Jacob Zuma’s failed mercenary ambitions — from China to Russia, the road is littered with abandoned recruits

The Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation’s (DPCI’s) Crimes Against the State unit is investigating Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla’s involvement in the recruitment of 17 South Africans into the Russian Wagner mercenary group after her half-sister Nkosazana Bongamini Zuma-Mncube lodged criminal charges on 22 November.

In a statement, Zuma-Mncube (41) revealed that among South Africans recruited for “bodyguard training” and who have since been sent to the front line in Ukraine’s Donbas region were “eight of my family members”.

Zuma-Mncube lodged charges of contravening the Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act and the Foreign Military Assistance Act, as well as the commission of the common law act of fraud against Zuma-Sambudla (43).

Read more: Nkosazana Zuma-Mncube accuses stepsister Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla of trafficking family to Russia front line

The Directorate of International Relations and Cooperation has confirmed it is “exploring” lines to extract the soldiers who have been sent to the front line.

An intelligence source told Daily Maverick that Zuma’s penchant for sending young recruits overseas for military training can be traced back to 2016, the peak of State Capture. In that instance, it was taxpayers who footed the bill.

Training in China

In 2016, Nathi Nhleko, then minister of police and now a member of Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, sent a group of South Africans for off-the-books military training in China.

The recruits, mostly from northern KwaZulu-Natal, received intensive paramilitary training at the Chinese People’s Armed Forces Academy in Langfang, China, between March and May 2016.

In 2019, these same recruits, suddenly ghosted by Zuma and Nhleko, approached the then Office of the Inspector-General for Intelligence (OIGI) and the Public Protector before camping outside the Union Buildings to deliver a petition to President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Nhleko had been shuffled out of Cabinet and Zuma had lost the presidency of the ANC in 2017.

Read more: From Death Squad to Dead Squad: Nhleko’s Chinese-trained 'secret agents' left stranded and fearful

The Chinese “death squad”, 10 men and nine women, were part of Zuma’s ongoing grand ambitions of creating a highly-trained parallel, covert and personal army aimed at infiltrating Crime Intelligence and other state organs as “sleepers”.

The squad, former Independent Police Investigative Directorate head Robert McBride testified before the Zondo Commission in 2019, was “trickled” into law enforcement agencies, including the DPCI and Crime Intelligence.

McBride added that these recruits had been welcomed by the then DPCI head, Berning Ntlemeza, a Zuma appointee. They were later “fed off” to Major General Dumezweni Zimu, the Crime Intelligence head of counter and security intelligence, who had been appointed by Nhleko.

Their trip to China was funded, according to McBride’s testimony at the Zondo Commission, through the NGO Indoni, registered to Nhleko’s wife Nomcebo Mthembu.

Zuma’s big project

Interviewed in 2019, one of the members of the group told Daily Maverick that they had been informed that they were being recruited “to be top secret agents of the state”.

They were told that “this is a big project that has been planned by Jacob Zuma and the Chinese president”. Some had dropped out of school or had resigned from jobs to join the squad, said the spokesperson.

“All of our lives were put on hold as we were sold a very big dream, only to be deserted by our government at the end.”

On their return to Pretoria, Nhleko’s squad was sent to Mphata Lodge in Hammanskraal for “a crash course by members of Crime Intelligence, as this was a strategy for other members from SAPS not to detect us as we had to be as discreet as possible since we were being strategically placed undercover to counter other officials of the state which were corrupt”.

This matter was never further investigated and has fallen through the dusty cracks at the OIGI and the Office of the Public Protector.

Cannon fodder

That Zuma’s MK party captured 58 seats in South Africa’s 400-seat Parliament came as a surprise in 2024. With their camouflage uniforms and extreme loyalty to Zuma, this time it appears the former president is building a private militia.

The MK party leader’s recent pilgrimage, alongside Zuma-Sambudla, to Burkina Faso’s military leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, who seized control after a coup in September 2022, indicates where Zuma’s strongman vision lies.

Read more: Zuma’s MK empire falls apart as warfare rages within

Senzo Mchunu, the minister of police who has been placed on special leave in the wake of serious allegations of corruption and political interference in the criminal justice system, briefly touched on intelligence he had received about a paramilitary structure in KwaZulu-Natal while testifying on 22 October before Parliament’s ad hoc committee.

ANC MP Mdumiseni Ntuli quizzed Mchunu about the “recruitment of intelligence to strengthen a certain structure” in the province, as Mchunu mentioned in his affidavit to the committee.

Mchunu responded: “I had picked up information that there were such intentions in KwaZulu-Natal. I won’t be able to talk in detail.”

News24 reported that it was in possession of a letter written by Zuma in September, urging Russian Defence Minister Andrey Belousov to remove the South Africans from the combat zone to safer surroundings.

Zuma wrote that the recruits 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”.

Al Jazeera has reported that the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said that more than 1,400 people from 36 African nations were fighting for Russia in its war against Ukraine

Sybiha accused Moscow of enticing Africans into joining the war and signing military contracts that were “equivalent to … a death sentence”. DM