The South African Civil Society Information Service

Once Upon a Coup: A Tale of Intrigue from the Oil Rich Country of Equatorial Guinea

28 Aug 2009

WIDE ANGLE is a television programme of America's Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) that provides in-depth news coverage of international issues. This week it aired a programme about the foiled coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, which included the involvement of South African mercenaries. 

The clip above, which makes for intriguing viewing on the scramble for oil in Africa, is an excerpt of the programme aired by the public broadcaster.

PBS billed the programme as follows:

"A failed coup attempt…a British mercenary in a notorious African prison…a dictator suspicious of Western powers…and beneath it all, a spectacular underwater oil reserve that the world’s major powers would love to get their hands on."

"It may sound like the latest John LeCarré bestseller, but in fact it’s the real-life intrigue of Once Upon a Coup, WIDE ANGLE’s penetrating look at the mysterious goings-on in Equatorial Guinea, a tiny West African nation newly rich with oil and infamous for corruption. The story begins in 2004, when a group of mercenaries, including a British ex-special forces officer named Simon Mann, is arrested in Zimbabwe. Equatorial Guinea’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, accuses them of plotting a coup against him. When Mann is sentenced to 34 years in Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Black Beach prison, he claims to be only one piece of an international plot to control the country’s vast oil resources. Once Upon a Coup travels the globe to unravel that plot, which stretches from Africa to the U.K., from a prime minister’s son to Zimbabwean arms dealers, from South Africa to Spain."

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You can find this page online at http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/165.19.