It is almost 20 years to the day since I flew high above Africa, with a TV crew jammed into a bumpy light plane. It was a white-knuckle ride through clouds into the jaws of a military coup.
We woke on that October morning, in 1997, in Harare, to news of a military coup in neighboring Zambia. Given that Zambians are not exactly warlike people, this breakfast declaration by a group calling itself the National Redemption Council was startling. It was going to put in place a military junta to carry out live executions of traitors on TV.
The frontman was a Captain Solo – in real life Captain Steven Lungu of the Zambian army – who gave President Frederick Chiluba three hours to surrender, threatening bloody revenge to anyone who stood in his way.
All commercial flights to Zambia were cancelled in the chaos. For me, it meant the first trauma of the day; we had to charter a flight from the aptly named Bush Pilots in Harare – the only people crazy enough to fly into a coup. The pilot was a young guy who looked like he should have been at school rather than flying a plane.
As we bumped through the clouds he wriggled in his seat and to my surprise brought out a box of cigarettes and lit one. On his first puff, the message came through the radio that the authorities had shut down the airport at Lusaka.
This story is from the December 2017 - January 2018 edition of Forbes Africa.
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This story is from the December 2017 - January 2018 edition of Forbes Africa.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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