Four South African mercenaries who were granted pardons for a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, were still waiting in Malabo on Thursday morning to hear when they will return home, an official said.
"I must tell the truth, they are still with us at the embassy," the head of South Africa's mission in Malabo, Lungile Mkuyana, told Sapa.
"We haven't heard anything about when they are leaving.
"We are organising special transport for them to go to South Africa."
Several journalists waited in vain at Lanseria airport in Johannesburg in the early hours of Thursday morning in anticipation of their return.
Asked why it was taking them so long to come home, Mkuyana said: "We didn't expect it [the pardon] to happen. It happened very quickly."
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Their accomplice and the alleged mastermind behind the 2004 plot, Briton Simon Mann, had already returned to his home in Britain on Wednesday.
But South Africans Nick du Toit, George Alerson, Sergio Cardoso and Jose Sundays were still waiting after their unexpected release from Black Beach prison on Tuesday.
Alerson's wife, Lucia, said she had not been contacted by any officials by Thursday morning.
"I know that he is coming because I saw it on the news," she said.
The men were convicted in a trial implicating Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, as the financier of the plot to overthrow the oil-rich Equatorial Guinea and oust long-serving President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
Their release coincided with a visit by President Jacob Zuma. - Sapa
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