The Wonga Coup

Guns, Thugs, And A Ruthless Determination To Create Mayhem In An Oil-Rich Corner Of Africa. Equatorial Guinea is a tiny African country. Humid, jungle-covered, and rife with disease, even some of its own people call it Devil Island. Its president in 2004, Obiang Nguema, had been accused of cannibalism, mass murder, billion-dollar corruption, and general rule by terror. Why, in March 2004, was Equatorial Guinea the target of a group of British, South African and Zimbabwean mercenaries, traveling on an American-registered ex-National Guard military plane, that was flown to Africa by American pilots? The real motive lay deep below the ocean floor: oil. In The Dogs of War, novelist Frederick Forsyth had described an attempt by mercenaries to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea--in 1972. The chain of events surrounding the night of March 7, 2004, is a rare case of life imitating art--or, at least, life imitating a 1970s thriller--in almost uncanny detail, in a tale of venality, vanity and greed.--From publisher description.

Softcover. English. PublicAffairs. 2007. ISBN: 9781586485009. 320 pp. Fair/good. Book No: 2003063