The Wonga Coup (3 page)

Hoare tried to ape Denard with a similar attack in the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, in 1981. He used a commercial plane and a team of South African mercenaries disguised as beer-swilling tourists – the Ancient Order of Froth Blowers. Hoare hoped to reinstall an old president, but he barely left the airport. His hired guns, after too much beer on the plane, started a battle at the arrivals hall. They managed to kill one of their own, endured several hours of fighting around the airport, then hijacked an Air India plane back to South Africa. There were worse examples of bad mercenary behaviour, especially in Angola where trigger-happy – and perhaps deranged – soldiers of fortune ran amok. An odd assortment fought for both sides of Nigeria's civil war. The hired guns generally got a reputation for daring and adventure, if not for effectiveness.

Such was the tradition of the dogs of war in Africa when Mann and Buckingham volunteered to arrange for men to fight in Angola. Mann, however, was a little different. He was as likely to wear a crumpled business suit and rimless spectacles as camouflage or chest webbing. He was an early example of a new sort of mercenary, the type as familiar with company law, bank transfers and investor agreements as with the workings of a Browning pistol. Mann and Buckingham came to represent a new era of corporate fighters, the professional soldier-of-fortune that is prevalent today.

It started with the smallish battle at the oil installations in Soyo, Angola, in February 1993 against Unita. At this time Unita – formerly an ally of the American and South African governments – was isolated while Angola's government had close ties with the west, largely because of its oil. The government agreed to let white South African and British mercenaries, under Mann and Buckingham, lead the fight to retake
Soyo. Officers and footsoldiers were recruited from the ready supply of South African apartheid operatives, both white and black. A small private security firm with the bland name Executive Outcomes, founded in 1989 and with close links to semi-official ‘counter terrorism' hit squads in South Africa, provided the corporate structure.

Many who worked for Executive Outcomes were veterans of a South African army unit, 32 Battalion, that had previously fought in Angola (ironically, alongside those same Unita rebels they would now attack). These included Portuguese-speaking Angolans with a reputation for brutally effective warfare techniques. 32 Battalion had been known – as were many mercenary armies in Africa – as ‘the terrible ones'. The South African army unit had fought using guerrilla and conventional tactics for more than a decade. Others in Executive Outcomes were drawn from domestic apartheid units: clandestine bodies of police and soldiers who were used to repress black democracy movements. Some were trained in the Koevoet, a terrifying counter-insurgency unit in South African-run Namibia. Others were parachutists, military intelligence, special forces officers and policemen.

From the start Executive Outcomes proved more serious than gentleman amateurs like Hoare and Denard. Most of the recruits at the attack on Soyo were skilled and experienced, though a few did turn tail at the first sign of gunfire. A smaller core of hardened soldiers, barely twenty-five men, led an assault that was backed by the Angolan air force and army. Many of the mercenaries had fought together before, in South African uniform, and some knew the enemy extremely well: they had once helped train and equip the Unita rebels.

The mercenaries favoured a limited selection of weapons – AK-47 assault rifles, PKM machine guns, a 60mm mortar – that
are light and easy to carry, and so are handy for attack. They were flown to their target by Angolan military helicopters, along the Atlantic coast, landing in thick elephant grass a few miles from Soyo shortly after heavy rains had fallen. From there on the mercenaries charged forward, overwhelming startled Unita soldiers, killing two men in a jeep, securing a beachhead a short distance from the Unita-run town, then withstanding a counterattack. With support from the Angolan air force and army, the mercenaries attacked from a direction the rebels little expected and retook the oil town in a couple of days. One South African, a veteran of 32 Battalion, was killed by a grenade when he leapt on to a tank in mid-battle; two more were killed in a fierce exchange of gunfire with the rebels. But Unita withdrew and the mercenaries – and Executive Outcomes – won a reputation for hard fighting.

Now there was no looking back. Angola offered a long term deal: more than $80 million plus diamond mining concessions if the hired guns would continue the war against Unita and help train the national army. Buckingham, Mann and their South African partners agreed. A second battle of Soyo followed and a much larger fighting force was put together by the mercenaries in Angola. ‘Executive Outcomes in Angola was a big affair. We had perhaps 1,000 EO people and some 3,000 locals under command for short periods. And we helped run the air force,' explains one man who helped organise it. Mann reportedly co-ordinated much activity from alternate headquarters in Luanda – Angola's capital – and from a hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg, in South Africa. In 1994 he claimed his corporate army's second attack on the rebels at the Soyo oil installation, which again dislodged them, was one of the largest combined ground and air operations in Africa since the Second World War. The soldiers recruited to the private
army included pilots, intelligence officers and men with intense and prolonged experience of war in Africa. This was a sophisticated army for hire to the highest bidder, though its leaders took care to choose clients favoured by western governments.

Pilots ferried large numbers of soldiers back and forth between Angola and South Africa. One of those who first took on the job of transporting them, a tousled-haired young Afrikaner called Crause Steyl, used a small Cessna aircraft. It was known as ‘Ghost Rider' and had once been used by American drug-runners. Mann also found him contracts servicing Angolan military aircraft and fitting spy cameras. Eventually a larger airline, Ibis Air, was formed to support Executive Outcomes using much larger planes. Helicopter pilots could earn $7,000 a month, hugely more than the South African military would pay. And the soldiers found a tightknit unit of hired guns provided camaraderie. One described enjoying ‘closer bonding than I've had with my mother, my father, with anyone else … It's like a marriage that doesn't go wrong.'

From 1993 to 1996, the corporate soldiers – led ultimately by Mann and Buckingham – went repeatedly into battle in Angola. Eventually twenty-one foreign mercenaries were killed alongside many more unnamed Angolans. Most notable were assaults against diamond-rich regions in rebel hands, especially in the north of the country. When Unita lost its income from the precious stones, due to a United Nations ban, rebel strength waned. The hired guns did not end the war, which continued until the death of Unita's leader, Jonas Savimbi, in 2002. But Executive Outcomes' reputation continued to grow.

The corporate army fought next in Sierra Leone, another west
African country blighted by internal conflict. Again the rebels of Sierra Leone were funded by the illicit trade in diamonds; again they were a nasty bunch. Soldiers of the Revolutionary United Front were famous for chopping off victims' limbs with machetes – a brutal operation known as ‘long sleeves' for those whose hands were amputated, and ‘short sleeves' for those who lost a whole arm. Sierra Leone's government hired Executive Outcomes in 1995–96 to fight the rebels and train its own forces. The mercenaries did so, growing popular among ordinary people sick of war. But international pressure grew too strong: African and other rulers officially opposed the use of hired guns. Eventually the mercenaries left and the government promptly collapsed, letting rebels swarm the capital.

But others flocked to hire the mercenary group. Executive Outcomes became a conglomerate of companies, with interests in security, diamonds, oil and other forms of mining. Its various corporate incarnations such as Sandline International, or Branch Energy, had offices in Europe, North America and Asia, as well as in twenty-six African states. Towards the end of the 1990s governments beyond Africa were keen to hire Executive Outcomes. Papua New Guinea paid for it to organise an attack on rebels in 1997, though a storm of public anger (and complaints from the poorly paid local army) eventually forced a withdrawal by the mercenaries. Tim Spicer, a front man for the organisation and friend of Mann, and two others were briefly arrested.

But Executive Outcomes expanded and other corporations were created. Later the corporate army was reborn for operations in other countries. A confusing web was spun of connected companies and holding firms, some related to oil or diamonds, others to military affairs or aviation. Many shared a single operational address in London but were registered in
Guernsey – an island tax haven in the English Channel – where Mann also kept some bank accounts. Mann and Buckingham grew wealthy. Mann proved a good project manager, spending two years developing a mining firm, Diamond Works, in Angola. Such assets were eventually turned into cash when the connected companies were floated on the Toronto stock exchange, earning Buckingham and Mann several million dollars each.

This arrangement kept away prying journalists, rivals and tax men. Some close to Mann say he did less well than the more financially astute Buckingham. But he clearly made a good income. Buckingham was probably worth $150 million by 2005, largely from his diamond and oil incomes, plus property. Mann was not quite in that league, but he reputedly earned as much as $1 million a month on the Angola contract. He came out of it with several million dollars and a growing property portfolio, including an expensive home on Portobello Road, a fashionable corner of west London, and a stately home, Inchmery, set in twenty acres of pasture in Hampshire on the south coast of Britain. The latter, which had long been owned by the Rothschild family, is currently worth more than £5 million. Mann's holding companies bought a private plane and made other investments on his behalf.

Executive Outcomes' spokesmen said the army helped bring order to Africa, and only fought for governments. But the mercenaries also broke rules and undermined broader efforts to end wars. In 1998 Sandline International breached a UN embargo on weapons sales to Sierra Leone. Many governments grew uneasy at the clout of these freelance fighters. South Africa's new democratic rulers particularly opposed
them. President Nelson Mandela did not want apartheid-era soldiers operating – fighting and killing for profit – out of South Africa. The country longed to shake off its reputation, earned during the apartheid years, as a source of instability in Africa. So, in May 1998, Mandela's government passed an anti-mercenary law, the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which makes it illegal for anyone to offer military aid overseas.

The impact was clear: the corporate army closed doors in South Africa, though it continued to operate elsewhere under different names. Buckingham continued to work in the oil industry, including in Africa. But others considered retiring. One of the South African founders of Executive Outcomes became a horsewhisperer, running a ranch in South Africa where he now offers tourists luxurious riding holidays. A few turned to writing up their adventures or preparing film scripts. Others fished for low-key intelligence work advising African governments.

The black footsoldiers, the former Angolans of 32 Battalion, sought jobs where they could. Many took menial employment as security guards at supermarkets or in office buildings in South Africa. Others returned to a wretched military base, Pomfret, in the desert of north-west South Africa. It is a miserable spot: an abandoned asbestos-mining town at the end of a dry and rutted road, between a distant village called Terra Firma and an even more remote one called Eureka. Birds of prey sit on broken telephone poles, mongoose and duiker scurry over the roads. Many houses have smashed windows; their sandy gardens are strewn with rubbish.

Mann all but retired. He looked for smaller diversions. He and Buckingham – plus a third British businessman and friend, David Tremain – competed in a marathon car race from China to Europe, the Peking-to-Paris Rally. But after weeks of hard
driving, Mann and Buckingham grew sick of each other and went their separate ways. Mann had a young wife, Amanda, who enjoyed luxury. Mann already had three children from previous marriages and Amanda produced three more. There were many opportunities for safe, sensible and unglamorous investments: he considered putting money into light industrial units being built beside the harbour at Southampton, near his stately pile. He could have made a decent return, but ‘I've never seen anyone look so bored', recalls a friend. He was sick of his quiet life in southern England. So, in search of something new, Mann and his wife moved to a large rented house in a fashionable corner of Cape Town, South Africa.

Mann's father died in 2001 and the son was ageing, too, nearing fifty. He had a hip replaced. He dabbled with various investments, including gold mines in South America. A friend recalls that ‘Simon was always involved in several projects at once. There was a big one, Placer Gold, a mine in Guyana. Simon was very involved in that one.' He took whatever chances arose. In 2001 he agreed to play a role in a British film drama, a gritty reconstruction of Bloody Sunday, the day (30 January 1972) when British troops shot unarmed Catholic protesters in northern Ireland. Mann thought the shootings a ‘cock-up', and played the part in the film of Colonel Derek Wilford, the British commander. He said he hoped to help the Northern Ireland peace process and spoke to the press under a slightly altered name, as Frank Mann. The film's director, Paul Greengrass, called him thoughtful, courageous and ‘a humane man, but an adventurer. He is very English, a romantic, tremendously good company,' he suggested. It was a typical assessment.

Mann felt as drawn to the daredevil lives of Hoare and Denard as to the new breed of corporate warrior. He could
not settle to light industrial units or a sleepy retirement. The romantic side of his character wanted excitement, the thrill of adventure, the old fashioned hunt for treasure and fame. By 2003 he was hungry, looking for an opportunity where he could find action, and money, once more. He was looking for the Big Chance. That would come in a small country in west Africa with a longstanding reputation for violence and a more recent reputation for wealth.