South Africa’s Zuma family feuds over alleged trafficking of recruits to Russia

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A feud has erupted between the daughters of South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma over an incident in which 17 men were lured to Russia and apparently tricked into taking combat roles against Ukraine.

Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, a member of parliament, was accused by her sister Nkosazana Zuma-Mncube in a criminal complaint of sending the men to Russia under the pretence that they would undergo bodyguard training — only to be co-opted into a mercenary outfit on arrival.

Zuma-Sambudla subsequently filed her own complaint this week against another alleged collaborator, saying that she had been “manipulated”.

The Daily News, a local newspaper, said she claimed to have been deceived by a WhatsApp contact — known as “Khoza” — who said they were a South African living in Russia with connections to a legitimate paramilitary training programme.

Neither Zuma-Sambudla nor her lawyer responded to requests for comment on the allegations or the complaints.

The incident has thrown the spotlight not only on how vulnerable Africans are being recruited to fight in the war, but on the deep affiliations between Russia and veterans of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress, of which Zuma was a member before he resigned under pressure in 2018.

Zuma, who received military and intelligence training in Russia at the height of the apartheid era, went on to form the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party.

His daughter Zuma-Sambudla, an MK parliamentarian, is a controversial figure in South Africa, where she is facing criminal charges over allegations — which she denies — of inciting deadly riots in 2021 after her father was imprisoned for refusing to testify at a judicial commission.

In a statement her sister Zuma-Mncube said Zuma-Sambudla had, along with two others, contravened laws on human trafficking, the provision of assistance to foreign military organisations and fraud.

“These men were . . . handed to a Russian mercenary group to fight in the Ukraine war without their knowledge or consent,” she said.

They were allegedly persuaded to sign contracts written in Russian which they did not understand, according to news website News24.

The Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s second-largest political party, said this week it had reported Zuma-Sambudla to parliament’s ethics committee.

“If a public representative abused her position to recruit or mislead young South Africans into a foreign conflict, it would be a serious breach of her oath of office,” said the DA’s defence spokesman Chris Hattingh.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said recently that the government had received “distress calls for assistance to return home” from 17 South Africans trapped in the war-torn Donbas region.

He said they were lured there “under the pretext of lucrative employment contracts”, and the government said it would work through diplomatic channels to get them home.

Olexander Scherba, Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, told the Financial Times that he had been contacted by the family of stranded recruits who asked him to help return them.

Scherba said the men were probably lured into what they were told would be a well-paid adventure in Russia, rather than joining the war because of any lingering allegiance towards Moscow.

“Since I have been in South Africa, I have seen this sentimentality towards Russia for its help during the apartheid era, but this is strange for us, since Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union too,” he said. “So, this is either misinformed or hypocritical.”