The Zimbabwe/Equatorial Guinea saga continues
BBC is reporting that the 70 alleged mercenaries seized in Zimbabwe are now being charged with conspiracy to kill Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of Equatorial Guinea. The men had previously been charged with violating immigration and firearms laws. None of those charges would merit the death penalty, which Zimbabwean foreign minister Stan Mudenge has threatened the men might face. It is possible that the conspiracy charge has been added so that one or more of the men could be charged with a capital crime. Their lawyer, Jonathan Samkange, describes the conspiracy charge as “fictional” and points out that, if a conspiracy took place, it occurred in South Africa where the flight originated and plans were made.
In the meantime, other nations are pulling their nationals out of Equatorial Guinea, including Ghana, which sent an air force plane to retrieve several dozen citizens and plans to evacuate more by sea. Hundreds of Cameroonians are also fleeing the country, reporting that they are being pressured out by the Nguema government.
September 8th, 2006 at 7:06 am
[...] The coup story made a minor splash with Africa watchers trying to unpack a complex tale that involved South African and British mercenaries, Zimbabwean arms, an exiled opposition leader in Spain, and a US-made transport plane. (My blog post from March 17, 2004, gives you a sense for how spotty information was.) The story made a bigger splash in Great Britain when it was discovered that one of the financiers of the coup was Sir Mark Thatcher, son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Roberts’ book makes the case that Thatcher did not know he was funding a coup attempt – that he believed he was helping finance an air ambulance service in West Africa – but also makes the case that Thatcher worked closely with Simon Mann, a British mercenary who was the key figure in the plot. [...]
June 29th, 2007 at 2:59 am
[...] So I guess at the end of the day what it boils down to is that their are some African nations where we could invest in or channel aid into and many would benefit and then there are others nations on the continent where this would not hold true. This is why I think that there is more than meets the eye on this aid vs aid debate. This is also what makes the arguments of economists like Prof. George Ayittey so valid. Unfortunately, it is so much easier for us to only hone in on the “shock value” aspect of arguments from the likes of those like Ayittey, Mwenda, and Shikwate-so we tend to sensatinalize the “aid is bad” component of their arguments and then end up taking that one part of what they say out of context. Which is to say that that aid does not necessarily have to be always bad and that trade is not necessarily all good at all times-but that good governance must precede both. The scenario playing out right now in places like Equitorial Guineua, Nigeria, and Sudan seems to crystalize this notion. There is a substantial amount of trade taking place in each of these three nations but the policy gaps have in each country have led to huge income gaps between the poor and wealthy of these three countries; in short the good deals only go to the well-connected. [...]