RTFA: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM…

CONAKRY, Guinea – A military-led group seized control of the airwaves in Guinea and declared a coup Tuesday after the death of the mineral-rich West African country’s longtime dictator, but the prime minister insisted he remained in charge.

An Associated Press reporter saw three tanks and dozens of armed soldiers heading toward the office of the prime minister inside the country’s presidential compound.

The troops’ allegiance was not immediately apparent. But they appeared less than an hour after Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare announced in a state broadcast that he was inside his office and that his government had not been dissolved.

Earlier Tuesday, a group calling itself the National Council for Democracy began announcing its takeover on state-run radio and TV, just hours after longtime dictator Lansana Conte’s death was made public.

“The government is dissolved. The institutions of the republic are dissolved. … From this moment on, the council is taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people,” said the coup leader, who identified himself as Capt. Moussa Camara.

The coup came just hours after the death of Conte, who was one of the last members of a dwindling group of so-called “African Big Men” who came to power by the gun and resisted the democratic tide sweeping the continent.

Mr. Conte was believed to be in his 70s but the government never disclosed his birth date. He was only Guinea’s second president since it gained independence from France a half-century ago.

Ahh yes… Good old “coup in Guinea.” This is a real meme, and if you want some background, you came to the right place. We start with a little “Illuminatus Trilogy” which psychedelically implanted dozens of half-truth/half-historical memes in our collective consciousness.

From Wikipedia for Equatorial Guinea:

Fernando Po (now Bioko) is featured prominently in the 1975 science fiction work The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. The island (and, in turn, the country) experience a series of coups in the story which lead the world to the verge of nuclear war. The story also hypothesizes that Fernando Po is the last remaining piece of the sunken continent of Atlantis.

I’m not sure what inspired Shea and RAW, but if you have the background, please enlighten us.

Continuing along, there have been many, MANY coup attempts over the last several decades. The Wonga Coup is one of the most visible, thanks to a novel written about it:
The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa. Rob Hardy, from Amazon, provides an excellent review of the book:

Equatorial Guinea isn’t much of a nation, even for Africa. “In most atlases, the country lies hidden under the staple,” writes Adam Roberts. But it has oil, and that makes quite the difference. In _The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa_, Roberts has told the story of an attempted coup by international businessmen and mercenaries in March 2004. The aim was not to gain political power, or to help the blighted nation’s poor start claiming some of their country’s riches. The aim was simply to get “a large splodge of wonga” as one of the plotters called a big infusion of cash. (Surprisingly, the _OED_ says that “wonga” is British, not African, slang.) The plot, for many reasons explained here, did not work, and plenty of the plotters and their henchmen suffered, but it has had some effects on Equatorial Guinea, and also reflects the current larger problems in the economic development of Africa. The book is well researched, and at times reads like an adventure novel, sort of a failed _The Dogs of War_.

This is no coincidence. _The Dogs of War_ was written by Fredrick Forsyth, who has recently, after formerly secret British documents were unsealed, admitted his own role in financing a similar, and similarly failed, coup against Equatorial Guinea in 1973. In some ways, it is a shame that the 1973 coup didn’t succeed; it was less for riches than for removal of the deranged dictator Macias Nguema, who went on for a further six mad years. He was succeeded by his nephew, Obiang Nguema, about whom the best that can be said is that he is not as crazy as his uncle. Torture and death were his ways of getting things done, but he has successfully brought foreigners and oil companies of the west into his little country, which now gets about six billion dollars a year for the very good and pure oil beneath it. The benefits do not go to the citizens, for whom spending on education is less than any country and for whom public health efforts are so stunted that the average life expectancy is fifty years. Obiang did have an opponent in exile, Severo Moto. The old Etonian and former Special Air Service Officer Simon Mann thought that he could put Moto in but run things commercially himself. Such a coup requires plenty of money, and Mann had it, but he was also competent at finding investors who were interested in the potential gains in a regime change. One was Sir Mark Thatcher, son of the former Prime Minister, who helped pay for a rental combat helicopter. Mann recruited black Angolan soldiers and Afrikaner thugs for the proposed action and plenty of armaments and aircraft. The plotters may have thought that South Africa and Zimbabwe supported their plans, but it was these two countries that stopped the coup while the forces were gathering. Hapless mercenaries, 64 of them, were arrested from their airplane in Zimbabwe and were consigned to the bad prison there, while the rest of the crew were captured in Equatorial Guinea and went to the even worse prison there. The descriptions of the prisons and the active and passive tortures that were used on the men are difficult reading.

Many of the participants in the coup have been released by now. Sir Mark Thatcher is sure that the retribution extracted against him was revenge against his mother, but he did plead guilty to financing the helicopter. He cooperated with prosecutors, had to pay a fine, became a convict who cannot return to the US, and his marriage broke up. Many of the other plotters struck deals as well, implicating their fellow conspirators deeper, but Mann has not done this, and remains in jail in Zimbabwe, hoping never to be extradited to Equatorial Guinea. Ironically, the plot has helped Obiang, as the US came to the realization that he was at least a known force and could be reliably counted upon to receive millions in exchange for allowing the oil companies to make their extractions. He has since visited Washington, and was told “You are a good friend and we welcome you” by Condoleeza Rice. He has made new friends in Spain and South Africa, who have argued that coups would be less likely if he would help the ordinary citizens of his country, but few changes have happened. Among the background villains of this piece are the oil companies themselves, which wash their hands of responsibility to make sure that some of the money they spend goes to causes better than enriching the powerful, and the US banking system that allows those powerful ones to sock away tainted millions. Roberts himself writes, “It is hardly appropriate to draw sweeping lessons about the whole of modern Africa as a whole from a story of a failed coup in a single small country,” but still, there are so many layers of rot revealed in this often exciting story that it is clear the world should be behaving better.

This really happened… The story was updated as recently as June 2008. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

British mercenary Simon Mann sought at his trial on Thursday to pin responsibility for a plot to topple Equatorial Guinea’s president on London-based millionaire Ely Calil.

Mann – who prosecutors accuse of spearheading the operation – said Calil was the mastermind in the failed 2004 bid to oust the small but oil-rich west African country’s leader, Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

Mann, educated at Eton and a former member of Britain’s elite SAS force, said the coup operation was budgeted at $US20 million ($A21.15 million).

The coup attempt has attracted international attention because of the involvement of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s son Mark, whom Mann described as a key member of the team yesterday.

However, on the third day of Mann’s trial, the mercenary, who faces a 30-year jail sentence if found guilty as charged, said he and his troops were unable to act without Calil’s express authorisation being given.

Calil could make decisions on any aspect of the operation, which Mann estimated cost around $US20 million, without consulting his team on the ground.

At the end of the day’s proceedings, the presiding judge announced that the trial – which had been expected to run for three days – would be extended to tomorrow.

He gave no indication as to whether there might be a further extension.

Speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Mann said Calil – a Lebanese-born oil tycoon now of British nationality – produced whatever money he wanted, whenever he wanted.

The court also heard from South African mercenary Nick Du Toit, currently serving a 34-year sentence in a Malabo jail for his part in the plot.

From Wikipedia for 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d’état attempt:

In 7 March 2004 Zimbabwean police in Harare airport impounded a plane which flew in from South Africa with 67 alleged mercenaries on board.[2] On March 9, 2004 Nick du Toit and 14 other South African and Armenian men were arrested in Equatorial Guinea on suspicion of being the mercenaries’ vanguard.[3][4] The alleged plot leader ex-Special Air Service (SAS) officer Simon Mann,[4] was arrested with two colleagues near the runway while waiting for arms to be loaded on a Boeing 727, carrying three crew and 64 former soldiers recruited in South Africa.[3] The majority of those alleged to have been the mercenaries planning to carry out the coup are based in South Africa and ex-members of the 32 Buffalo Battalion, a notorious special force unit that fought for the South African apartheid regime.[5]

The marketing manager of Zimbabwe Defense Industries, Hope Mutize, said in court that Simon Mann had paid him a deposit on weapons worth $180,000 (£100,000) in February 2004 and indirectly linked Mr Mann to the alleged plot by saying he was accompanied by a South African, Nick du Toit, the leader of the 14 men arrested in Equatorial Guinea.[3] “They insisted they did not want any paperwork,” Mr Mutize added. Legal sources said Mr Mann had cleared the deal with ZDI’s managing director, Tshinga Dube. But news of the deal apparently leaked to the South African authorities, who tipped off Zimbabwean intelligence. Their arms requisition included 20 machine guns, 61 AK-47 assault rifles, 150 hand grenades, 10 rocket-propelled grenade launchers (and 100 RPG shells), and 75,000 rounds of ammunition.[6][7][8] Mr Mann, 51, said he wanted the rifles, mortars and ammunition to guard mines in volatile parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo.[3]

It was alleged that those arrested in Zimbabwe made a stopover in Harare city to buy weapons and expected to join a team in Equatorial Guinea to overthrow President Obiang.[9] [10][11][12] Nick du Toit, the leader of the group of arrested in Equatorial Guinea, said at his trial in Equatorial Guinea that he was recruited by Simon Mann and that he was helping with recruitment, acquiring weapons and logistics. He says he was told they were trying to install an exiled opposition politician, Severo Moto, as the new president.[12]

Finally, some background on Equatorial Guinea itself:

In March 1968, under pressure from Equatoguinean nationalists and the United Nations, Spain announced that it would grant independence to Equatorial Guinea. A constitutional convention produced an electoral law and draft constitution. In the presence of a UN observer team, a referendum was held on August 11, 1968, and 63% of the electorate voted in favor of the constitution, which provided for a government with a General Assembly and a Supreme Court with judges appointed by the president.

In September 1968, Francisco Macías Nguema was elected first president of Equatorial Guinea, and independence was granted in October. In July 1970, Macias created a single-party state and by May 1971, key portions of the constitution were abrogated. In 1972 Macias took complete control of the government and assumed the title of President for Life. The Macias regime was characterized by abandonment of all government functions except internal security, which was accomplished by terror; this led to the death or exile of up to one-third of the country’s population. Due to pilferage, ignorance, and neglect, the country’s infrastructure–electrical, water, road, transportation, and health–fell into ruin. Religion was repressed, and education ceased. The private and public sectors of the economy were devastated. Nigerian contract laborers on Bioko, estimated to have been 60,000, left en masse in early 1976. The economy collapsed, and skilled citizens and foreigners left.

All schools were ordered closed in 1975, and the country’s churches were closed in 1978. Nguema introduced a campaign of ‘authenticity,’ replacing colonial names with native ones: the capital Santa Isabel became Malabo, the main island of Fernando Poo was renamed Masie Nguema Biyogo after himself, and Annobón became Pagalu. As part of the same process, Nguema also ordered the entire population to drop their European names and adopt African ones. His own name underwent several transformations, so that by the end of his rule he was known as Masie Nguema Biyogo Ñegue Ndong.

In August 1979 Macias’ nephew from Mongomo and former director of the infamous Black Beach Prison, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, led a successful coup d’état; Macias was arrested, tried, and executed. Obiang assumed the Presidency in October 1979. The islands were renamed Bioko and Annobón. The new ruler faced the challenge of restoring order in a country that was in shambles–by the end of Masie Nguema’s dictatorship, the state coffers were empty and the population had been reduced to only one-third of what it was at independence.

Is this meme going to live on? …will the coup attempts continue? Well, so long as people keep writing novels about it, and so long as the coups keep happening, I’d venture that the answer is “yes”.