South Africans recruited to fight for Russia: Africa’s new war pipeline
Five South Africans are accused of recruiting for Putin’s army, as reports allege Ethiopia is secretly training fighters for Sudan’s war.
Living abroad, I sometimes miss a gobsmackingly audacious online post that directly affects South Africa. The kind of post that, in a perfect world, would lead every news outlet around the globe. A head scratcher. This is that story… South Africans recruited to fight for Russia, and how a Kempton Park courtroom has opened a window onto a much larger pattern.
And along the way it connects Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, Russia President Vladimir Putin, and African youth wanting better lives.
And for what it’s worth, keep your eye on Kempton Park. Now there’s a sentence I didn’t think I’d type today.
It all started with a job opportunity that held real promise. Seventeen South Africans flew to Russia expecting lucrative security work. Some believed they’d be employed as bodyguards. Instead, they were presented with contracts in a language they could not read.
Next, the recruits were deployed to the Donbas region of Ukraine with minimal training. Once there, in reality, they faced combat, racism, and unpaid salaries, according to reports.
South Africans’ fight for Russia: how the scheme worked
On Tuesday, February 10, 2026, five people accused of sending African recruits to Ukraine stood before a Kempton Park magistrate. Among them, SAFM radio presenter Nonkululeko Mantula.
Meanwhile, prosecutors asked the court for more time, claiming they still need to comb through the accused’s banking records and analyse seized electronic devices.
If this sounds uncomfortably familiar, it is because it echoes South Park’s Battalion 5 and its “Operation Human Shield”. The difference, though: the Kempton case isn’t satire.
Then, during the same week, a Reuters investigation dropped a different, if no less disturbing, bombshell. Ethiopia is hosting a secret training camp for about 4,300 fighters loyal to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. It is bankrolled and supplied by the United Arab Emirates. These are not isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a larger pattern: conflicts abusing African manpower, sustained and driven by external players.
First, the Kempton courtroom
The Kempton Park case offers the clearest view yet of how South Africans recruited to Russia were identified, moved, and ultimately trapped.
The state’s case against Mantula, 39, and her four co-accused is still taking shape. Thulani Mazibuko, 24, Xolani Ntuli, 47, Siphamandla Tshabalala, 23, and Sfiso Mabena, 21, face charges under the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, the South African law passed in 1998 to prevent citizens from fighting in foreign wars without government approval.
Prosecutor Tshepo Boroko told the court that forensic analysis of devices seized from the accused is incomplete. The state has submitted requests under the Financial Intelligence Centre Act for the group’s banking records and cellphone data. Prosecutors also plan to request mutual legal assistance from foreign governments.
Mantula, described in court filings as the alleged coordinator, reportedly travelled to Russia five times since September 2025. Police arrested her and three co-accused at OR Tambo International Airport in late November, moments before they boarded a flight to Russia via the United Arab Emirates.
The court later released Mantula on R30,000 bail. It postponed the case to 29 April 2026. Interesting to note that, according to her own social media account, Mantula acted as co-chair of the BRICS Journalists Association.
And while on socials, another post shows Mantula at the Moscow Dialogue 3.0 Forum. The event was powered by Global Fact Checking Network. You can’t make this stuff up
High-Profile Names in Russia recruitment case
And Mantula is not the only high-profile South African name in this Russian recruitment story. The Hawks are investigating Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, daughter of former President Jacob Zuma, for her alleged involvement in the recruitment efforts.
For what its worth, Zuma-Sambudla resigned as MK Party MP in late 2025.
Zuma-Sambudla has denied being the mastermind behind the operation. She has, however, repeatedly posted her admiration for Putin online.
“We Love You Both LOUDLY And UNAPOLOGETICALLY So … I’ll Drink To That,” Zuma-Sambudla posted on X. Accompanied by a visual of Putin and her father, Jacob Zuma, making a toast.
That picture dates from 22 February 2022, the day Russia invaded Ukraine. In May 2025, along with two pictures of St Petersburg’s Hermitage, she again posted on X: “I Stand With Russia.”
The scale of African recruitment into Russia’s war effort
Ukraine’s foreign ministry puts the number at over 1,400 Africans from 36 countries now fighting for Russia. The real figure, officials in Kyiv say, is likely higher. As of January, an estimated 18,000 foreigners from 128 countries are recruited into Russian forces, excluding North Korean troops.
To be clear, these are not romanticised soldiers of fortune. These are often young men navigating unemployment, migration pressure, and online recruitment networks. According to international reporting, recruiters allegedly promised African recruits receive $13,000 (about R209,000) in signing bonuses and monthly salaries of $3,500 (about R56,000).
Oh, and Russian citizenship. On the downside, they got contracts in Russian that nobody had translated. Also, officials took their passports and then deployed them to the front with minimal training.
A Foreign Policy investigation reported that out of 14 Ghanaians lured to Russia on promises of agricultural and security work in August 2024, only three were known to be alive a month later.
Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, Olexander Scherba, told The Telegraph that “once an African person comes to this war, they become meat for the meat grinder”.
Video circulating online appears to show a Russian soldier taunting African recruits before sending them into frontline assaults. The footage reflects a broader pattern reported by investigators and Ukrainian officials: foreign fighters deployed in the most dangerous positions, frequently described as “meat assaults”, and treated as expendable.
Ethiopia’s secret camp, and the UAE’s open wallet
Then, beyond African recruits in Ukraine, there’s this. A Reuters investigation reports that Ethiopia has built a covert military training facility near its border with Sudan where approximately 4,300 Rapid Support Forces fighters were being trained as of early January 2026.
The investigation cites 15 sources and satellite imagery showing tents, heavy machinery, and construction near Asosa airport. An internal Ethiopian security memo reviewed by Reuters alleged UAE logistical support. The UAE denied involvement.
Sudan’s civil war, which began on 15 April 2023 between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces, has killed thousands and displaced millions.
Two stories. Two continents’ worth of conflict. One common thread. Africa is no longer a bystander in the wars shaping the 2020s. It is a labour pool, a staging ground, and, increasingly, a place where other people’s power games are paid for with African lives.
‘Non-alignment’ and its enforcement gap
South Africa’s standard position on the Russia-Ukraine war should be familiar by now. Non-aligned. Pro-dialogue. No sanctions. The same language appears when BRICS naval drills draw Western criticism or when Pretoria abstains from UN votes condemning Moscow.
We can defend that stance in principle. That non-alignment claims to mean treating all parties to a conflict evenhandedly, refusing to choose sides in great power disputes. In practice, however, it requires active enforcement: preventing your territory from becoming a recruitment ground, prosecuting violations of your own laws, protecting your citizens from exploitation by foreign actors.
The government cannot sustain that stance when recruiters enlist South African citizens, on South African soil, into one side’s army. And when the state responds after the headlines rather than before the flights take off.
Kenya’s response offers a stark contrast. Nairobi acknowledged the problem publicly. It negotiated the return of at least 27 citizens.
Also, President William Ruto spoke directly with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about securing the release of Kenyans in Ukrainian custody. That’s what treating your citizens as victims of exploitation looks like.
Pretoria’s response has been somewhat slower. While the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has issued general warnings against joining foreign armed forces, the state’s primary enforcement has been by means of recent Hawks-led arrests at airport checkpoints.
But, the Hawks arrested Mantula and her co-accused after they were already at the boarding gate. The investigation into the 17 South Africans stranded in the conflict zone began after their families reached out to the media.
And when comes to Africans being recruited in Ukraine, warnings on government websites are a good start. But they are no match for a recruiter with promises of salaries and Russian citizenship targeting a 21-year-old who otherwise has few prospects.
Following direct talks between President Cyril Ramaphosa and President Vladimir Putin on 10 February 2026, there is broad agreement on a process to repatriate 17 South African men trapped in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The cost of silence
Several African governments like to talk about thwarting a fresh Cold War. On the ground, though, something closer to the opposite is taking root. Recruitment messages are pinging around WhatsApp messages and Telegram channels and Discord servers. Training camps are going up near borders. Gulf funding and Russian contracts increasingly intersect with African unemployment and fragile institutions.
Governments that call themselves non-aligned run the risk of looking the other way instead, moving too late, or issuing statements that sound on-point yet change little, if anything.
A non-aligned foreign policy cannot hold when South Africans recruited to Russia are enlisted on home soil and only acknowledged once the damage is done. It has to start with concrete action. South Africa should actively enforce the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act before citizens board planes.
Public recruitment warnings need to reach communities where these offers circulate, not just government websites. Bilateral pressure on countries hosting recruitment operations should be direct and sustained.
We cannot not allow our citizens to be treated as expendable in someone else’s conflict. We must enforce the laws we wrote. And perhaps, most crucially, we honor the social contract and protect the people we claim to represent.
Everything else is more false recruitment.
If South Africa does not learn to act sooner, South Africans recruited to fight for Russia will not be the last citizens treated as expendable in someone else’s war.