"Africa isn't the same anymore"

SIMON Mann, heir to the Watney's beer fortune, graduate of Eton and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, former co-founder of Executive Outcomes, a leading mercenary outfit in Africa in the 90s, currently resident at Chikurubi maximum security prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, believes that "a large splodge of wonga" (a large amount of money) would spare him most of the seven-year term to which he was sentenced last Friday.

A number of his co-conspirators apparently believe the same. They just don’t get it. The conspiracy was classic African stuff: a plane-load of mercenaries flying across Africa, picking up a consignment of weapons as they went, to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny dictatorship that is Africa’s third-largest oil exporter.

The money was put up by a syndicate of British and South African investors, the mercenary muscle was provided by British and South African soldiers-of-fortune, and the pay-off would come in the form of cash and a cut in future oil revenues for the investors plus a contract for Simon Mann to provide security for the new regime.

The only problem with the scheme was that the "classic" period in African history is long over.

Full Article : newvision.co.ug