One year on, families renew plea for help for engineers held in Equatorial Guinea

A woman from George has indefinitely delayed her wedding in the hope her father can walk her down the aisle, while a Langebaan woman is keeping up her faith by washing and ironing her fiancé's clothes every second week.

Friday marks one year since two South African engineers, Frik Potgieter and Peter Huxham, were detained in Equatorial Guinea and their families are growing increasingly anxious for them to be freed. 

A team working to secure their release has asked the government and the UN to intervene, stating the two men are effectively hostages because they are caught up in a geopolitical tangle between the central African country and South Africa.

The men were arrested at their hotel in the capital, Malabo, hours before they were due to return to South Africa after working on offshore oil and gas platforms for the Dutch firm SBM Production Contractors. Though working for the same company for 11 and 15 years, the men had not met before their arrests as they were working on different vessels.

They were accused of drug possession and each sentenced to 12 years behind bars and jointly ordered to pay $10m (R189m) in fines.

Their arrests coincided with the attachment of a superyacht linked to Equatorial Guinea’s vice-president Teodoro Nguema Obiang, who has been fighting for the return of two upmarket Cape Town properties attached by the Western Cape High Court several years ago.

The attachments are linked to a legal skirmish with South African businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg, who won a civil claim for damages against Obiang after being wrongfully imprisoned in Equatorial Guinea.

“It is time they are brought home as it is a year that has been ‘stolen’ from Peter and Frik’s lives with their families and friends,” said a spokesperson for the families, Francois Nigrini.

“The families are desperately looking to our government and the relevant departments to use their expertise and position to engage with their counterparts in Equatorial Guinea to bring home two innocent South Africans, and end the pain being experienced by them and their families and friends.

“They are hostages. Their incarceration is not their fault, but even worse, there is nothing they can do to secure their release. It is only the South African government that can do this.”

Both men have maintained an impeccable professional record in the oil and gas industry, in Equatorial Guinea and in other countries, Nigrini said.

During the trial “no witnesses or expert opinions were presented to the court by the prosecutor, nor was any proof presented that the alleged drugs were found on the two men, and further, the nature of the alleged drugs was not tested or conclusively proven.”

The distraught families are holding onto hope of a breakthrough.

Nigrini said Sonja and Frik Potgieter’s daughter, Jolene, who is very close to her father, was meant to get married last year. “But without her father there, no contact with him and the uncertainty as to when he will be released to help with the planning, walk her down the aisle, and enjoy what should be a celebration with family and friends, as well as fulfilling every girl’s dream and be one of the happiest days of her life, her plans have been put on hold.”

In anticipation of Huxham’s homecoming, his long-term partner Kathy McConnachie washes and irons his clothes every second week, Nigrini said. The couple bought a plot in Langebaan where they were planning to build their dream retirement home.

“In Peter’s absence, and in his honour, Kathy has laid the foundations and built the walls and roof. She says she is waiting for Peter to come home to install the electrical infrastructure, given this is what he does so expertly for work on the vessel in Equatorial Guinea.”