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Freed from prison after more than two years. Were two South African oil workers ponds in a diplomatic row between their country and Equatorial Guinea.
The moment when I saw the race war and basically who without two names on it, I realized that this is something serious.
With many international companies invested in the country, some are now asking how safe it is to do business in opek's smallest member state.
You get one side, you get the people that's genuinely honest, open people, that's the people on the ground, and on the other side, you get the people that's in control that's totally opposite. You learn a lot through a thing like this that's happened to me and Peter.
On this week's Next Africa Podcast, the oil workers speak with Bloomberg about that incident. I'm Jennifer Zabastaja and this is the Next Africa Podcast, bringing you one story each week from the continent driving the future of global growth with the context only Bloomberg can provide.
And joining me.
To discuss this today is Bloomberg reporter Paul Burkhart. He's been following the story for some time now and actually was able to interview Peter Huxhem and Frick Pottgeiter.
Paul, thanks so much for being here. You know, I don't think.
We've been able to cover a story like this on the podcast yet, so thanks for bringing it to us.
So let's start from the.
Beginning, maybe, and if you can give us a bit of background on this case and talk to us about Equatorial Guinea and the companies that we're investing in the country, I believe that's a good place to start.
In the nineties, Mobile made a huge discovery in Equatorial Guiney, so the Atlantic coast of the African continent and was kind of in the middle, and then production in increased from there. Gatorial Guinea became a member of OPEK, and it really because of this oil wealth just enabled the kind of the ruling family. Their Exxon became the backbone of production. But the other US companies have also joined,
and other Western oil producers have joined. And the workers typically live in gated communities or on the platforms and then just kind of rotate out, but they're largely kind of separate from the rest of the country.
And so then, Paul, how did these two oil workers find themselves arrested. Take us through that story.
So they were really just on their way back from a stint of working on the platforms.
The engineers.
They were working on these oil platforms and expecting to take a flight the next day. It's staying on this island where they would bore their flight when they were arrested, charged with drug trafficking. It was very discombobulating situation and just like in the dark most of the times of what was going on.
So after they were released.
And back in South Africa, I was able to talk to them and they told me about the moment that they realized things were going wrong.
The moment they that I saw this is when I saw the restaurantant basically without two names on it. I realized that this is a this is something serious, and I immediately phoned my partner and I let her know.
Phone my shore base manager.
I let him know and at that stage my back to back, the guy that would replace me on the on the platform.
He was also in the hotel, so I sent him a WhatsApp with.
My partner's contact details, you know, so that if they were to confiscate my phone, he at least would be in country and maybe could provide her with some support. So yeah, I mean within ten minutes, I think our whole company.
I also told her to notify our embassy.
So I tried to get as many people aware of what was happening to me and where they were taking me. So I handed the phone to the driver of the police vehicle that was taking us to the police.
I ended the phone phone to him so.
That he could let my show base manager know where he's taking me. He was reluctant at first.
But I insisted I didn't add any suspicion that this is going to turn out to the way he did. I thought, well, I was maybe a witness or something. But when I reached the police station, but there's a lot of people there waiting for us, a company, the lawyers, and people from the embassies, that's when you realized this is this thing is big, not a normal just a statement.
And then you can go back to the hotel, and that's when the fear really hits you in the Then you start thinking, well, people disappear in Africa, and people disappear in these countries, and then you realize you're in a big, big mess.
And so that's that's quite a story from them, a herrowing story. I wonder what they told you about what the conditions were like when they were in custody.
How much detail did they get into it was, it's quite vivid.
And they were first taken to Black Beach Jail, which is very like notorious just throughout Africa. And soon after that they were taken to the mainland, and the mainland that they were held in a facility that were usually political prisoners are kept.
Here's Peter and Frick again.
I don't know about Black Beach.
I don't know any history of Black Beach. Well, the first thing that slakes you is the gods. They don't go inside the present itself. You get actually picked up by fellow prisoners, can call them the guardians or whatever, the rulers of the present, and then they take you through and they tell you the rules and the regulations or what's happening inside. Now everything's going to work out.
That's a big fright are you getting in there? There's another I would say about two three hundred guys in there or looking at you strangely, and then you realize, hey, this is a real, real bad situation. You are in the place is not trying to be kept clean by the fellow prisoners. They sought out all the rules and regulations inside by themselves. We didn't see any abuse taken place verbally or physically on fellow prisoners or whatever. But yow,
the circumstances inside is very bad. The food, the food that even the fellow prisoners they warn you don't eat the food because they don't even eat the food. That is how bad the food is inside.
In the beginning, they put us down in this underground area.
It's sort of it looks like a secret location because the entrance to it it looks like a servitude.
There's pipes inside this cupboard and then you have to swing the whole closet out of the wall.
And then it provides access to these stairs leading down.
That's two flights leading down in that space.
At the bottom, they are four cells they roughly two meters by two meters, including a toilet.
I was in cell No.
One and Frecusine number sell number four initially, so we were separated by two cells. We were only we were the only guys down there. For the first two weeks. We didn't see any daylight, so they kept us down there for two weeks and only after that did we get the opportunity to go out on a daily basis to get some fresh air exercise.
So Paul, stick with us. When we come back, we'll talk about the role EG Vice President Tyo Doren played and their detention, and also the connection to South Africa in a bit more detail.
We'll be right back. Welcome back. Today. We're hearing from the two oil.
Workers back in South Africa after being pardoned and released from an Equatorial Guinea jail after more than two years in detention. Paul Burkhart is still with us. Paul, let's talk about the relationship between the vice president of Equatorial Guinea and South Africa. What happened in the run up to the workers arrest.
So shortly before Peter and Frick were jailed, there was a yacht that's that was linked to the vice president that was seized here in Cape Town as part of the case that was won by a South African who was separately imprisoned earlier before these two men were and took it up, you know, in a court here and then won the case or one part of the case. And when that yacht was seized in the days after these two men in Equatorial Guinea were put in jail
and fined and you know, and sentenced. And so the sources that we spoke to connected the jailing of Peter and Frick with the seizure of the yacht, and Teodorin has said that it belongs to the Ministry of Defense and it's since been released, but the link was there from the people that we spoke to, and that that was really kind of a cause and effect and it's one of the retaliatory measures that we're talking about, or it falls in line with some of this, you know,
the trend that we had seen from earlier cases.
And I wonder if Paul, you cover the energy industry very closely. I wonder back then what the reaction was to their arrest, if there was reaction within the oil industry or back home in South Africa for these men.
I think there was some surprise because it did link directly to the oil industry. So usually there's that kind of operate in parallel. The oil industry is there, but it sort of lives in its own environment, so it was surprising.
For a lot of people.
But it's also such a sensitive nature and there's so much uncertainty as to what could happen politically in that country, that the oil companies don't really come out and make proclamations about what they think. They're quite sensitive and then and they're they're mainly concerned about you know, their operations and their staff there, and they're having discussions to deal with that. But but you know amongst themselves really.
Yeah, they probably have to be delicate about what all they can or can't say, which leads me to wondering how the discussions about their release then ended up happening. Do we know any sort of details about what went on behind the scenes potentially to negotiate their release.
No, again, because of yeah, because of the sensitivity of it, we don't know exactly like what the engagements were. We do know that that South Africa, the you know, the South African government through the Foreign Ministry, had brought this up, that it was it was discussed both in Equatorial guint and in South Africa with officials. We know that the employer of the two Men Oil Services company sbm that they were involved in doing whatever they could to help out.
And yeah, otherwise, another thing that happened was the United Nations Working Group on arbitrary detention, took an opinion on the case and found that the imprisonment of the two South Africans was in breach of multiple international human rights So whether that played a part in what led to the release.
We just don't know. But there were a few things that happened.
And again, all that time went by, so there might have been pressure building in one area or another.
And you spent quite a bit of time speaking to these two men. What did Peter and Frick have to say about how this whole incident has left them feeling towards the country.
It's kind of amazing because I think it was such an intense period of just isolation for both of them that they really had so much time to reflect and they want to move on, and they want to make up for the time that they lost with the people that they love.
And they even you know.
Had had things to say about the people they met in detention and and and really developed bonds with some of the people that they got to know there. So they wonder about them, and they wonder what's happened with their fair will be.
I mean, obviously there is a there is a degree of anger. You know, you have to you have to God against it overwhelming you. I tried to focus on healing and my own future, but these in the back of your mind, there's always the seed that injustice was was done upon you, and you know, you like for
there to be some sort of acknowledgment of that. But I think at this stage of my life it's really really important that I live the rest of my life to the full and not to try and you know, use my time in in retribution.
You still think about the people that's still stuck in that prison, and I don't think that will ever get out of your mind. And their answer actually tied. We tried to help those guys as well. That's still stuck there. So that's the ongoing bad dam. But except from that, okay, there's no ed retribution on nothing from my side.
No, Equatorial is probably a country of two extremes.
You know, we have really really good people that that took good care of.
Us, and you know that were a great source of inspiration to us.
You know that the people down on the ground. I think it's very easy.
To generalize, you know, when you have when you have a place that maybe doesn't have a political system that we all agree with, you know, to feel that all the all the inhabitants of the country are guilty, and they're not. You know, they're really really good, warm people that we experience with that I experienced anyway, so.
We may we made a lot of friends on that side, fellow prisoners, fellow wardens. And you get to one side to get the people that's genuinely honost open people, that's the people on the ground, and on the other side you get the people that's in control, that's totally opposite. You learn a lot through a thing like this that's happened to me and Peter.
And are there lessons potentially to be learned from Equatorial Guinea and whether or not this could potentially happen again, or whether or not companies are now taking extra precautions to protect their own nationals who may be there for work.
The hope is that this was an isolated incident. I think Frick had had mentioned that he didn't think it was going to happen again. The other thing is that Equatorial Guiney's oil production they're the smallest OPEC member based on output, right, so that's dropping because then they need to keep investment. So these types of incidents wouldn't encourage investments, and so they really need to do as much as
they can to keep production going. But one aspect to watch will be when President Obion retires and if in fact the.
Role will go to Tiodoran and so then Paul, what has Equatorial Guinea had to say about all of this?
Well, I mean, aside from the presidential pardon that not only include Peter and Frick, but a number of other prisoners, there wasn't anything directly that they said in response to our questions about you know, why this was happening during the detention or you know, what was the reason for it, or what they had to say about a link to Tiodoran.
There wasn't much information from them.
And you can read Paul's coverage of Equatorial Guinea and the energy sector across Bloomberg platforms. Now Here are some of the other stories from the region that we've been following this week. Kenya is in talks with to convert dollar denominated debt the East African nation, Owes its biggest
bilateral lender to Yuwan and extend the repayment period. According to the Treasury Secretary John Body, the negotiations are aimed at helping reduce the one billion dollars Kenya spends annually on servicing its debt to China and to create more wiggle room in its budget. And an International Monetary Fund team was in Senegal this week to discuss concrete steps to address recent data issues and advance work toward presenting a misreporting case to the IMFs Executive Board.
Investors are closely.
Watching to see whether the West African nation will inch closer to securing new funding needed to stabilize its trained public finances, and you can follow these stories across Bloomberg, including the Next African Newsletter. Will put a link to that in the show notes. This program was produced by Adrian Bradley and Tiwa Adubai. Don't forget to follow and review this show wherever you usually get your podcasts, But for now, I'm Jennifer's Abistanja. Thanks as always for listening