by Adam Roberts
As the months passed, Thatcher’s predicament worsened. He recalls being threatened with extradition to Malabo. ‘I was told that if I didn’t co-operate I’d be extradited to EG. This was political mugging of the first order.’ By late November Crause Steyl’s plea bargain made it clear that Thatcher had a role. Thatcher’s own trial was due to start on 25 November. He was also supposed to answer a set of questions, in court, posed by Equatorial Guinean investigators. His twin sister Carol later said she was ‘dismayed at the hurt and worry Mum was suffering because of Mark’s involvement in the Equatorial Guinea plot … I was annoyed with my brother for getting embroiled in it …’
Both the court sessions were postponed. That was telling. Whatever the evidence against Thatcher it seems the prosecutors’ case was not watertight. It is notoriously hard to convict anyone of breaking anti-mercenary laws anywhere, not least because it is difficult to define a mercenary. It seems that, unsure they could pin anything on the Briton, the prosecutors hoped to pile on the pressure by postponing his court appearances. As long as Thatcher awaited trial he could not travel. Several friends, including Morgan, were named as state witnesses, and were forbidden from meeting or communicating with him. As his wife and children left for the United States, Mark Thatcher became increasingly isolated.
Then a verbal deal was offered in November: according to Thatcher, if he agreed to postpone the trial, the state would return his passport so he could make essential trips. Thatcher agreed and the trial was delayed. But the prosecutors, says Thatcher, broke their word. He would not, after all, get his passport back. Worse, it was suggested that the trial would not proceed for another two years. Wheeldon explains: ‘It became clear that the trial would not have happened until 2007. Not being able to travel until then would have killed his business, and his relationship.’ Mann’s lawyer in London, Anthony Kerman, believes Thatcher – and others who struck plea bargains – were pushed into giving untrustworthy testimony: ‘There are people making confessions in terms of plea bargains. They don’t impress me at all, they are all self-serving. As for Thatcher, he was put in a very difficult position. He was told his trial date was 2007, but told he could get out if he admitted guilt and paid some money. He was completely blackmailed into it. If you had a quarter of a million, or your mum did, what would you do? I know what I’d do.’
Thatcher later considered this a triple witching hour. He was well known and rich. Prosecutors thought they could ‘ping’ him, he recalls. ‘I admitted guilt, by negligent conduct under intense pressure. I believe there was a witchhunt against me, led by very senior members of South African president Thabo Mbeki’s government.’ He suggests Mbeki had always disliked his mother, Baroness Thatcher (who supported the apartheid leaders in South Africa).
Mark Thatcher explains: ‘There is no doubt that the pursuit of me was political. There are three reasons. The first was explained to me by a member of the investigating team who described how and why Mbeki bore such animus towards my mother. In 1977 he was at a conference and he spoke about the armed struggle in South Africa and the ANC’s policies, which were highly socialist. Subsequently my mother spoke about her own political, market-based views. [She] eclipsed the ANC policy stance; for that, the Thatcher family supposedly earned Mbeki’s eternal fury.’
Second, prosecutors needed a high-profile scalp so the antimercenary law would be taken seriously. ‘And, third, they went after me with complete malice aforethought.’ Thatcher says that the prosecution, under pressure from politicians, also sought to deny him bail. Such a complicated conspiracy might explain things. More likely Thatcher admitted funding a helicopter which he suspected would be used for mercenary activity, for a simpler reason: it was true.
Next he negotiated what fine to pay and what suspended sentence he would receive. He noted that Crause Steyl, who was deeply involved, had been fined 200,000 rand (about $30,000). Prosecutors said they wanted Thatcher to pay 1 million rand (about $150,000) and take a nominal 2-year sentence (if the fine was not paid). He agreed. But around December 2004 he believes the ministry of justice became involved. At a further meeting prosecutors said, ‘We’re not prepared to accept anything under 25 million rand: 5 million plus 20 million into the asset forfeiture account [a way of imposing a large financial penalty on organised criminals].’
Thatcher was furious, pointing out that he had no proceeds – he had lost money in the venture. He reportedly told officials to ‘fuck off’. Haggling ensued which Thatcher found ‘hairy’, but eventually the officials agreed on 3 million rand. He says: ‘Originally the amount was one million. Subsequently at a drafting session to agree the documentation that amount was arbitrarily increased to five for the stated reason that I lived in a large house.’ He was unamused: ‘These are the standards of a mad house. Only after considerable further discussion did the amount then get agreed at 3 million.’ He was told that the ministry of justice wanted a suspended sentence as this would ‘look better in the press’. ‘That’s why exploiters/invaders never come down for the long haul. Africa is not creating an environment where investors want to bring money long term.’ He later recalled: ‘I took the plea bargain before it could change again, as it did almost daily.’
Around this time Thatcher lamented to a journalist from the magazine Vanity Fair: ‘I will never be able to do business again. Who will deal with me?’ He suggested the charges had ‘destroyed’ him. ‘I just feel in this particular case like a corpse that’s going down the Colorado river, and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ He noted that the world took an extraordinary interest. On the day of his arrest he said there were ‘18,500 Google hits about it. Who will want to deal with me after that?’ Few sympathised. Most newspaper and magazine articles, including the Vanity Fair piece, gleefully described ‘Scratcher’s’ troubled career and self-inflicted woes.
In January 2005 Thatcher finally struck his plea bargain. He would admit to helping to charter a helicopter he suspected ‘might be used for mercenary activity’. Journalists waiting outside the Cape Town court noticed one resident had hung a cheeky banner from a nearby window. On it was daubed: ‘Save me mummy.’ Inside, the accused pleaded guilty under Roman law of ‘intention by gross negligence’ – dolus eventualis – negligence so bad it is considered as strong as being deliberate. Though the main plea bargain made no mention of Equatorial Guinea, an ‘Annexure C’ to the plea bargain spelt out that ‘during the period November 2003 to January 2004 and at Cape Town [he did] undertake to financially assist Simon Mann and Crause Steyl to charter a helicopter, which helicopter Mann, Steyl and other persons acting for them, planned to use in mercenary activity, as defined in section 1 of the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, 1988 (Act No.15 of 1998) (hereinafter referred to as ‘mercenary activity’) in Equatorial Guinea’.
Thatcher accepted a 3 million rand fine ($450,000), or five years in jail if the fine was not paid. He paid. He also received a four-year suspended jail term. His friends tried, rather plaintively, to insist that he really ‘had no idea what was going on’. Morgan said he was at worst a ‘voyeur’ trying – and failing – to get close to the plot. Wheeldon said Thatcher believed he was ‘investing in an air ambulance to operate in west Africa, including Equatorial Guinea … Mark doesn’t mind sailing close to the wind, but he severely minds breaking the law’.
Eventually, in February 2005, Thatcher sat in court for his final test. A stern magistrate posed over forty questions about the coup that were sent from investigators in Equatorial Guinea. To the sound of cell doors clanging nearby, Thatcher spent an hour answering the questions he would have faced in Malabo. In a thin voice he admitted meeting Mann several times and discussing Equatorial Guinea. However, he denied ever paying money into Mann’s bank accounts or funding du Toit’s company, Triple Options. He recalled meeting du Toit, on Mann’s request, to inspect helicopters, though he denied ever dealing in arms. ‘I’m not in the business of buying or selling any military hardware. I’m a director of a company
which distributes fuel oil products,’ he told the court.
Thatcher’s business was not too badly hit, since many treated the coup attempt as an exotic joke. But there were some other costs. His marriage collapsed in September 2005, probably hastened by the strain of the Wonga Coup. By entering a plea bargain, paying a fine and accepting a suspended prison sentence, Thatcher became a convicted felon. He feared he might be blocked from the US, but ‘soundings had already been taken with the US consul in Cape Town that this would not be a problem’, he explains. He was told that the crime in South Africa was not recognised as one in the United States, so he could visit his family. But he was misinformed. Now he is barred from the United States. ‘It’s fair to say that the US ruling creates a fairly serious impediment’ to a full family life, he concludes. It was not quite the misery of Chikurubi or Black Beach prison, but Thatcher’s fall was spectacular.
Back in Britain, some members of parliament demanded that the disgraced Mark Thatcher be stripped of his honorary rank and no longer referred to as ‘Sir’. Thatcher was increasingly unpopular. The principality of Monaco, where he tried to set up home, ordered him out. There was also renewed talk of a civil court case in Britain, with the government of Equatorial Guinea prosecuting.
Later Thatcher expressed his rage at how the prosecutors treated him. ‘The application of the rule of law in Africa is selective for political purposes. Exhibit one: me, my case. Why was my fine seventy-five times greater than someone [Crause Steyl] who admitted having Severo Moto in his plane? Why haven’t any of the 6,800 [South African mercenaries] in Iraq been arrested? The Prosecutors’ Office itself gave me this figure, of 6,800. So they know about it. Why? Because it doesn’t suit the President’s political agenda.’ But the prosecutors applied the letter of the law. They had convicted the most prominent man connected to the Wonga Coup, who had brought the greatest publicity to South Africa’s anti-mercenary campaign. Despite his later denials, he had pleaded guilty to breaking the mercenary law because he was guilty of doing so.
The prosecutors wanted other financiers. Charge sheets were issued against Mann, Wales and Tremain. Wales and Tremain (charge sheet stamped and dated ‘2005-04-08’, case number 14/954/05) were accused of conspiring and ‘rendering foreign military assistance’. They were, according to charges lodged at a court in Pretoria – and not made public until now – part of recruiting, training, financing and engaging in mercenary activity. They were part of ‘devising and attempting to implement an operational plan to engage and defeat the security forces and seize key points of the said Government in order to oust the president of EG’. The charge sheets suggested they conspired to ‘make the necessary logistical arrangements for the instalment of a new de facto government on the 19 February 2004 and the 6/7 March 2004 by accompanying CRAUSE STEYL and others from the strategically placed Canary Island, from which they were meant to fly in the replacing President, SEVERO MOTO, after the coup had been successfully completed.’ They confirm that, despite Wales’s denials and Tremain’s silence, the two men were deeply involved in Mann’s plot. They also show how thoroughly Steyl (and other informers) spilled the beans to the South Africans.
One prosecutor explained in 2005 he wanted to ‘go after the financiers, the organisers who sit in ivory towers, using guys from Pomfret to do their dirty work. Even the financiers will pay their dues … Mark Thatcher, that was the beginning. The first step in the right direction … It’s not just poor black soldiers in Pomfret who are left to rot in jail, but guys with an oil platform who are looking to exploit others.’ Calil, Wales, Tremain and Karim Fallaha have not set foot in South Africa since the coup plot collapsed.
24
Back from the Dead
‘We suffered. What are they thinking of us, as dogs? It is like using a condom, use and throw. Or because we are blacks? Somehow they will pay.’
Footsoldier
In mid May 2005, the first prisoners were released in Zimbabwe. Described by some as the ‘scum of the earth led by the fool of the family’, sixty-one of Mann’s footsoldiers were finally let out of Chikurubi prison. They had spent over fourteen months behind bars. Two had already been let out early, for medical reasons. Another died in prison. One man, Moses Moyo, was apparently removed from Chikurubi by the feared Central Intelligence Organisation for further interrogation. He was let go some weeks later.
The relief of the freed men was obvious. After several delays they were driven to the frontier with South Africa to a town called Beit Bridge. Many relatives gathered to meet them at the dusty border, where a long bridge crosses the Limpopo river. Ken Pain, the ageing flight engineer of the 727, was met by his wife Marge. She explained: ‘I ran across, the cops just had to pull me away, and I cried and I was jumping around. I threw my arms around him, and ja, I just acted like an absolute idiot.’ Pain himself was moved. ‘Ah, it’s incredible, hey, just watching Marge come … just watching my grandson come running. You just can’t describe what it feels like; it is just too much,’ he told South African television at the time.
Mazanga Kashama was happiest to have clothes again. ‘The moment you get in, you are stripped naked. They give you shorts and a shirt … I spent 434 days without underwear. Now I have three days wearing underwear!’ Like many others he expressed his pleasure at being free by describing the misery of jail, the blood-sucking wildlife behind bars and the starvation: ‘These people, their skin peels off like a snake.’ But the former footsoldiers were generally furious with Mann and the other plot leaders and financiers. One raged: ‘If everything went all right they were going to benefit. Now our fingers are burnt. Employers don’t want to hire us. They don’t want to associate with mercenaries. We suffered. What are they [the financiers] thinking of us, as dogs? It is like using a condom, use and throw. Or because we are blacks? Somehow they will pay. They will have to pay us.’
Mann provided some food for the footsoldiers in prison, but it did little to buy off their bitterness. ‘If I met Simon Mann, one thing’s for sure, I’d kill him. He lied to us a lot … We’re just a sacrificial lamb. We protected his ass in Chikurubi. That was our mistake.’ Those returning to Pomfret, the dilapidated asbestos town, were knocked again. South Africa’s ministry of defence announced that it was to be bulldozed. There is nothing to endear one to the old army base, and the fear of asbestos dust should have seen it flattened years earlier. But the government clearly had another reason for acting: they wanted to crack down on the Buffalo Soldiers, the men of 32 Battalion who were such willing hired guns. One minister talked of South Africa as a ‘cesspool for mercenaries’. A government insider said the veterans ‘made the mistake of fighting on the wrong side yet again’. Residents were promised housing elsewhere, though scattered around the country. But even with Pomfret razed, the problem of men being recruited as private soldiers will persist. Ex-army types with no other job prospects are sure to be lured into similar work in future. ‘Soldiers-of-fortune are as old a profession as prostitutes,’ suggests a defence analyst in Pretoria.
For those released after fourteen months jailed in Zimbabwe, there was soon something else to worry about. South African prosecutors had seen Thatcher, Pienaar, Crause Steyl, Horn and Carlse all strike plea bargains by admitting guilt. A handful of others involved in conflicts elsewhere had also struck plea bargains. In April 2005 charge sheets were drawn up and lodged with a court in Pretoria against Mann, Wales and Tremain should they ever set foot in South Africa. But the country’s anti-mercenary laws had still never been tested in court.
The authorities chose to launch a test case against eight of the men who had been released. These men were regarded as officers, against whom a prosecution stood the best chance of success. Raymond Archer, Errol Harris, Louis du Prez and Simon Witherspoon formed one group. Their lawyer said the men would not deny the plot, but could show that the South African government gave the ‘green light’ for it to proceed. Four black defendants, Victor Dracula, Mazanga Kashama, Neves Matias and Maitre Ruakuluka (kn
own as Celeste), formed a second group. Prosecutors said privately that their political masters wanted a trial to prove the law’s worth. ‘You should never be blasé and think it wouldn’t happen again, or to think the law is going to stop these guys,’ explained a prosecutor. ‘A court case is the only way we get versions out. It would be interesting if the defence calls witnesses sympathetic to them, suggesting that there was a perception of a green light from government.’ The trial was finally held in 2007, but the judge threw out the case after two weeks, noting that some defendants had believed that the South African government backed the plot.
Prosecutors wanted to crack down on them, in part to prevent them attacking each other, they said. There were fears that bitter men might settle scores between themselves. Smith had taken to sleeping with a Glock handgun under his pillow. Morgan added extra security to his remote, rural home. Smith regularly confronted drunk and aggressive ‘moustaches’ who said they were going to kill him. These were often friends and relatives of those behind bars in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea. There were rumours of a hit list of those who had helped foil the coup. Morgan was advised his name was on it and told to take precautions. The police warned troublemakers they would be arrested immediately if there were any attack.
Another effort was made to stamp on mercenaries. As South Africa’s 1998 law against them – one of few in the world – had proven so difficult to apply, the country’s rulers promised a new act by 2006. It was even tougher, requiring anyone who sells any service in a conflict zone to be licensed. Intended to stop South African ex-soldiers fighting in Iraq, it could also hinder aid workers and journalists in war zones. Confusing matters, the law made an exception for ‘freedom fighters’ who joined an ‘anti-colonial’ war abroad. It promised to be no more useful than the old one: now both mercenaries and freedom fighters would have to be defined. South Africa also wanted to prosecute anyone visiting the country, even foreign tourists, who might have broken this law abroad. The chances of enforcing it looked slim.
