Two South African men, Frederic Potgieter (53) from George and Peter Huxham (55) from Langebaan, were arrested at a hotel in the Equatorial Guinean capital Malabo on Thursday February 9. Their arrest follows days after another South African managed to obtain a high court order to attach property belonging to the Equatorial Guinea’s vice-president to be sold at a public action.

According to information, the men are being detained at the notorious Black Beach prison, the same prison where South African, Daniel Janse van Rensburg, spent 400 days after he was illegally detained.

The department of international relations and cooperation (Dirco) says POtgieter and Huxham are yet to be charged with a crime.

Police arrested the men at the Anda China Malabo hotel in Equatorial Guinea on a complaint believed to be related to a shipment of cocaine found on an international flight.

The drugs were apparently discovered on the plane the men arrived with from Singapore. Both Huxham and Potgieter are employed by a Dutch oil and gas company.

A family spokesperson for Potgieter told George Herald that they haven’t been able to get in touch with him yet, so they can’t confirm his well-being.

“He was arrested after allegedly using and transporting drugs. This could not possibly be true as he did not use drugs of any kind at all,” the spokesperson says.

SA embassy staff apparently visited the men at the police station last Saturday and said they did not complain about treatment, access and medication or food.

The arrests were made days after the high court in Cape Town authorised the attachment of a R300m superyacht, Blue Shadow, owned by Equatorial Guinea’s vice-president Teodorin Nguema Obiang.

The sheriff seized Blue Shadow at Cape Town harbour so the vessel could be sold at a public auction to honour a court order that says Obiang has to pay about R40m in damages to Janse van Rensburg.

Janse van Rensburg was arrested in September 2013 and released in 2015 after he had set up an airline in Equatorial Guinea with the president’s brother-in-law, Gabriel Mba Angabi. Angabi withdrew from the venture at the last minute and demanded a financial refund.

The dispute led to Angabi phoning Obiang, who was the second vice-president of the country, in charge of defence and security at the time, as well as the political head in charge of the armed forces, police and prisons.

Within minutes after the phone call, an elite security force arrested Janse van Rensburg on trumped-up charges and threw him into Black Beach Prison. Since the seizure of Obiang’s superyacht, the Equatorial Guinean government has threatened to confiscate South African assets if the multimillion-rand yacht is not released.

Janse van Rensburg says he is in contact with the detained men’s families.  However, the families have indicated that they do not wish to speak to the media at this stage.

“I have been in touch with the families, hoping that they have not read my book, which describes the horrors of my experiences being locked up there. As I am aware of how important it is to have contact with the outside world, I reached out to friends in Malabo to see if they could get in to visit the men and bring news back to their families.

“It has been traumatic for my wife and I to relive the nightmare of my time in Black Beach, knowing that these two families will be suffering as we did. Fortunately, their employers have appointed an internationally recognised legal firm to represent them, so our thoughts and prayers are with Peter, Frik and their families and we trust that their nightmare will end, and they will soon be reunited back home in South Africa,” Janse van Rensburg says.