The Wonga Coup (6 page)

I originally postulated a question to myself: would it be possible for a group of paid and bought-for mercenaries to topple a republic? I thought, if the republic were weak enough and power concentrated in one tyrant, then, in theory, yes. I looked around and saw Fernando Po, and every story about the country was gruesome. I didn't go there myself, but I met businessmen and others who had been there, and they told me this place was weird. So I decided it could be done … If you stormed the palace – well, it wasn't really a palace, it was the old Spanish colonial governor's mansion – probably by sunrise you could take over, provided you have a substitute African president and announced it was an internal
coup d'état
.

I began to explore the world of black market arms. Where do you get a shipload of black market weapons? I knew nothing about it, so I dug around. I discovered the capital was either Prague, where Omnipol, the Communist arms dealer was (but for that the client had to be cleared by Moscow), otherwise it was Hamburg. So off I went. I penetrated under subterfuge, using a South African name, and developed my theme. I attended conferences of black market freelance criminals. And I learned about the curious ‘end user certificates' [to identify those who are entitled to use and buy weapons],
how they were forged or purchased from corrupt African diplomats. One of those attending a conference brought a bodyguard with him, an Alan Murphy, who was a British mercenary. He kept a diary.

Forsyth says Murphy, the mercenary bodyguard, believed his story about a coup in Equatorial Guinea and wrote it in his diary. Later Murphy shot himself and London police found the diary, which was passed to journalists at the
Sunday Times
. In turn, they claimed to have evidence of Forsyth's involvement in a real coup attempt.

Forsyth first suggested he is ‘certain there was no coup attempt in 1973', though the British police knew different. They had the benefit of the Special Branch report from Gibraltar and the confessions of the mercenaries arrested in the Canary Islands. They also believed Forsyth had played a central role, according to Forsyth himself. The novelist admits that Scotland Yard contacted him, while he was living in Ireland, and told him never to try it again. Others are convinced, too. An ex-mercenary who fought with Mike Hoare and now lives in South Africa says he received a letter from a person close to Forsyth, Knowle Hamilton, who also confirmed that the novelist had arranged the real plot. Even readers of
The Dogs of War
might have suspected something: though an entertaining novel, much of the story reads like a documentary account.

The evidence suggests Frederick Forsyth did plot a real coup in 1973, which sadly did not succeed. Somehow he lifted details from the real plot, as shown by the newly released documents in the National Archives. Forsyth might have claimed that he was told an insider's account of the real coup plot by others and merely borrowed the information. But then why deny a real coup was ever planned? Perhaps because he
also conducted extraordinary ‘research' in the same year into carrying out that coup. That reasonably led others – like Murphy – to think he planned a coup for real. It seems that Murphy was right.

Interviewed in April 2006, Forsyth now admits there was a ‘stillborn attempt' at a coup. Asked whether he helped plot it, he says his memory is vague: ‘I don't know whether I thought of it, or someone else.' As for the relationship between the coup attempt and his novel, he is not sure which came first: ‘It was a chicken and egg situation. I'm not sure if the authors of the plot listened to me, or I listened to them … We were sitting around in pubs discussing it … people with a lot of beer in them.'

He also knew Gay – ‘a level-headed Scot' – from Biafra, and conceded that the two had co-operated. ‘Yes, we were talking, meeting in pubs, over Fernando Po', he says. He admits, too, giving the police a character reference regarding Gay, after a bag with guns was traced to the Scot. And, finally, he admits passing money to the coup plotters: ‘Yes, payments were made, always cash.' Though he suggests this was for ‘information' only. Asked bluntly if he plotted a coup in Equatorial Guinea he laughed and suggested ‘you put in the book what you have found.'

If Forsyth's art imitated real life, it is also clear that life imitated his art. The men of the rent-a-coup mercenary adventures, soldiers like Denard and Hoare, were fond of his novel. They treated it as a useful guide, perhaps because it contained such convincing detail. Forsyth says: ‘Denard succeeded, Hoare failed, but in both cases it was remarkable. In Denard's attack, I learned, every mercenary had a copy of
Les Chiens de Guerre
stuck in his back pocket and in Hoare's attack they all had the English version,
The Dogs of War
.' The plotters of the
Wonga Coup in 2004 went a step further, apparently replicating Forsyth's work in their own coup attempt. Forsyth believes the plotters of the ‘bizarre' Wonga Coup followed his book extremely closely.

It was almost the same, blow by blow, as my novel! There was one important difference. I said it cannot be done by airplane. A ship can drop over the horizon and be entirely on its own. There you can do your training; on board, you can oil and grease – or degrease, rather – your guns. You can use inflatable boats for dummy runs. Then you would come ashore in RIBs. In my book Cat Shannon, the chief mercenary, had a back-up unit of forty black soldiers.

Then thirty years pass and suddenly I hear of this bizarre plan in Equatorial Guinea! I've never spoken to Simon Mann. But here were the elements of my novel: the British backer; there is Severo Moto in exile; an external financier; the lure of [mineral] wealth; funding through blind companies; the recruitment of an officer to run it all. Then it was a complete cock-up, too much chat in bars in South Africa, the intelligence soon knew all about it. Yes, it was all taken off the page!

What is remarkable about this episode – apart from the fact that a prominent British figure was apparently involved in plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea, which sadly failed – is that his exploits were repeated precisely three decades later by another British figure, Simon Mann. But where the plotters of the real life first attack had a noble goal – removing a deranged dictator from power – Mann's scheme was organised for a more predictable reward. Where the old Equatorial Guinea was repressive and poor, the modern one is both repressive and rich – a far more appealing target for a hired gun.

‘… the Fernando Po people say …[a] ladder reached from earth to heaven so the gods could go up and down it and attend personally to mundane affairs…[But they] threw down the ladder, and have since left humanity severely alone.'

Mary Kingsley,
Travels in West Africa
(1897)

The consequences of the coup's failure in 1973 were not too grave for the plotters. Forsyth profited from
The Dogs of War
; the hired guns avoided jail. But Macias stayed in power for six more years, growing ever more awful. His behaviour also grew increasingly odd. As if performing Shakespeare, he held long conversations with people he had killed, ordering that places be set at dinner for ghosts of particular victims. By 1979, even close family members feared for their lives. He dreaded assassination himself. He was part deaf (which helps explain why he shouted and screamed during speeches), half blind and suffered ‘jerky movements', suggesting a serious illness. He could only rule with the support of his immediate family, notably his nephew Obiang Nguema, the commander of the National Guard and the military governor of Fernando Po.

Macias eventually retreated to a fortified villa in his remote home town of Mongomo, on the mainland. When the army stopped receiving wages, a group of officers of the
National Guard visited and asked for money. Macias had them summarily shot. Finally that spurred others to act: the tyrant was removed in a putsch on 3 August 1979, without the help of foreign novelists. Obiang and a group of other senior officers called it a ‘freedom coup'. Macias retired with suitcases packed with green banknotes – equeles – bearing his own likeness to his stronghold in Mongomo, where he stuffed the loot in a wooden hut. The exact amount is unknown but estimates vary from $60 million to $150 million. He hunkered down in a bamboo bunker, defended by loyal fighters, with dozens of villagers as hostages.

As soldiers loyal to the new government approached, Macias killed several hostages and a large battle erupted. The hut full of money was set ablaze, destroying the country's entire foreign reserves. A Romanian engineer who hid under a table in a house in Mongomo while fighting raged guessed that hundreds were killed. Eventually Macias fled to the jungle. Racing to the Gabonese border, his car fell into an ambush and the driver was killed. Cornered in thick forest, most of his fighters deserted. A government soldier bragged that Macias was now ‘on foot and alone: we shall get him'. Eventually a peasant woman spotted the old dictator clambering out of a roadside ditch, still clutching a small suitcase. He screamed at her: ‘You will come under my black magic powers. I don't know why you want to hunt me when I have given you all my money.' An army statement said just one loyal guard stayed with Macias to the end, though he was finally killed. A bullet caught Macias, too, in the left arm, but he was detained alive.

News of the arrest produced ‘wild scenes of joy in Malabo', reported Spanish radio. Ordinary people called the old dictator Hitler. He had all but destroyed Equatorial Guinea.
A Reuters journalist who visited shortly afterwards wrote that the ‘jungle creeps into cocoa plantations … The jobless wander about aimlessly and rats dash across hospital wards. Most people live on wild fruit and vegetables, and a packet of cigarettes costs a week's average salary.'

But it was not the start of democracy for the country. Macias's nephew and longstanding acolyte, Obiang Nguema, took over as head of a new ‘Supreme Military Council'. He anguished over what to do with the old tyrant. His uncle was an important relative, a near father figure, according to custom in this part of Africa. More troubling, Obiang had long supported him. A trial might expose evidence of his own complicity in Macias's misrule, so the nephew wanted to leave his uncle to rot in a psychiatric hospital. But the public demanded prosecution and execution.

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.'