Mark Thatcher’s season of mischief across Africa

As Britain conducted the funeral service for the former Conservative British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher on Wednesday, there must have been many who spoke the name of one particularly notorious member of the famed so-called Iron Lady’s family in hushed tones.

That family member, one Mark Thatcher, is likely to endure for years as a most controversial and dubious footnote of his late mother’s legacy. One reason for that is because he has for most of his life cut the figure of persistent waywardness that visited much embarrassment on his mother and his family.

The country also had to bear with his controversial ways as his mother’s policies rubbed weary Britons the wrong way.

The African continent was, unfortunately, also dragged into Mark’s misadventures, particularly after he captured world headlines when he got lost in the Sahara in 1982.

Later known as Sir Mark, the Prime Minister’s son admitted that his antics in the Sahara were the result of having been unprepared for the Paris-Dakar Rally he had entered.

He ended up spending four days in the desert, causing his already overburdened mother much despair in a development that almost resulted in her losing her celebrated image as the Iron Lady.

Mark was born on August 15, 1953, in London’s Kensington district while his father, the late Denis, was watching a test match. It has been said that few children of British politicians have attracted the sort of negative headlines and embarrassing lawsuits that Sir Mark notched up.

Ironically, his notoriety rose as Lady Thatcher continuously assailed her compatriots with sermons on the value of self-sufficiency and the virtue of individuals standing on their own two feet.

Her openly adored son, however, continued to hang on her apron strings only to be later accused of inviting business associates to ring him at Downing Street, in the process allegedly dangling the prospect of meetings with his powerful mother.

As he set out on the road to vast riches, the highly controversial Sir Mark was able to shake off mounting criticism of his conduct.

Officially styled The Honourable Sir Mark Thatcher, he inherited his father’s hereditary baronetcy title in 2003, his father having become the first Baronet Thatcher in 1990.

Thick student

His haughty title aside, the former British PM’s eldest and only son, whose only sibling is his twin sister, The Hon Carol Thatcher, has been dogged by controversy since his childhood days.

Educated at the prestigious Harrow School, he rubbed shoulders with blue-blooded schoolmates from his early years but was never known for being particularly good at school. Instead, even as a schoolboy he was derisively referred to as “The boy Mark” and was dubbed “thickie” at Harrow.

In fact, when he left Harrow in 1971, Mark had only a measly three O-levels to his name. He later reportedly joined Touche Ross, an accounting firm, only to fail his accountancy exams three times and leave. Later, his nickname would change to “the Scratcher” after he gained a reputation as a millionaire fixer whose mother’s name opened doors for a loved son said to be so suave as to “sell sand to Arabs”.

Sir Mark’s peccadilloes were to go a notch higher when in 1995 he persuaded his first wife and their two children to move to South Africa, where they bought a huge and well-protected house in the fashionable district of Constantia, situated on the southern slopes of Table Mountain and overlooking Cape Town.

Styled Number 10 Dawn Avenue, the house was reportedly thatched, evoking the occupants’ connection with the Thatcher name while also provoking much humour among South African neighbours.

Reportedly heavily guarded by armed men, the residence had been bought after the sale of their British home in the Boltons, Kensington.

The house had been bought for £2 million (Sh257 million) in 1992, a price that aptly showed that Mark and his young family were not living in want.

The family was indeed reportedly well off enough to acquire another very large house in the wealthy Highland Park area of Dallas, where Sir Mark’s wife Diane used to return regularly for at least two months a year with her children Michael and Amanda.

There were early murmurs that the marriage was on the rocks, although Diane repeatedly denied them.

In the meantime, Sir Mark was gaining popularity – and later notoriety – on the Constantia party circuit. After rapidly gaining a reputation as a braggart, he was soon being ridiculed by those who knew him.

“He would keep banging on about his contacts throughout the world and the millions to be made in the Middle East,” a local industrialist was later quoted as saying, “but when it came to a serious discussion about world affairs, international business or politics, he didn’t seem to have much to offer”.

A hostess familiar with him said he reminded her “of those rather amiable, entertaining twits that PG Wodehouse used to write about”. And Mark’s reputation was not boosted when, in 1998, his African sojourn was further sullied by a major scandal.

According to reports, he lent huge sums of money at exorbitant interest rates to more than 900 local police officers and civil servants in Cape Town. Unrepentant, he admitted lending the cash but denied allegations of wrongdoing.

Coup d’état attempt

At about the same time, there were other allegations that he was making huge amounts by allegedly acquiring contracts for supplying aviation fuel in various African countries. The greatest blight to his character, however, came after he was implicated in the sensational coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea in 2004.

Arrested on 25 August, 2004 at his Constantia home, he was on the same day charged with contravening two sections of South Africa’s “Foreign Military Assistance Act” that bans South African residents from taking part in any foreign military activity.

Among the accusations levelled against him was one relating to alleged “possible funding and logistical assistance in relation to an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea.

The alleged plot was said to have been organised by Thatcher’s friend, Simon Mann, a man with mercenary connections who was later tried but released on presidential clemency in the African country.

In Equatorial Guinea in June 2008, Simon claimed during his trial testimony that Thatcher, then resident in Spain, “was not just an investor, he came completely on board and became a part of the management team” of the coup plot.

Around the time of the 2005 plea bargain, an advisor to Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme that: “We are confident that justice has been done”, although he did not indicate that the country would seek Sir Mark’s extradition.

Later, the president himself named Thatcher as a financial backer of the alleged coup attempt, even as more media reports linked Thatcher with its supposed leader, Mann.

Having earlier been arrested in South Africa, he was released on two million-rand bail and spent a period of time under house arrest but later moved to London to live with his widowed mother. In the meantime, wife Diane and the two children relocated to the family’s home in Dallas, Texas.

But the Equatorial Guinea coup matter continued to haunt Sir Mark, and following a process of plea-bargaining he pleaded guilty in January 2005 to breaking anti-mercenary legislation in South Africa. His specific offence was recorded as investing in an aircraft “without taking proper investigations into what it would be used for”.

Having admitted that he had paid the money for the aircraft intended for use in the planned coup, Sir Mark reportedly said he was under the impression it was to be invested in an air ambulance service to help impoverished Africans.

The presiding judge rejected the explanation and Thatcher was fined 3 million rand and received a four-year suspended jail sentence.

On 3 April 2005, Sir Mark announced that his family home would be in Europe after he was refused a residence visa to live in the United States as a result of his guilty plea in the Equatorial Guinea affair.

Later, plans to set up a home in Monaco were thwarted after Sir Mark was informed he was unwelcome. He was soon back to his old antics, including becoming embroiled in an alleged racketeering case in Texas that was settled out of court. Soon afterwards, there followed a criminal prosecution – later dropped – over alleged evasion of US taxes.