Point of departure
Point of Departure
Report 200403PVKH
Mission Report, National Intelligence Agency, South Africa, declassified under Section 34(b) Act 145 of 2014 "declassified with ministerial concurrence"[1]
Persuant to instructions met DAGOBERT [2] at bar in HATFIELD, 5 March 2004. Advised him our information received re mercenary attempt on EQUATORIAL GUINEA and asked him to pass on Minister's request that they be detained on arrival in HARARE and charged under Zimbabwean law. He affirmed.[3]
With Thatcher in the Bight of Benin
Edwin Summers, 2031, No Exit Press
The day before our departure, Joshua [van Staden] called me in a panic. He had been approached by a Zimbabwean intelligence officer, one Harold Dube, whom he knew from his days in Harare. Apparently South African intelligence had somehow gained knowledge of our plans and wanted the Zimbabwean authorities to arrest the advance team when they stopped in Harare to collect weapons. I'd never been in favour of this Zimbabwean weapons business and this just confirmed my worst fears.
"What does he want?", I asked Joshua, "Do you trust him?"
"He's been good in the past", he replied, "He's just hard up." Of course he's hard up, he's a Zimbabwean civil servant. Do the math as the Americans say.
I called Simon [Mann] and Mark [Thatcher] and we met at the usual place in Parktown. Mark finally agreed to go back to Nick's [du Toit] plan of sourcing the weapons locally, which I had always preferred. We would naturally lose our deposit paid to Zimbabwe Defence Industries, but that beat telling Mutize [4] we were abandoning the deal. I called Nick and he confirmed he could set up the deal in time and take delivery later the same day. Simon called Joshua for him to pay off Dube, and the last threat to our plan was stopped. No-one would pass through Zimbabwe but hopefully the South Africans still thought our men would be arrested there and take no further action.
Nick said later that he thought that Kasrils [5] wanted the team arrested in Zimbabwe as they would face much stiffer charges than could be brought in Johannesburg under the Foreign Military Assistance Act - not to mention stiffer sentences and the truely horrendous conditions of Zimbabwean jails and prisons.
[1] Known colloquially as the "five year rule", providing for bulk declassification of government documents, five years after their classification, with exemptions at the discretion of the Minister for Intelligence.
[2] Code name referring to Harold Dube, a Zimbabwean central intelligence officer.
[3] Thus far consistent with
one interpretation of what took place OTL. POD follows immediately.
[4] Zimbabwe Defence Industries managing director, who received a deposit of £100,000 via Simon Mann before the POD.
[5] Ronnie Kasrils, then South African Minister for Intelligence.