Johannesburg – In the lounge of his Brackenhurst, Alberton home, William Endley’s unopened presents are piling up. He missed Father’s Day, his birthday and Christmas.
With no direct access to him in a South Sudanese jail, his family and friends are increasingly worried about his health. Now they hope a hashtag will build the pressure needed for his release.
They want the South African government to do more to secure his liberation.
On Twitter, friends and family have over the past couple of days created the hashtag #FreeWillEndley, and they want it desperately to go viral.
Next week, Endley will have been detained in the South Sudanese National Security Services headquarters in Juba for five months.
In that time, his wife Sana has watched his condition worsen through the odd photograph smuggled out.
The last photograph shows him painfully thin, but smiling and it is this that gives Sana hope. Each photograph she studies over and over again, trying to glean information about his health. There is precious little to go on.
But people who have seen him, including Dane Henrik Tobiesen, who was detained with Endley, said he has been suffering from severe malnutrition.
Both are detained in the National Security Services headquarters which has become infamously known as the Blue House.
“The South African government should be doing more for him, he fought for this country,” said Sana, of her husband a retired colonel in the SA National Defence Force.
Since Endley’s detention, South African embassy officials have not been allowed to see him.
Four days ago, Sana received an e-mail from the Department of International Relations and Co-operation (Dirco) that it was securing a meeting with the South Sudanese under secretary of foreign affairs.
For any information about his condition in the jail, Sana said, she and his family had to obtain it through their own sources.
“The Danish were able to visit Henrik once a week, why can’t our embassy do the same,” Sana said.
Endley was picked up from his hotel by Sudanese security forces on the evening of August 18.
Sana said that before this happened he seemed to know that he was in some sort of danger. When he last spoke to her he used the code phrase “I am going on holiday”. It meant he could be in trouble, but he would not say to her what that trouble was. Going on holiday could also be that he was going to make a dash for the border to escape South Sudan.
Before his arrest, he had been working as an adviser for the South Sudanese rebel leader Riek Machar. In July, war broke out between the soldiers of Machar and South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir. Machar fled the country, but Endley stayed behind.
So far the Sudanese have not charged Endley and say that he is being held for questioning.
Dirco spokesman Nelson Kgwete said they had been hitting brick walls with the South Sudanese government.
“We have contacted the authorities and are trying to arrange a visit so we can establish his condition and see what support he requires,” he said.
Among Endley’s unopened presents is a big jar of jelly beans, his favourite kind of sweet, and his daughter Janice is quick to point out that they will still be there when he gets home.