The Wonga Coup

by Adam Roberts

  The final days were ticking down. Mann was in Johannesburg for the last preparations. At some point in February a small celebration was held at the Butcher Shop and Grill, Mann’s favourite. Among others, Mark Thatcher was present: it was the last time he saw Mann. He later told a court: ‘The last meeting was in February 2004 at a restaurant in Sandton Square in Johannesburg. He [Mann] had recently been advised that his wife was pregnant and we met to celebrate the news.’ It seems a safe bet that the news of the pregnancy was not the main topic of conversation that night, as the plot was due to be launched within days. Asked if he and Mann had ever discussed Equatorial Guinea, Thatcher produced an unconvincing reply. Speaking in a thin, nasal voice, he claimed: ‘To my recollection I discussed Equatorial Guinea with Simon Mann twice. I discussed Equatorial Guinea in the context of the west African region. I have no recollection of talking about anyone in Equatorial Guinea or any Equatorial Guinean.’

  Another meeting took place, probably on 17 or 18 February. Various sources say that Henry van der Westhuizen met a man called Bulelani Ngcuka, the head of South Africa’s national prosecuting authority (and thus chief of a crack investigative team called the Scorpions), who was known to be close to President Thabo Mbeki. He explained something about the plan in Equatorial Guinea. Ngcuka listened but said little, possibly indicating that any official response would have to come from another part of government. But van der Westhuizen believed he got no warning to stop. Applying the logic that anything not forbidden is therefore permitted, du Toit and Mann went ahead.

  This was the prime moment to attack. Steyl left for the Canary Islands in the King Air plane, ready to escort Severo Moto to his new job. He flew via Equatorial Guinea, dropping off du Toit and a young assistant, Mark Schmidt, in Malabo, then refuelling in Mali. On board, he recalls, were Wales and David Tremain, the quiet accomplice, as well as Alex Molteno, a stunt pilot. They eventually arrived in the Canary Islands on 17 February and checked into the Steigenberger hotel on Gran Canaria. There they met Karim Fallaha, the Lebanese businessman from Asian Trading – the firm that apparently had agreed in November to invest $5 million in Mann’s Logo firm. The same day Mann went to Harare, Zimbabwe, intending to inspect his weapons. He told ZdI he would soon collect his order. The officers and footsoldiers in South Africa prepared to board the DC3 planes. All were poised and ready.

  At first, the complicated plan worked. Groups took position. Du Toit was in Malabo. Moto reached the Canary Islands. Mann was in Harare. They communicated by satellite and mobile phone. Before dawn on 19 February the footsoldiers, who had been sleeping at Hotel 224, climbed on to buses and drove to Wonderboom airport, near Pretoria. They boarded the two DC3 Dakota planes and flew over the dry veld of northern South Africa to a small airport at Polokwane. They cleared emigration (a flight registration ZS-OJM was used), then aimed for Congo and the Kolwezi rendezvous. The same day the Antonov left Malabo and began its long trip south. Merz was in charge, but the captain of the plane was an Armenian, Ashot Karpetyan.

  Now problems arose. Cheap, second-hand and poorly maintained east European aircraft are popular all over Africa. The problem? They are cheap, second-hand and poorly maintained. The Antonov was soon struggling. It broke a nosewheel while landing in Douala, Cameroon. That was fixed and the Antonov flew a short distance further, this time to Brazzaville in Congo Republic (the smaller of the two Congos). There it suffered again, sucking a bird into an engine. If any of the Armenian crew were superstitious, these mishaps should have made them uneasy. But the battered plane limped on, well behind schedule.

  Then came the second blow. Mann had sent a small team to liaise with the Congolese rebels. This group was possibly the PDD, the rebel group with whom du Toit had apparently signed an agreement in May 2003 to provide military goods and advice. South African investigators say Mazanga Kashama, Simon Witherspoon and perhaps a third man ‘were in Kolwezi with the rebels for the first attempt’. They were to tell Mann when the airstrip was ready. But the rebels’ bravado did not mean they would really act. There are two versions of what happened next. One holds that the rebels failed to show, leaving Mann’s group with nothing to do but report that the airstrip was not secure. Another version holds that some rebels appeared, failed to take the airstrip, then became angry when they heard their weapons were not coming. South African investigators prefer the latter, saying Mazanga and Witherspoon ‘had to run from there, they had to move, the rebels might moer them, get cross, because they didn’t get their goods’. The Antonov never made it to Harare; instead, it landed in southern Congo, in Lubumbashi, a short distance from Kolwezi and close to the Zambian border.

  Mann later summed up his dismal day in a confession: ‘The AN12 was en route to Harare and the pick was to take place. The aircraft broke a nosewheel in Douala and had a bird strike in Brazzaville. It ended up in Lubumbashi, then eventually flew back to Equatorial Guinea empty. In the mean time the rebels had not secured Kolwezi and the whole operation was cancelled.’ He postponed plans to collect the weapons in Harare, and told the pilots of the two DC3s to forget Kolwezi. Instead, they flew to Ndola, a Zambian border town close to Lubumbashi. Mann flew up to pay for yet more repairs and fuel for the stricken Antonov. The footsoldiers on the DC3s were told of problems in Congo. They waited three hours at Ndola, only to be sent home. Some perhaps did not know of the plan to attack Equatorial Guinea. One recalls: ‘We were told there was a problem that the rebels had attacked the mine, so we are going back until it is peaceful again. I believed it.’ They returned the same evening to Hotel 224.

  On the Canary Islands, the force that was to escort Moto had the least to do. They posed as holidaymakers and waited. First they heard the attempt was postponed by a day, then by several days. Wales, Tremain, Steyl, Molteno and Fallaha passed their time sunbathing. Steyl recalls, ‘We tanned at the hotel. David Tremain was a brilliant chess player, a really good guy. He gave me a book on Alan Bond’ (Tremain once worked for the Australian tycoon). Moto was also on the island, but kept away from the plotters. For several days they drank, dined and waited. Eventually Steyl paid the hotel bills with cash and returned to South Africa on a commercial flight via Zurich. Others went on to London or Madrid. They left behind the King Air for later use.

  Mann was furious. The failure now meant all sorts of new problems. The Spanish frigates in the Gulf of Guinea would not remain there for long. Then came reports of a small uprising in Equatorial Guinea and the arrest of conspirators, including a Brigadier Antonio Nchuema Nguema. This appeared to be the effort Mann and Moto hoped would coincide with the invasion. Another uprising was extremely unlikely. Next time the invaders, plus du Toit’s forward team, would have to do everything themselves. Mann also had to reassure ZDI, his weapon suppliers. Back in Harare, on 20 February he handed the balance of money owed to ZDI – some $90,800 – wrapped in a bundle and stuffed inside a magazine (the newspaper sort, perhaps the Economist, not the military sort). At a later meeting at a well-known meeting point called the News Café in Harare, with du Toit present, he agreed to pay a surcharge of $10,000, ‘to compensate ZDI for the inconvenience we had caused them by failing to collect the first time’. At this meeting du Toit irritated Mann by asking the ZDI representative, Martin Bird, to add another pair of items to the shopping list of weapons. du Toit wanted two missiles added to the order. Mann complained later, ‘This seemed unnecessary but, more importantly, dangerous, because to ask for such sensitive items might raise the alarm and compromise the whole deal.’

  By now everybody’s blood pressure was up. Morgan, the red-faced freelance intelligence man, recalls he felt physically sick soon after the February attempt. He had missed the big event. Though he had given South Africa’s authorities several warnings in January and February that a coup attempt was imminent in Equatorial Guinea, he had failed to notice when the DC3 planes set off. He had dined many times with Mann in this period, mostly in Johannesburg, and had monitored events from his hideaway on a remote South African moor. Yet
he had not spotted the launch. He could not bring himself, at first, to admit the attempt had really been made. Mann had set off without triggering any alarms and had every chance to fly on to Equatorial Guinea. It was a golden opportunity. Morgan, for one, resolved not to let it happen again.

  But Mann was also disheartened. He had slipped from South Africa without problems, but he could not be sure of that again. There was no time to rebase his operations in Namibia. Then there was the question of money. Keeping over sixty men in a hotel in Pretoria drained resources. Arranging for planes was costly, too. And, though Mann did not know it, there were signs that Equatorial Guinea was receiving better intelligence of a plot. When a King Air plane similar to the one used by Steyl landed at Malabo, its crew were hauled aside by officials and subjected to fierce questioning. The arrest of local plotters also suggested Malabo was on higher alert.

  Those near Mann noticed his mood darken. The affable aristocrat grew ill-tempered. Like other coup plotters before him, he found that costs mounted and funding was never quite adequate. He still chased money, the dribs and drabs promised – but not delivered – by friends and investors. It is possible he misled other plotters over how much he had invested himself. He was ‘visibly uneasy’ by late February. ‘He looked under huge emotional pressure,’ recalls one who saw him regularly. Matters were not helped by Amanda, his free-spending wife. On one occasion, he ‘lost it’. ‘He threw the phone ten metres at a wall and it smashed into a thousand bits,’ says somebody who worked in his office. The reason? On top of the stress of finding cash for his coup, he had to provide ever more dollars to his wife. Mann could afford it in the longer term, but he lacked ready cash. His wife and children, used to luxury, were running up bills just as he needed every dollar. Another man might have thrown down his cards, said he was beaten and retired to think up another plot. But under pressure, determined to recoup his losses, repay his investors and produce another military success, Mann vowed to push on. ‘Simon got cavalier because he was worried about money,’ says the colleague. ‘And there was his pride.’

  He had to continue – in part, because so many people were involved. Looking back, Crause Steyl complains the Wonga Coup was immensely complicated. He recalls Mann talking a few years earlier as they sat together in his English country house. Mann spun a tale about Drake, who lived in a similar old house in the south of England, says Steyl. ‘In the days of British pirateers plundering Spanish ships in the Atlantic, the Spanish would do all sorts of things to protect the gold they brought back from the New World. They would put ships in a convoy, or camouflage them. Once in a hundred years the pirates would get it right and plunder a ship full of gold,’ laughs Steyl. And like them, ‘We were going for a once-in-a-hundred-years deal.’

  But there were difficulties. Mann’s plot was grand and unwieldy. ‘The problem is the scale. Simon was doing this when acting with a hundred guys. You’re almost like a semi government, and much less flexible,’ concluded Steyl. By late February, after the first coup attempt failed, many were disheartened. Du Toit, eager to keep his business interests, again wanted out. He called his journalist friend Brabazon to say he had ‘withdrawn from the operation’ and was ‘walking away from it’. Steyl, too, had his doubts and thought of withdrawing. But Mann saw no option. Crause concludes: ‘Simon had put so much money into it, he had to see it through to rescue his money.’

  Morgan also heard, through Kershaw, that Mann was under great strain. He was shouting and swearing. Mann was driven on by a mixture of vanity, the need to recoup his losses and by the love of adventure. But the plotters, who had done much in good humour early on, were falling out. Du Toit saw no reason to keep trying. Steyl was out of Mann’s favour – the two spoke less and less. Investors were pushing for their money. After years of success with Executive Outcomes, Mann now battled just to keep his team together. Yet somehow, from his luxurious enclave in Constantia, Cape Town, he conjured up a feeling of power. He lived in an ‘unreal world’, says Morgan. He ignored those who told him to scrap his plot. ‘Essentially he said, “Fuck it, let’s just go,”’ believes Morgan. His spirit pushed him to try again. ‘Simon Mann was taking a major chance,’ concludes another friend. But that, after all, is what adventurers do.

  A New Plan, a New Steyl

  A resourceful British soldier, trained to think around problems, Mann decided to simplify his plan. The unreliable Congolese rebels and shoddy aircraft were dropped. He needed reliable allies and equipment, so he turned to the trusty Boeing 727 that had done so well in Angola for Executive Outcomes. Its three noisy engines guzzled fuel, but it was powerful, able to reach 30,000 feet from take-off in fifteen minutes if lightly loaded. A single plane could take the men from South Africa, then stop to pick up the weapons in Zimbabwe. With a top speed of 900 km (560 miles) an hour, it could travel to Malabo in six hours, refuelling on the way. One could easily be found. There are ‘so many aircraft standing around in desert locations, refugees from the scrap heap’, says one aviation expert. Though expensive to maintain in the longer term, Mann wanted it for a single journey. Then it could be left to rust beside a runway.

  Steyl recalls sitting with Mann and David Tremain at the end of February in a hotel lobby in Sandton, Johannesburg. They set a new date for the coup attempt, choosing 6 March, a Saturday. Mann clearly expected to move fast. He said he had already arranged to buy a 727 in Mena, a small town near Kansas in the United States. Suspicion as to the source would naturally point at Steyl, who bought 727s for his early aviation business, Capricorn Systems, in the days of Executive Outcomes. But he denies organising the purchase, pointing to Ivan Pienaar, whose role grew as Steyl fell from favour.

  One Robert Dodson Sr, president of Dodson Aviation Inc. in Ottawa, Canada, had offered to sell a Boeing 727-100 for $400,000. He also promised to buy it back six months later for $300,000 if its vital parts, especially the engines, were undamaged. Dodson specialised in selling planes for the US government. He would see it delivered to Wonderboom airport, near Pretoria, by 6 March at the latest. It would remain in Dodson’s name while it cleared the United States. It had a white fuselage and a blue line along the length of it. The registration number, N4610, was painted just below the starboard engine at the rear.

  In fact, N4610 is a remarkable aircraft, one of very few such Boeing 727-100s in use, and almost designed for the needs of a modern mercenary. The plane, according to an American researcher, was formerly used by the 201 Airlift Squadron of the American National Guard to transport personnel, but was equipped with special devices that allow manual control of the steering mechanism in case of hydraulic failure, while special tanks allowed rapid dumping of fuel in case of emergency. The baggage compartments were both heated and pressurised, allowing access to at least one of them while the craft was in the air. Perhaps most important, the wing flaps used for landing and take-off had been adapted so that the Boeing could approach a runway at low speeds, and thus make use of a shorter landing strip – such as those found in the more remote bits of Africa. The timing is striking: Mann managed to get hold of a specialist plane from the United States extremely quickly after his first, failed attempt to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. And he did so through a company, Dodson, that had offices in the United States and a subsidiary based, conveniently, in Pretoria, at Wonderboom airport. No doubt some will ask whether Greg Wales’s special lobbying in Washington DC might, somehow, have helped obtain this semi-official aircraft.

  Now all Mann needed was someone to fly it. Niel Steyl could pose as the ageing pop crooner Rod Stewart in a lookalike competition. Like any 1970s rocker, he drives an open-top red sports car, has a mullet of grey hair down to his shoulders and dresses in a denim jacket and jeans. But he is no singer; he is a pilot. He is engaging, easygoing and is probably the least bitter of any involved in the Wonga Coup.

  Life, he suggests, has generally been good. Like many in his family he loves planes and adrenalin. With his two brothers, Crause and Johann, he flew for
Executive Outcomes in the 1990s. He was a ‘tanker jockey’, a pilot with the dangerous job of flying diesel and other fuel to remote airstrips in Angola’s jungle. Rebel soldiers sometimes took potshots at him with heat-seeking missiles. He enjoyed that. Then he found a better career as a pilot for an Indian tycoon, the owner of Kingfisher breweries, Dr V. J. Malya. ‘I flew his personal Boeing 727. It was an awesome job. We followed the Grand Prix circuit. We went to the Monaco Grand Prix and watched the race from the balcony of his apartment, then went for a huge party on his yacht moored in the harbour there.’ They waltzed around the world, partying hard. Steyl recalls the converted plane had ‘an ensuite bedroom, a bar, a lounge with a 42-inch plasma TV screen, a dining room, a kids’ room with games and another TV, then at the back staff quarters for eight staff. There were usually more staff on board than passengers.’ When the music system was on, the bass thudded so loud in the cockpit Steyl worried his instruments would break. They stayed at 5-star hotels. He got a business-class flight home for two weeks’ holiday every few weeks, plus a generous salary.

  Mann called his friend in Bangalore, late in February, asking if he wanted a freelance job. Few would blame him for refusing. But Mann said the task would take just ‘three or four days’. It would be like before, the thrill of Executive Outcomes again. Steyl, by chance, was due home in South Africa in March anyway. There are rumours that Mann offered him $1 million to fly the plane. So he accepted, bringing his holidays forward. ‘I thought I’d take a few days off and do this thing and it turned into a big fuck-up.’ He laughs contentedly. ‘I knew it was something military, but not the details. I’d just be moving cargo from A to B. A pilot doesn’t care what his passengers do when they get there. I wasn’t going to do anything there. I expected to stay two or three days. But such details were never discussed.’