Some call it South Africa’s Siberia, a dumping ground for the unwanted, but those condemned to live in Pomfret lament that some of them were wanted — as warriors.
Marooned on the dust-blown fringe of the Kalahari desert in the Northern Cape, Pomfret is a village of 3 000 outcasts eking out an existence in cracked houses with no running water.
Two decades ago they lived in Angola, where the apartheid regime enlisted the men into a black foreign legion, 32 Battalion, to fight against liberation movements in their native Angola as well as then South West Africa (Namibia).
They lost the wars and moved to South Africa, but here too a liberation movement took power. It allowed the Angolan soldiers and their families to stay at their former army base in Pomfret. Stranded on an asbestos-poisoned wasteland 160km from the nearest town, this was the price of fighting for the white man.
Earlier this year former members of 32 Battalion repeated that folly for a Briton — and his backers — whose lifestyles are at the opposite end of the wealth spectrum. This time they took orders from a British mercenary, Simon Mann, who allegedly dangled a monthly pay cheque of about R50 000.
Now the village is counting the cost of accepting his offer in absent husbands and fathers. The same court in Zimbabwe that recently jailed Mann for seven years jailed his foot soldiers for 12 months.
For relatives it was a disaster: while their men languish in Harare’s Chikurubi prison they will struggle for food, clothes and medicine. ”We are all suffering. We have nothing to pay for anything,” wept Bibiana Tchimuichi, whose husband Eduardo was one of dozens of Angolans who formed the bulk of the 67 men jailed with Mann.
The Angolans were arrested in March when a Boeing 727, chartered by Mann, landed at Harare to refuel and collect weapons. Though convicted only of immigration offences it is alleged the Angolans were on their way to Equatorial Guinea to topple an oil-rich dictatorship for the benefit of Mann’s alleged British backers, including, it is alleged, Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
”It is a lie. My husband is not a mercenary. He is a security guard,” said Lucia Baka (40), whose husband Manuel quit a security job in Pretoria to follow Mann.
Like other wives, she claimed the Angolans were told they would guard mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a lucrative, legitimate, low-risk job. Under interrogation in Zimbabwe their husbands have stuck to that story.
Analysts wonder whether the Angolans really believed that was their job, but Lucia Baka insisted they would not have boarded the plane knowing the real mission was to depose President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
Whether naive dupes or complicit mercenaries, there is no doubting the gulf between the foot soldiers’ personal circumstances and the plot’s alleged investors, all of whom deny links to the coup and none of whom is known to have visited Pomfret, a sprawl of brick bungalows with broken windows, patchy electricity and no flushing toilets.
Some former 32 Battalion members who could speak English found security work in cities, boosting family incomes otherwise dependent on pensions and social grants. Now that lifeline has been cut, said relatives, because of the coup plotters’ greed. They relish Thatcher’s upcoming trial in Cape Town on coup-related charges that could put him behind bars for 15 years.
The ire of Cristina Fernando (38) was directed at Mann, who she claimed duped her husband Augusto: ”He lied to us.” At least nine families in Pomfret have men in Chikurubi prison.
Lawyers for Mann said he sold his private plane to raise funds for his co-accused and that it is not his fault the money has been held up.
But that did not appease Aida Tchimuichi (20). She wanted Mann to serve more than seven years. ”He put my father at risk.”
To be caught again on the wrong side of a white man’s fight is a grim twist. Two decades ago the Angolans were lionised by apartheid generals for feats against left-wing guerrillas in Angola and South West Africa.
Enemies called them Os Terriveis (The Terrible Ones), and accused them of atrocities. In apartheid’s last years they were granted South African citizenship but never received decent housing, jobs or training for civilian life.
”I have tremendous guilt because the promises made to them were broken,” said the battalion’s founding commander, Colonel Jan Breytenbach. ”The only thing they knew was fighting.”
For João dos Santos (46), home is a derelict clinic in Pomfret smelling of urine. Paralysed from the waist down, he had no chance of boarding a plane to Zimbabwe. ”I’m getting old in a wheelchair. There is no future for us. We can’t go back to Angola and the South Africans accuse us of helping the whites.”
Dos Santos comforts himself with historical revisionism. By resisting Soviet-backed forces in Southern Africa, he said, 32 Battalion helped defeat communism and bring democracy to South Africa. ”It’s like we built a house but we have to sleep outside.” — Â