The South African government began looking into the “recruitment of these young men into these seemingly mercenary activities” two weeks ago. The details of the case are very similar to recruiting scandals in Cuba, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and India — young men allegedly lured to Russia with false promises of good civilian jobs and then pressed into service with the Russian military.
South Africa identified 17 victims, ranging from 20 to 39 years of age, all of them currently “trapped” in the war-torn Donbas region of Ukraine. South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg this weekend that diplomatic efforts to bring the men back to South Africa were underway.
“It is not an easy situation because they are in the front lines of this battle, but we are hopeful that there will be breakthroughs,” Lamola said.
“The police must investigate and whoever is involved in this must be arrested,” he added.
The phony job offers that lured the men to Russia reportedly included high-paying positions as trained bodyguards. The offers appeared to come from a member of the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party, a left-wing opposition party in South Africa founded and led by Jacob Zuma.
Zuma’s daughter, Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, is a senior lawmaker from the MK Party. The request for South African police to investigate her came from her half-sister, Nkosazana Bonganini Zuma-Mncube.
“These men were lured to Russia under false pretenses and handed to a Russian mercenary group to fight in the Ukraine war without their knowledge or consent. Among these 17 men, who are requesting the South African government for assistance, are eight of my family members,” Zuma-Mncube said in a statement to the media.
Zuma-Mncube said she was driven to file an affidavit against her half-sister by “moral obligation,” noting that Zuma-Sambudla and her accomplices could be guilty of violating South African laws against human trafficking, providing assistance to foreign military forces, and fraud.
The families of three of the men trapped in Ukraine forwarded videos to the media in which the victims said they were personally recruited by Zuma-Sambudla, who promised to go through paramilitary training with them and “experience the same hardships.” Instead, she vanished as soon as they arrived in Russia, and soon resurfaced in South Africa.
The victims said they trusted Zuma-Sambudla, so they signed contracts written in Russian that they could not read. They suggested other MK Party officials were involved in the scheme.
Zuma-Sambudla reportedly responded by filing charges on Monday against her accused co-conspirators, Siphokazi Xuma and Blessing Khoza, in which she accused them of duping her into participating in the Russian military recruitment scheme.
According to Zuma-Sambudla’s complaint, she was contacted on social media by Khoza, who “represented himself as a South African citizen residing in Russia who had connections to a legitimate paramilitary training program.”
“Our interaction began entirely because he approached me, not the other way around. I relied on the information he provided in good faith, as I had no reason at that time to suspect fraud or misrepresentation,” she claimed.
Zuma-Sambudla said she did indeed participate in the “paramilitary training program,” but only for about a month, and was repeatedly assured it was a “non-combat” program whose graduates would not be “placed in a conflict zone.”
“Based on my own experience, I believed that the program was lawful and safe. But I too was manipulated and used to create a false impression of legitimacy,” she said.
“The fact that my own family members elected to travel and participate serves as clear evidence that I neither knew nor had any reason to suspect that the program was unlawful, unsafe, or in any way dangerous,” she added.
Zuma-Sambudla pleaded not guilty in early November to unrelated charges of incitement to commit public violence and terrorism in connection to violent riots that broke out in July 2021, when her father, Jacob Zuma, was arrested for contempt of court. Over 350 people were killed in the riots, making them among the deadliest examples of public disorder since the end of apartheid.
An “intelligence source” told the South African news outlet Daily Maverick that the investigation could eventually reach Jacob Zuma, whose “penchant for sending young recruits overseas for military training can be traced back to 2016.”
In 2016, Zuma was allegedly involved in a scheme to trick South African men into receiving “off-the-books military training” in China. According to the Daily Maverick’s source, Zuma’s ultimate goal was to create a “highly-trained parallel, covert, and personal army” that could infiltrate South African police and military agencies as “sleeper” agents, with the long-term goal of preparing for a coup.
In early November, South African media obtained a copy of a September 19 letter from Zuma to Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, pleading for the South African recruits to be pulled away from the front lines in Ukraine.
In the letter, Zuma appeared to admit he was involved in the recruiting scheme, as he told Belousov the South African men were sent to Russia to “learn from the world’s finest, so that they may one day return to Africa as capable leaders and steadfast champions of our common cause.”
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