had set his dog on inmates to feed on their raw flesh. Macias’s co-defendants said they carried out atrocities because they feared death themselves at the hands of the despot. Macias said all the misdeeds ‘happened behind my back. I was head of state, not a prison chief.’ He tried also to blame his nephew Obiang, but the court cut him short.

  After four days, Macias and six others were sentenced to death 101 times, whisked off to Black Beach and put before a firing squad. Local soldiers dared not pull the trigger: they were terrified of the old president’s magical powers. Sorcery was strong in his family, they knew, passed down from the witchdoctor father. One writer said, ‘They feared their bullets were too weak to kill his spirit which “would return as a leopard”.’ Instead, members of a new, 80-strong Moroccan presidential guard did the honours. Macias was said to be calm and dignified at his death. At news of it people took to the streets chanting ‘Eleven years of Macias, eleven years of small fry’. Over 1000 political prisoners were released. Nightclubs and churches reopened.

  Obiang took possession of the Fang ancestral skull and control of the country. But everyone knew of his part in the old horrors. He tried to wriggle out of it, claiming shamelessly that everyone was equally at fault for letting Macias get away with so much murder. ‘Who among us can blame others for the errors of the dictatorship … we were all collaborators of dictatorship, all guilty,’ he stated later. But Obiang was Macias’s ‘leading acolyte’ and the ‘number two man’ in the country, to use the words of one expert. He could be blamed. Some alledged that he supervised the most sadistic interrogation, torture and murder of prisoners in Black Beach. He saw that Macias’s punishments were carried out. Forsyth rightly described him as the ‘inflicter of many horrors of his uncle’. Replacing one despot with another made only a limited difference.

  Obiang did, however, turn to western countries for help, dropping Chinese and Cuban advisers. The old colonial power promptly provided aid and recognition. The king and queen of Spain visited Malabo just before Christmas 1979, when Obiang modestly requested: ‘We ask Spain to make Equatorial Guinea the Switzerland of Africa.’ While they sat down to a banquet, people rioted outside for a share of a delivery of food parcels. Paranoia continued, but the government spread less terror; rulers ignored the law, but a new constitution was enacted; there were limited economic and political reforms. The small economy, after many years of stagnation, eventually grew: in the best of times the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expanded by astonishing rates, such as 60 per cent a year by the end of the 1990s when oil exports boomed. Some gave Obiang grudging credit. An African ambassador in Malabo once concluded that ‘Obiang is twenty years ahead of any of his ministers’, though he added, ‘The trouble is, he’s twenty years behind the rest of us.’

  But these were limited virtues. Obiang looks moderate only when compared with his monstrous predecessor. By 2004, after a quarter century in power, most commentators ranked him as one of the worst leaders anywhere in the world. A British lawyer who is well paid to fight for Obiang’s rights later said airily that ordinary people do not need money or good government to be happy. Sitting in a plush district of Paris in 2005, he claimed that Equatorial Guineans were ‘happy plucking bananas from trees’. ‘They all seem to be smiling,’ he noted smugly after a trip there. Perhaps that attitude explains why the government does almost nothing for its desperate citizens. On average, by 2005, each Equatorial Guinean should have been receiving roughly $6,000 a year, an income higher than Poles or Chileans enjoy. But none of this wealth is actually shared out. In 2002 Equatorial Guinea spent the least of any country, bar Iraq, on health (a wretched 1.8 per cent of GDP). No country anywhere spends less on education (a mere 0.5 per cent of GDP). An Equatorial Guinean can expect to live no more than fifty years.

  Obiang frequently sounds like a lesser version of Macias. He is known in public as the ‘Father Behind the Gates’. A fawning aide on a radio programme in July 2003 called him ‘the country’s God’, who ‘can decide to kill anyone without being called to account and without going to hell because it is God himself, with whom he is in permanent contact, and who gives him this strength’. He is not as violent as his uncle, but the catalogue of murder and torture in his prisons, police stations and elsewhere is toe-curling. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch frequently report on extrajudicial executions, torture and rape by police and soldiers; jurists from the International Bar Association throw their wigs up in horror at the rotten legal system, suggesting torture is common and few in power respect the rule of law. A British judge in April 2005 described Obiang as ‘a despot, [who rules] without regard to the rule of law, or democratic institutions (such as free elections), and through a regime which uses torture to procure confessions as a systematic feature of its legal system, and in which the judiciary is not independent but under the control of the President’s political party …’

  Black Beach

  In Obiang’s realm, prisons, especially, are horrific places. Opposition leaders die behind bars with suspicious regularity. Pedro Motu led a small political party preparing to contest an election in 1993. He was arrested and killed by police within days of his returning from exile. Obiang gave an explanation favoured by his monstrous uncle, claiming the opposition leader had killed himself to cause trouble: ‘he swallowed some pills that were probably poisoned … He wanted to create disorder for political reasons.’ In fact, he was tortured and murdered. Close watchers of Equatorial Guinea said Motu’s liver was removed. A colleague arrested with him also died, after being tortured so badly that he slumped into a coma.

  Such events in rat-infested Black Beach prison are common enough. One ex-inmate says the guards ‘whipped my hands with electric cables so badly I could not even sign a confession’. Another had his jaw broken when being bundled into the jail. Some were tied to poles in such a way that the bones in their forearms eventually snapped. One said he felt like a chicken in a back yard: ‘You never know when they are going to come out and chop your head off.’ Such ill treatment is never justified, but it is worth remembering the trivial ‘crimes’ of some who were detained. Fabian Nsue Nguema, an opposition politician, was arrested in April 2002 for ‘insulting’ the president. His insult? A lawyer, he dared prepare the defence case for several people accused of plotting Obiang’s overthrow. Others – notably the diminutive islanders of the Bubi group, a people under the thumb of the mainland Fang group – were rounded up, beaten, jailed and raped as a means of discouraging political protest or coup attempts. In 1998 a small protest did erupt, dismissed by a foreign journalist as ‘four guys, two guns, a pick-up truck and a row at a road block’. He recalls sitting with a minister as they heard the news. The minister – now an ambassador in a western country – immediately warned that ‘these people [the Bubis] will be sorry’. Pogroms and attacks on Bubi villages followed and some hundred people were dragged before a military court where fifteen were sente
nced to death.

  Most outsiders ignored it all unless a foreigner died. Soldiers shot dead a young Spanish missionary as her bus approached their roadblock in July 2003, causing some criticism from Spain. Earlier, a French economist was found dead in his bedroom in Malabo: he had been beaten unconscious and the veins in his neck sliced open, suggesting a professional killing. Some said he was about to expose corruption in an aid programme.

  Sometimes, however, outsiders noticed if a rival to Obiang disappeared. Late in December 2003 Obiang’s half-brother General Augustin Ndong Ona – seen by some as a rival to the president – was arrested and reportedly tortured.

  Equatorial Guinea stages elections and calls itself a ‘fledgling democracy’, but it is more like the comic-opera dictatorships in Burma or Zimbabwe. Voters know elections are not secret. During campaigns people know to wear Obiang-embossed clothing ‘to keep clear of trouble’. ‘If you’re not seen showing support for the party you can have problems,’ said a resident of Malabo during one campaign. The opposition call Obiang and his family ‘gangsters with no respect for the law’. The president’s son, Teodorin, owns the sole private radio station, Radio Asonga; Obiang owns the only television station. In 2005 the international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders called Equatorial Guinea ‘one of the continent’s forbidden zones for free expression and an unchanging hell for journalists’.

  Few countries have embassies there. The United States briefly closed its offices in 1995, with officials dismissing Equatorial Guinea as a ‘basket case’ and ‘a nasty little dictatorship in the middle of nowhere’. When the erstwhile American ambassador, John Bennet, spoke out about the torture of prisoners, he was accused of witchcraft after police spotted him at a graveyard during an election ‘taking traditional medicine given to him by election-boycotting opposition parties in order that the vote would come out badly [for Obiang]’. He was warned: ‘You will go to America as a corpse.’

  ‘An authentic cannibal’

  It is hard to imagine what more Obiang could do to be like a Bmovie villain. Environmental activists accuse him of profiting from large-scale dumping of toxic (and possibly radioactive) waste on a pristine Atlantic island, Annobon. Others say his diplomats ship large quantities of drugs around the world. One was caught at New York’s JFK airport trailing cannabis from a hole in his suitcase as he strolled through the terminal. In 1997 Spanish police arrested and jailed an ex-minister of information from Equatorial Guinea, Santos Pascal Bikomo, for drugtrafficking. He wrote a public letter describing how Obiang, his son Teodorin and his brother Armengol distributed drugs in Europe using shipments of tropical timber, diplomatic bags and even Obiang’s baggage during state trips. Others even accuse Obiang of cannibalism. Such claims may be made merely to score political points, but Severo Moto, an exiled opponent, made his accusation with some elan in 2004. He warned he would face persecution and certain death in Equatorial Guinea and called Obiang an ‘authentic cannibal’ who hungered for his testicles. On Spanish radio he said Obiang ‘systematically eats his political rivals’ and was a demon. ‘He has just devoured a police commissioner. I say “devoured” as this commissioner was buried without his testicles and brain.’ Moto added: ‘We are in the hands of a cannibal.’

  Obiang retorted that ‘international credibility is not important to us’. In turn, most of the world ignores his speck of territory off Africa’s west coast. In most atlases the country lies hidden under the staple. Few outsiders, not even Africa experts, can name a famous Equatorial Guinean. Just one man earned headlines. A 22-year-old swimmer called Eric Moussambani briefly became famous at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Dubbed ‘Eric the Eel’, he floundered so slowly in the 100-metre freestyle event that the world’s press became enchanted. Eric took nearly two minutes to cross the pool, roughly twice as long as the fastest swimmer. A jellyfish would have moved faster, but sports journalists made him into a star, concocting ever less plausible stories about him. According to some, the first time he completed 100 metres in a single stretch was in Sydney. Others said he trained in the wild. His bemused manager complained: ‘Why do they keep printing that he swims with crocodiles? It makes us look like savages. Who would swim in a river with crocodiles?’ His own mother said her boy ‘liked going to the beach’ but he had never been keen on swimming. She said he had merely wanted to see Sydney.

  That aside, Equatorial Guinea draws interest from one source: an industry that is notoriously willing to do deals with repressive governments. The oil industry, dominated by big American oil firms like ExxonMobil, flocked to Equatorial Guinea in the late 1990s. The small country proved a remarkably tempting corner for western companies – and an irresistible one for mercenaries, too.

  5

  The Gushing Prize

  ‘And the place had to have oil. I mean, who’s going to do a coup in Zimbabwe?’

  Crause Steyl, pilot and plotter

  By the turn of the millennium Simon Mann was living in South Africa. He set about getting South African citizenship, as well as his British status, and applied for a passport on the basis of his mother’s nationality. According to one source he was removed to a safe house and debriefed thoroughly about his past. The South African government made it clear it opposed mercenaries. The country’s tough Foreign Military Assistance act (1998) had forced Executive Outcomes to close. More military escapades would not be welcome. But Mann reportedly had good contacts with some in the African National Congress government. He struck a deal: citizenship and a passport in return for a promise he would lead a quiet life. ‘They told him that he must not be involved in any military adventures any more. He agreed,’ says a South African with connections in the intelligence world. Mann seemed sincere and, five days before Christmas 2001, he received a South African identity card, number 520626 5294080, followed in August 2002 by a passport, number 436417852.

  Mann now had two nationalities and (apparently) his history of soldiering behind him. Most who met him rather liked the upper-class Briton; women found his old Etonian manners endearing. A South African who met him a few times socially thought him ‘quite charming, not too dominating. Physically he is not a hulk, he is not a marine, but smallish, slim-boned.’ He wore rimless glasses and was usually quick to smile. Though not overbearing, he had a military presence. ‘He is straight-backed and tanned, and talks like an officer … [he is] a precise interlocutor,’ concluded a journalist who interviewed Mann in Britain about his part in a drama about Northern Ireland. ‘Equivocation offends him.’ As if to remind listeners of his Englishness, Mann peppered conversation with cricketing terms, suggesting that honourable people should always ‘play with a straight bat’.

  Men generally warmed to him too. His pinstriped London lawyer calls him ‘a very likeable chap’ who ‘loves Africa’. His Zimbabwean lawyer was equally charmed: ‘Simon Mann is very intelligent and very sociable. And he is very fit.’ An old friend said ‘Simon is an entertaining, charming and good chap. He tells a good joke. None of us thought that at age fifty, with all his wealth and a family and with a wife with a bun in the oven, that he’d go on another bloody adventure.’ He had a sense of humour. He sometimes called his plot against Equatorial Guinea the ‘Patrick O’Brian Appreciation Society Spring Outing’, referring to the adventure novelist whose characters sail the oceans to battle foreign foes. A British newspaper once summed up Mann as ‘a complex character, part thrillseeker, part businessman, who mined Africa’s wars for profit’. Tim Spicer, a colleague in the private military industry, called him a ‘good mate … a great sailor and skier and a thoroughly good sport …’

  A jovial, social animal, part of the affluent South African suburban scene, Mann had no reason to imperil his newly settled lifestyle. But he was tempted by news of a discovery that rivalled the reason Frederick Forsyth had imagined to justify the coup against Equatorial Guinea in 1973.

  Africa, overall, has a handy supply of oil. Its known reserves are small compared with the Middle East: it may have 10
0 billion barrels of crude, roughly the same as in Kuwait alone. But the continent is poorly explored. As new technology is used to study its land and seabed, known reserves have risen fast. Some western companies hope for big discoveries in dry spots like Madagascar and in parts of east Africa. But they are not only looking for oil. Africa has a useful supply of natural gas. Nigeria alone may have 17 million cubic metres (200 trillion cubic feet) of gas which is barely exploited. Turned into Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) by ‘deep cooling’, it is of a quality that suits American consumers. ‘You can plug west African gas direct into the North American gas pipeline system,’ says an excited hydrocarbon expert. Already large quantities of African gas are being pumped north to Europe. Since poor African countries consume little energy, they are also ready to export almost everything pumped out of the rock. Experts talk of a new ‘scramble for Africa’, especially for mineral and hydrocarbon resources. Oil firms from rich countries have earmarked hundreds of billions of dollars for ‘upstream’ African development (that is, finding and pumping out the oil and gas) in the next couple of decades.

  The continent has one especially valuable area. The broader west African region is fast increasing output: the most optimistic estimates indicate it could export 6 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. This includes one area described by white labcoat-wearing experts, in technical jargon, as ‘one of the oiliest patches in the world’. That is, the armpit of the continent, in the Gulf of Guinea in the middle of which is Equatorial Guinea. For years all hoped for a big oil discovery. Spanish prospectors in the 1980s found nothing. Then a tiny Texan outfit, Walter International, struck lucky in 1991. The bonanza began, formally, in October 1996 with a solemn act of inauguration at the first commercial oil field, presided over by Obiang and the executive vice-president of Mobil Corp, Paul Hoenmans. A decade later the country exports some 350,000 barrels of oil a day. At a rate of $50 a barrel, that is worth over $6 billion each year. No one is sure what reserves exist, but there may be another billion barrels of oil to come, plus 4 trillion cubic feet of gas, from Equatorial Guinea.