“In the Republic of South Africa, the police detained five people as part of an investigation into the recruitment of citizens into the Russian army to participate in the war against Ukraine”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
Bloomberg reported on the arrest of four suspects on November 29, citing a statement from the South African Hawks elite police unit. They were detained on Friday, November 28, at the Johannesburg airport, from where they were trying to fly to Russia via the United Arab Emirates. On November 29, they were charged with attempting to participate in an armed conflict on the side of a foreign state without government approval.
On November 29, it became known about the fifth suspect. His name has not been released, but the local publication Netwerk24 claims that journalist Nonkululeko Mantulu, an employee of the state media group SABC, was also detained at the airport after returning from Russia. It is alleged that she is suspected of violating national legislation that prohibits mercenary employment.
The investigation is trying to establish the circumstances under which 17 South Africans ended up in the ranks of the Russian army. One of those 17 people claims in voicemails from the front that he was recruited by two people, and one of them was Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, the daughter of former South African president Jacob Zuma, who now heads the country’s main opposition party, the Spear of the Nation.
Zuma-Sambudla allegedly promised him and his comrades that they would take security training courses to work for her father’s party in the future. The deceived bought tickets to Russia, and there issued military contracts in Russian, which the South Africans signed, believing that they were signing documents for security guard courses. After that, they were sent to the front, with many of them their relatives lost contact.
The authorities of South Africa previously reported that they had received “distress signals” from their citizens who ended up in Ukraine in the war zone as a result of deception. They promised to act through “diplomatic channels” to bring them home, but this has not happened yet.
Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla does not deny being involved in recruitment, but says she believed it was “legitimate training”, according to the BBC, whose journalists have seen the statements she sent to the police.
It follows from Zuma-Sambudla’s testimony that she herself underwent non-combat training in Russia. She was contacted by an organizer whom, according to her, she did not know until now and offered to recruit more people – as she thought, to participate in a similar program. After that, she “naively shared the information” with other people, including family members. “I myself became a victim of deception, distortion of information and manipulation,” Zuma-Sambudla claims.
According to Bloomberg, several people were also recruited in this way in neighboring Botswana.
On November 28, Reuters reported that Zuma-Sambudla resigned from the National Assembly of South Africa due to accusations of recruiting troops for Russia.