A free Mann
Equatorial Guinea is a pretty awful place to live. Unless, of course, you happen to be a member of the ruling elite. Despite experiencing recent economic growth thanks to the discovery of oil, the population largely live in poverty with almost all of the petroleum revenue being appropriated by President Obiang to fund a luxurious lifestyle for him and his inner circle, as well as ensuring the military are paid well enough to keep him in power. Although there are occasional elections, they are quite obviously loaded in Obiang’s favour and nobody is under any illusions about him being willing to relinquish power voluntarily. He is a dictator in all but name, and while he probably isn’t responsible for quite as much bloodshed and tyranny as the guy he overthrew, that’s really not saying much given the record of Francisco Macías Nguema. Macías reputably had a penchant for mass public executions to the soundtrack of Mary Hopkin’s Those Were The Days. His regime was nightmarish in the most literal of senses… terrifying and surreal all at once, like a David Lynch film writ large.
If you’re an ordinary person in Equatorial Guinea, you have a difficult life and probably quite a short one.
It’s worth pointing out that when people describe Equatorial Guinea as “oil rich”, it’s a statement that needs to be placed in some context. In fact, with estimated recoverable reserves of a little under 2 billion barrels, Equatorial Guinea represents a fraction of one percent of global oil. However, with a population of less than 650,000 that should, in the right hands, be enough wealth to provide the country with a more than adequate health, education and social welfare system. Given their oil resources in proportion to their population size Equatorial Guinea could be a very pleasant place to live given radically different circumstances.
It’s the sort of place that could desperately do with a change in government.
And about five years ago, a group of men decided to try do just that. A bunch of South African mercenaries led by Simon Mann (a former British SAS officer turned soldier-for-hire) were preparing to launch a coup d’état when they were seized enroute to Equatorial Guinea. The Zimbabwean government intercepted their chartered plane when it touched down in Harare to take on supplies and Mann was extradited to the small West African nation to stand trial. During the trial allegations were made that Mann’s coup attempt was being backed by members of the British establishment including Sir Mark Thatcher (son of a certain ex-Prime Minister) and Jeffrey Archer (baron, bad novelist, prominent tory and all round git). These remain “allegations”, though Thatcher’s involvement in providing logistical support has been proven despite his insistence that he was unaware of the details of the plan and had no idea Mann and his private army were up to anything dodgy.
The details of the operation are obviously a little vague, but the basic plan seems to have been to overthrow Obiang and install either Mann himself or a local puppet as President of the country whereupon those who organised, financed and took part in the coup would reap the rewards in much the same way that Obiang currently does. I feel confident that largescale infrastructure projects and a redistribution of the oil wealth to the general populace wasn’t on the cards.
Mann was placed on trial in Equatorial Guinea and found guilty of plotting to overthrow the government. In July last year he was sentenced to 34 years in prison.
Now, it’s fair to say that Equatorial Guinea probably doesn’t have the most robust or transparent judiciary. People like President Obiang rarely install that kind of thing in the countries they rule. Dictators can be funny like that. Nonetheless, there’s no question — given Mann’s own public statements — that the basic facts are as stated. Surprisingly (or not if you assume that some kind of deal was done… cf. not the most robust or transparent judiciary) Mann has just been released having served less than a year and a half of his 34 year sentence. He appears to be a guy with an axe to grind and is looking to get even with the other coup plotters who left him swinging in the wind.
Despite the obvious relish with which some are anticipating whatever he’s got up his sleeve for Thatcher, there are others; Merrick for instance; who point out quite rightly that “a vicious mercenary is now free to enjoy his millionaire’s lifestyle and work on his book deal and film options”. This is hardly very satisfactory and is a somewhat lamentable outcome to the entire affair.
John Band, on the other hand, via that horrid twitter service that irritates me considerably, makes the following comments…
and then (because twitter insists on breaking simplistic soundbites down into absurd soundnibbles)
Taken at face value (and Twitter is doubtlessly doing John a disservice by reducing his position to two sentences of less than 140 characters each) that’s a pretty dreadful sentiment. It seems to be saying that so long as the regime is bad enough, it doesn’t matter if rich westerners storm into an African country, kill a bunch of people, overthrow the government and then syphon off the mineral wealth for their own benefit. It’s an endorsement of violent imperialism because the suggestion that Mann and his 70 heavily armed mercenaries were going to liberate the people of Equatorial Guinea from tyranny is risible.
Perhaps they’d have set up a regime that was moderately less oppressive? But that resolves into an endorsement of Obiang’s government given the fact that it is moderately less oppressive than the Macías dictatorship it replaced.
The reason we should be upset about the likes of Simon Mann and his establishment backers… the reason their actions should matter… is because military intervention and murder for personal gain should not be tolerated even if most of the dead were bastards. People like Mann are no different to the Obiangs of the world, even if he did go to Eton. And I’m a little taken aback that John seems to think it doesn’t matter if they go tearing around Africa pocketing the continent’s wealth at gunpoint.
I quite agree. It would be interesting to know what deal was made to secure Mann’s release, and who led the negotiations.
November 8th, 2009 | 2:49am
by R J Adams
Not only is it pretty clear that Mann’s team were there to install friends of Ely Calil as the government, with Mann’s reward being lucrative mineral concessions (as per his previous exploits), but – as you say – nobody’s claiming they were going to install any kind of sane or fair regime.
I’m sure you’re right too that Twitter necessarily reduces John Band’s points to caricature and they may be considered if given proper space. That being so, and him professing a failure to understand why I have the opinion I do, I wonder why he didn’t say owt in the comments on my post instead of issuing it in such an unsatisfactory medium as the tweet.
I hate tweeting for an extra reason. Every time the word is used it sets The Birdie Song by The Tweets going round my head.
November 8th, 2009 | 5:41pm
by Merrick
Short answer: because Twitter, unlike nearly all blog platforms, is just about tolerable to use for writing as well as reading from a mobile phone (and I didn’t have access to a computer over the w/e). But yes, it’s too unsubtle for this sort of thing.
The issue I have with Merrick’s post is that I don’t think it makes a blind bit of difference whether the crooked murderous bastards who misrule any given place are black, white, local, foreign, old Etonian (of local or foreign extraction) or left-school-at-10-to-join-the-militia. I don’t understand the mindset that being oppressed by a dictator who happens to carry the same passport as you is any better than being oppressed by a governor from abroad.
So while I’d have had no problems with Mann spending the rest of his life in a fleapit jail, I’m no sadder about his release than I am about the fact that – following the failure of Mann’s coup – Obiang isn’t going to spend the rest of his life in a fleapit jail. Being an Old Etonian with a UK passport doesn’t excuse robbing the poor in Africa, but nor is it any worse than wealthy Africans robbing the poor in Africa. Suggesting that it is has vaguely nasty connotations of “*they* don’t know any better, but *we* oughtn’t to do it”.
I might be misreading Merrick’s motivation, of course – I don’t read vile rags like the Telegraph, so if they’re running fawning pieces on Mann and Thatcher and the terrible injustice that befell them from trying to assume the White Man’s Burden, etc, then the Merrick piece is a completely reasonable reaction and I’m sorry for misunderstanding what drove it.
November 9th, 2009 | 10:12am
by john b
I hear what you’re saying, John, but I don’t really understand the point too well. There are a number of African nations currently being ruled by corrupt and oppressive governments. Some are ostensibly democratic (Nigeria, for instance, fulfills many of the criteria by which we judge a nation to be democratic but is still riddled with corruption) while some are clearly dictatorships despite their own claims to the contrary (Equatorial Guinea being one example).
And of course, Africa doesn’t hold a monopoly on corruption or oppression, but that’s where Equatorial Guinea is, and where Simon Mann sought his next fortune, so it’s the object of current focus.
Neither Merrick nor myself have suggested that we see local dictators as acceptable in some way, or that oppression and corruption can be justified by nationality or skin colour. Indeed, I pointed out that your implication that Mann’s coup attempt “didn’t matter”, was almost an endorsement of Obiang (as he isn’t quite as bad as his predecessor). That point is — I believe — an obvious condemnation of the Obiang regime.
But by saying that Mann’s release isn’t something to get worked up about or that his coup attempt didn’t matter, you are either saying “it doesn’t matter if white Etonian oppressors are not punished for their deeds” OR you are saying “it doesn’t matter if any oppressors are not punished”.
If we seek a world where the nations of Africa are free from brutal dictators, then we need to be upset when anyone who engages in that kind of activity escapes punishment irregardless of their nationality. Obiang’s continued rule is to be lamented. But so is an attempt by anyone; white or black; to emulate him.
I’d also suggest that Mann, being European and a former member of a European army, should be of marginally greater concern to us than Obiang in a “get your own home in order before criticising the housekeeping of others” sense. But that’s very much a secondary point.
And a tertiary point is that Mann’s activities represent a continuation of European imperialism in Africa (albeit with corporate rather than political paymasters). We may, in the final analysis, have little control over how Africans handle their affairs (and rightly so, many would argue) but we perhaps have an obligation to stamp out whatever remnants of our own inglorious past that remain on that continent. In which context, Mann’s release is extremely unhelpful and his violent plans must certainly matter to us.
November 9th, 2009 | 1:03pm
by Jim Bliss
John,
I don’t understand the mindset that being oppressed by a dictator who happens to carry the same passport as you is any better than being oppressed by a governor from abroad.
Neither do I. Which is why I didn’t say that or, as far as I can see, anything like it.
I lament Mann’s release because here was someone who has made a career of killing people in order to take the mineral resources of their countries to enrich himself. He is, in the most direct sense, a corporate colonial killer. He has moved around the world doing it with the arrogance one would expect of the English upper class soldier, entrenching vile regimes and siphoning off wealth, making justice for the peoples of those lands even further out of their reach.
If the idea of such killing and repression for a corporate coup bothers you, then you should be bothered that those who get caught doing it get released from jail after a token spell inside.
I don’t read vile rags like the Telegraph, so if they’re running fawning pieces on Mann
It’s not just the Tory rags, most ‘quality’ papers ran cuddly pictures of him hugging his wife wearing a remembrance poppy. Which they were always going to do, cos he’s one of ours. When he first went down the British press said he was ‘looking more like a jailed intellectual than a freelance commando’ and had quotes calling him a ‘humane man… very English, a romantic, tremendously good company’.
November 11th, 2009 | 11:19am
by merrick
Hmm. I still don’t quite understand the work that ‘corporate’ or ‘colonial’ are doing in your second paragraph above, or why I should be any more upset that Mann’s been released from jail than I should that Obiang is still in charge – I don’t accept that ‘we’ owe any responsibility for Mann’s actions.
I do, 100%, agree with Jim that:
“If we seek a world where the nations of Africa are free from brutal dictators, then we need to be upset when anyone who engages in that kind of activity escapes punishment irregardless of their nationality. Obiang’s continued rule is to be lamented. But so is an attempt by anyone; white or black; to emulate him.”
…also, you’re taking Paul Greengrass’s quote out of context there: it was from 2002 in response to “what was Mann like to work with on Bloody Sunday” – it’s interesting in the same way as people’s comments on Hitler’s paintings. As far as I can see, most British centre-right-to-left press coverage has been more on those lines, “isn’t it weird that an African coup-running mercenary is a posh chap from Eton”, rather than “it’s OK that he’s an African coup-running mercenary because he’s a posh chap from Eton”.
November 11th, 2009 | 4:05pm
by john b
I think the point Merrick was making, John, is that those quotes (which are indeed out of context) were wheeled out by the press around the time of Mann’s trial. You asked whether the press were fawning over Mann, and the fact that such irrelevant quotes were published at all during his trial certainly suggests they were — if not fawning — then at least going out of their way to make him appear more sympathetic to their readers.
Regarding the “corporate colonial” thing, I can’t speak for Merrick here but my understanding when that phrase is used in the context of modern Africa is simply that the exploitation of the African continent (and elsewhere) that was carried out by nations (and their agents) in the past has largely continued into the present but in a slightly different guise — the multinational corporation.
Mann’s erstwhile paymasters (Executive Outcomes) are one of several corporations involved in — amongst other things — making sure that the natural resources of Africa flow into Western economies for as far below “a fair price” as is possible. That was pretty much the function of imperialism in the past, so the phrase “corporate colonialism” is justifiable I believe.
November 11th, 2009 | 4:15pm
by Jim Bliss