New calls to free South African hostage held in Mali

Johannesburg, South Africa (AFP):

The family of a South African held hostage by rebels in Mali for over five years have launched a fresh appeal for his release, just days after a French journalist was freed.

Gerco van Deventer, 47, was kidnapped in Libya on November 3, 2017, on his way to a power plant construction site around 1,000 kilometres south of the capital Tripoli.

Three other Turkish engineers also seized at the same time as him were freed seven months later. Van Deventer remained in captivity and was moved to Mali.

“I’m launching a fresh appeal… we desperately need him home, he’s a father of three children,” his wife Shereen van Deventer, told in an online interview.

“It’s a difficult situation for us as a family, we would really ask for … their (captors) compassion to release him,” she said speaking from the small town of Swellendam, 220 kilometres east of Cape Town.

Van Deventer, an emergency paramedic who was working for a security company, is the only South African citizen held hostage by a non-state actor in the Sahel, according to the wife.

The new calls for his release came after the freeing of French freelance journalist Olivier Dubois, 48, and 61-year-old American aid worker Jeffery Woodke — respectively kidnapped in 2021 and 2016.

Shereen van Deventer said Dubois’s “release certainly provides us with renewed hope for Gerco’s release”.

There was flurry of negotiations for his release during the first few years after his kidnapping, but the Covid-19 pandemic put brakes on the efforts until early this year, said the wife.

The Sahel has been ravaged by insurgency that began in northern Mali in 2012 triggered by French intervention in the region.

In 2015, the insurgency swept into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Kidnappings of foreigners and Malians is common. Motives range from ransom demands to acts of reprisal.