How odd.
Sir Mark Thatcher (he inherited the Baronetcy from his father) has been held by South African police for involvement in the plot to overthrow the government on Equatorial Guinea. The trial of the mercenary Nick Du Toit has just begun in EG, along with thirteen other defendants accused of conspiring to start the coup. Meanwhile, in Zimbabwe, between 65 and 70 men have been held since March when their plane was seized during a stopover. The head of this group, Simon Mann, a former SAS captain and boss of the original mercenary plc
Exective Outcomes, has now plead guilty to trying to procure dangerous weapons in a Zimbabwean court. The theory seems to be that these 70 odd men under Mann were to carry through the coup that Du Toit's men were to start. Mann is a friend of Mark Thatcher
who was apparently threatened with blackmail over this fact. The article there theorises that the blackmail attempt was undertaken by coup-plotters who wanted to put pressure on high profile friends of Mann's to get them to help them out of a sticky spot. The fact that Mann has now plead guilty to a charge that could get him ten years in a Zimbabwean prison suggests that any high profile friends he might have have not been able to come through for him...
So why a coup in EG? Well it's the oil, clearly. The place floats on it, and many non-Africans make a lot of money out of it. The current president is getting on a bit, and the feeling seems to be that he will die soon and precipitate a nasty succession struggle. Better for all concerned to engineer a coup and keep everything running smoothly, if undemocratically.
This Guardian article even suggests a possible money-man for the operation. So - why is Mark Thatcher (or Thickie Mork as his Harrovian school chums dubbed him) being picked up? Well,
the idea is that he funded the thing, perhaps arranging it on behalf of powerful friends for a fee... Of course this may just be the inevitable outcome of standing up to blackmailers. Only time will tell. He'll be the death of his mum, that boy.