Campaign launched to secure release of SA engineers

The families of Frik Potgieter and Peter Huxham, two SA engineers who say they have been unlawfully held as state hostages in Equatorial Guinea since 9 February 2023, have launched an online petition and social media campaign to share their story and demand their urgent release. The Daily Maverick reports that they were working in that country on Africa’s west coast for their employer, a global oil and gas company, when they were arrested two days after a SA court seized a luxury superyacht belonging to Vice-President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. Earlier, the courts had seized Obiang’s two luxury Cape Town villas. These assets were seized to execute a court ruling in SA on a separate matter, unrelated to the two engineers. Even though the superyacht has been released, the villas remain impounded in SA, and Potgieter and Huxham remain incarcerated. ‘Frik and Peter are caught in the political crossfire between SA and Equatorial Guinea,’ said Shaun Murphy, a spokesperson for the Potgieter family.

Full Daily Maverick report