A man is hanging naked from the ceiling by a meat hook. His feet are bound but
his mouth is open – screaming a confession. He is surrounded by soldiers in
ragged uniforms whose fists are caked in his blood. Unsatisfied, they taunt
him in a language he doesn’t understand as a rifle butt is thrust into his
groin. His name is Nick du Toit. He is a South African mercenary and one of
my best friends.
In his final bout of punishment, the air fills with the tang of roasting meat.
Under the flames from the soldiers’ cigarette lighters, the fat on the soles
of his feet spits and crackles. His eyes gulp in the horror of the concrete
cell he’s strung up in. Men he has known for years dangle moaning, broken
and bleeding. One old friend is already dead. After uncounted hours of
torture, he is left to the mercy of the rats and the sea. The cell floods at
high tide, encrusting his wounds with salt.
This is how, in 2004, Nick began his 34-year sentence in Black Beach prison,
Africa’s most notorious jail. Along with Simon Mann, who was also sentenced
to 34 years last week, he was arrested trying to overthrow the government of
Equatorial Guinea, a tiny west African nation fabulously rich in oil. But
there is one person missing from the scene.
What Nick doesn’t see, when he opens his eyes, is me. Had all gone according
to plan, I would be hanging next to him: I was supposed to film the coup.
One afternoon two years earlier, Nick – a man I hardly knew then – saved my
life twice. Filming in rebel-held Liberia, I was making a documentary about
the vicious civil war there. Like many journalists working in war zones, I
decided to employ a security adviser. Unlike most journalists, I hired a
mercenary. Having fought as a gun-for-hire in the region, Nick seemed a
natural, if unorthodox, choice.
For many years he had been part of a reconnaissance commando unit in apartheid
South Africa’s elite special forces. I found it hard to identify this quiet,
measured man as a racist assassin. “That was the past,” he said. “And
anyway, we lost.”
Despite his history, I trusted him instinctively. We walked for 300 miles into
the heart of a brutal war. I filmed executions, torture and even ritual
cannibalism. Forgetting my misgivings about Nick’s past, I began to realise
that people are not good or evil, only that people do good or evil things.
His sheer will to live pulled us through. I was exhausted, malnourished and
at the edge of my sanity. And then came that afternoon.
We had edged our way towards the front line of the battle that engulfed the
rebel-held town we were trapped in. Fat machinegun rounds droned overhead.
Thirty yards away, government troops stood up and engaged us openly. I heard
Nick say: “We have to go – now.”
I shrugged his advice away. I hadn’t crawled for two hours to turn back
without pictures. But Nick’s hand was on my wrist, pulling me across the
street. Whoosh-thump. He dragged me sideways, down, rolling clear as the
earth sprang away from me like a dirty fountain.
Our party had taken a direct hit – by what? A rocket-propelled grenade? A
mortar? I stared mute at the bloody remains of the soldiers I’d been
standing with only seconds before. Deafened by the blast, I stood transfixed
as Nick mouthed commands at me. A high-velocity rifle bullet passed between
our faces, punching a hole in the wall beside us. Nick was dragging me to
safety as we were strafed by machinegun fire, the searing lead harrying us
down the street.
Nick had saved my life. As the desperate retreat began, we kept each other
sane through a mounting tide of bodies, violence and degradation.
Whoever I had been when I met Nick was a stranger to me when I returned to
London. In order to survive, Nick had helped me navigate to a place inside
myself so dark that I could no longer find my way back to normal life.
Without him to talk to, it seemed as if I was completely alone. None of my
friends at home could comprehend what it was like to watch a man butchered
and eaten in front of you; my attempts to confess what I had seen were
dismissed with embarrassed silence.
Eventually, Nick confided in me the details of his next job. A business
associate had asked him to help plan the overthrow of the government of a
small oil-rich west African country. The current president, alleged to be a
psychotic cannibal, was not cooperating with the oil industry. He would be
toppled by force and his exiled arch-rival installed in his place. The
payoff would be lucrative oil contracts for the plotters.
Nick promised me a place on the operation and another scoop – on one
condition. If the new government was to gain international recognition, the
coup would have to look like a local uprising. Nick was going to recruit
black African troops led by white mercenaries. I would be flown in ahead of
time, to be on the ground before the main contingent landed. My job would be
to film the arrival of the new president, flanked by black mercenaries, in
such a way as to make them look like rebellious local soldiers and not the
remnants of an apartheid-era special forces unit.
This footage would be released to the world’s media, buying the new regime
time while it took over the institutions of state. In return, I would have
exclusive access to film every aspect of the coup for a documentary that I
could release once Nick had been paid by the new president. It didn’t matter
how I phrased it to myself: one of my best mates had just asked me to help
him conspire in robbery with violence, which would involve tacitly agreeing
to murder. But the president of Equatorial Guinea is a monster, I reasoned.
Removing him might possibly, though not definitely, lighten the burden on
his citizens.
That was good enough for me: the ends excused the means. And besides, the
chances of Nick financing the operation were almost nil. I agreed.
Nick wanted me to meet the associate he was working with on the coup. In a
village outside Paris, I sat down to supper with Nick and Simon Mann,
legendary professional soldier and former member of the SAS. I was
astonished, actually momentarily lost for words. Nick, it seemed, was
serious.
They hinted at governmental backing from the US and UK; the list of financiers
and backers of the coup was an A to Z of international moneymen, oil barons
and politicians which at times verged on the downright ridiculous: even Mark
Thatcher had (apparently unwittingly) coughed up for a spot of DIY regime
change.
Over the following months, Simon and I kept in contact. Nick began
establishing a cover business in Equatorial Guinea to serve as an
operational base.
I packed my cameras. And then things fell apart. Unknown to me, the apparently
watertight plans for the operation dissolved into farce of such epic
proportions that Nick walked off the scene. Overall military planning was
handed to an operator who turned out to be an informer for the South African
government.
Panicked by the prospect of losing their investments, different financiers
began demanding refunds, or selling details of the operation on the
commercial intelligence market. Simon feared that the plan (and his future)
was doomed. He persuaded Nick to sign up again, claiming that the coup’s
financiers would kill Nick, and his family, if he didn’t rejoin.
Reluctantly back in the game, Nick fell foul of his own adventure. At least
one of the architects of the coup was working as a double agent for the
Equatorial Guinean government. My conversations with Nick were tapped by
African and western intelligence services. Everyone had sold out everyone
else.
In nervous ignorance, I was told to wait, uncertain what would happen next.
What happened next was that, in late February 2004, my grandfather – a war
hero who had raised and educated me – died after a short illness. I e-mailed
Nick in Equatorial Guinea to tell him I would be unable to travel until
March 14.
On March 7, Simon was arrested at Harare airport in Zimbabwe with 69 men, many
of them infamous mercenaries, attempting to buy weapons. Nick and his men in
Equatorial Guinea were rounded up. Two days later, Nick made a televised
confession admitting his guilt. He subsequently retracted this confession,
claiming it was extracted under torture. International observers confirmed
that one of his colleagues, Gerhard Nershz, was tortured to death.
Nick has another 30 years to serve in Black Beach prison, a sentence described
by Amnesty International as a slow death sentence. Had my grandfather not
died, I would have been jailed myself. And neither my cameras, nor Nick,
could have protected me.
Nick lived by taking risks, steeped in a profession deemed immoral by many and
not without reason. Yet I cannot find it within myself to condemn or even
judge him. When he was sentenced, I broke down in tears. He was my mate when
we limped out of the war in Liberia and he’s my mate today. The unpalatable
truth is that adversity breeds friendships that transcend moral judgments.
In the end, Nick made his choice, which took moral and physical courage, and
is paying the price for it.
The consequences of his African adventure have been far-reaching. I didn’t
film a coup, but I did make a documentary about his role in the plot. At the
premiere in London – while Nick spent another interminable night shackled in
his cell – I met my future wife. Our daughter has just turned one. The truth
is that I don’t just owe my own life to Nick, but my child’s life, too.
There is no greater debt of friendship than that.
© James Brabazon 2008
A version of this article appears in this month’s Arena magazine
His fate is a despicable outrage, an indictment against all who condone it - no matter what his crimes.
Chris, Daytona Beach, USA
Always two sides to every story it seems...................
We all have choices in this life !!!!!
Ian Payne, walsall,
Nick du Toit, who headed South African 5 Reconnaissance commando on 14th June 1985 into Gaborone, Capital city of Botswana, a country not at war with South Africa, killing with his group 14 unarmed civilians including a six year old child and a pregnant mother. A wonderful man? Certainly not
Dr. Alexander von Paleske, Gaborone, Botswana