Sometimes his blue eyes are lost in the vagueness. Daniel Janse van Rensburg hesitates, searches for his words: “I can’t stay focused, I tried to work again but it’s hard, I have panic attacks…” The sharp businessman he was no longer. In 2013, the South African left a part of him in a suffocating prison in Equatorial Guinea. In his nightmares, he sees hunger, thirst, raped women, the terror of not holding out until the next day.

His hell has a name: Black Beach. A dark, hot and humid hole designed for about sixty prisoners, where nearly 500 inmates share two smashed toilets and a thin trickle of water. After 6 p.m., men, women and children are left to fend for themselves until dawn. In this jail where “to survive a single night is a miracle”, Daniel Janse van Rensburg spent 491 days, between 2013 and 2015. He still wonders how he overcame an acute attack of cerebral malaria without treatment. “Most of the detainees have never been tried. If the government has a problem with someone, they are sent to Black Beach,” he sums up.

At the head of Equatorial Guinea for forty-three years – the world record for longevity in power for a living head of state – Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has made the small oil state his personal kingdom, which he manages from an iron fist. Daniel Janse van Rensburg is well placed to know: he worked for a long time with a brother-in-law of the president, Gabriel Mba Bela, nicknamed “Angabi”. “I had nothing to fear, I was part of the family,” he once persuaded himself as he watched the clan take millions of petrodollars while the majority of the 1.6 million Equato- Guineans were sinking deeper into poverty.

“Spurious motives”

At the end of 2013, Daniel Janse van Rensburg went to Malabo, the capital, where Angabi had to make a final payment for the launch of a new airline called Coriscair. But this will never see the light of day. The apparatchik accuses the South African of embezzlement and the sum to reimburse the money advanced to start the project. Daniel Janse van Rensburg first thinks of a misunderstanding. In a ramshackle police station, he watches Angabi accuse him of theft by waving “three or four state-of-the-art phones.” Released by a judge who does not hold any charges against him after an unbearable police custody, he believes himself out of the woods.

But as the entrepreneur prepares to embark for South Africa, special forces challenge him. Direction Black Beach, close to the presidential palace. Released again three months later, he was sent back to prison after several unsuccessful diplomatic attempts. “Daniel Janse van Rensburg was imprisoned by verbal order of Angabi, his business partner, following an alleged breach of contract, recalls Juan Carlos Ondo Angue, former president of the Supreme Court of Equatorial Guinea. Even if this commercial dispute had been proven, it would not have constituted a criminal offence. The decision taken by the investigating judge to place Mr van Rensburg in pre-trial detention was therefore based on spurious grounds. »

He will stay this time for more than a year in a hell that the inmates call “Black Bitch”, which translates to “black whore”. “It is a prison center inaccessible to human rights defenders and whose unsanitary conditions have been the subject of several reports by the Superior Council of the Judiciary, in vain”, assures Juan Carlos Ondo Angue. Daniel Janse van Rensburg will finally be released by decision of the Supreme Court in August 2015. “I ordered his release because justice is responsible for protecting the fundamental rights of citizens, explains Juan Carlos Ondo Angue. The Supreme Court has the duty to revoke decisions taken by public authorities in violation of the law and, a fortiori, when these emanate from the judicial authority. »

But Juan Carlos Ondo Angue will pay dearly for his recurring opposition to the Obiang system. In August 2018, he was removed from office without official reason by a presidential decree read on state television. Eighteen months later, his house is surrounded by soldiers who have come to arrest him. It will take the intervention of several Western ambassadors (United States, France, Spain, Germany) to exfiltrate him and allow him to reach France, from where he continues his fight against the Obiang clan.

A yacht and jet skis

On his return to South Africa, burdened with a heavy post-traumatic stress disorder, Daniel Janse van Rensburg thirsts for justice. His weapon: the South African courts. His target: Teodoro Nguema Obiang, known as “Teodorin”, son of the Head of State and Vice President of Equatorial Guinea. Become the emblem of a corrupt power, Teodorin then appears as the favorite to succeed his father. Known for his excesses, which he spreads on social networks, the sulphurous playboy was sentenced to three years in prison suspended and 30 million euros fine in the case of “ill-gotten gains” in France. He has also been banned from the UK since 2021 and had to sell more than 26 million euros in assets in the United States to end a prosecution for corruption.

On February 3, Daniel Janse van Rensburg added a South African penalty to this list. After years of legal battle, he obtained confirmation of the conviction of Teodorin to nearly 2 million euros in damages for torture and illegal detention. “Angabi had no authority to send me to Black Beach,” says Daniel Janse van Rensburg. If he managed to do so, he explains, it is because this former mayor of Malabo, who died following an illness a month after the judgment, was close to his nephew Teodorin, in charge of defense and security of the country since 2012.

South African justice shares his opinion. She is convinced of this in particular because the mobilization of the Rapid Reaction Force, considered by Teodorin to be his “personal security”, according to a judge of the High Court of the Western Cape, was deployed to arrest Daniel Janse van Rensburg. Since 2017, the South African has also obtained the seizure of two luxurious South African properties from the vice-president, each estimated at more than 2 million euros. But the proliferation of procedures prohibits the sale of real estate until then. “I haven’t had a penny yet,” he sighs.

In his village of Hoekwil, a green setting perched halfway between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, the entrepreneur is patient: “We’ve been struggling with this file for seven years, he laments in a voice tired. If the case continues, it is only thanks to the money Teodorin has to pay ever more legal costs and multiply the appeal proceedings. »

At the beginning of February, a solution emerges when he learns that a yacht belonging to Teodorin is moored in the port of Cape Town. This is “movable property”, that is, something that can be moved. He interests the lawyer because his auction could be quickly ordered. The 67 meter long boat is seized. On board, the South African authorities discover sixteen jet-skis, a luxurious Riva (a prestigious boat), a speedboat… “Obiang has three yachts, this one is a bit like the mother ship where he stores all his toys” , explains Errol Elsdon, Daniel Janse van Rensburg’s lawyer.

In his palace in Malabo, the vice-president sees red. He demands the release of the yacht, assuring that it belongs to the Equatorial Guinean navy. “I’ve never seen a military ship with a hot tub, sauna, bar and jet skis,” the lawyer laughs.

Diplomatic tensions

Forty-eight hours after the vessel was seized, two South Africans employed on oil rigs off Equatorial Guinea are arrested as they prepare to return home. Accused of having “smoked cocaine”, according to the Equatoguinean press, they claim their innocence. Officially, the two cases are unrelated. Their families are refusing to speak for the time being, preferring to avoid mixing their fate with that of a saga that looks more and more like revenge against a backdrop of diplomatic tensions.

Since February 9, Frederic Potgieter, 53, and Peter Huxham, 55, have been detained in circumstances similar to those of Daniel Janse van Rensburg. “They disappeared into a black hole,” he blurts out. There is no communication, the families do not know if they are dead or alive. Is the arrest of the two men a form of retaliation for the seizure of Teodorin’s yacht? A currency of exchange? Equatorial Guinea’s information and press office did not respond to various requests from Le Monde.

“At the end of the appearance of the South African nationals before the investigating judge, no evidence was presented to support the alleged facts and justify the expeditious decision to place them in detention,” said Juan Carlos Ondo Angue. The simultaneity between their arrest and the seizure of a state-owned yacht may justify suspicions of revenge. »

While Teodorin threatens to close Equatorial Guinea’s air and sea space to any South African commercial aircraft or ships, Daniel Janse van Rensburg and his lawyer finally lift the seizure on the ship: “Everyone knows that the yacht belongs to Teodorin, but it couldn’t be 100% proven immediately. It would have been necessary to keep the boat on the spot and to pay the adjoining expenses. In case of victory, we would have recovered them, but if not, we lost everything, “summarizes the businessman. On February 20, the vice-president of Equatorial Guinea exulted on Twitter: “Twenty-four hours after the announcement of our powerful package of measures against South Africa, the Ministry of Defense ship that the racists of Cape Town were holding back $2 million to defraud me has already been released. »

The Equatoguinean vice-president is now trying to take the case to the South African Supreme Court of Appeal. Daniel Janse van Rensburg’s lawyer explains that he is hopeful that his request will be rejected. In the meantime, the 56-year-old South African wants to continue to denounce the abuses of the Equatoguinean regime, as he did in his book Black Beach, 491 Days in One of Africa’s Most Brutal Prisons. “A lot of people don’t know that Equatorial Guinea exists,” he said. What happened to me is not in the past. Right now people are being tortured at Black Beach. I can tell my story, others have not had this chance. »