By Mogomotsi Magome, JOHANNESBURG
South Africa
South African officials did not know a sanctioned Russian ship was assigned to deliver military equipment to the country until the vessel was nearing national waters, according to an inquiry into an incident that caused diplomatic tensions between South Africa and the U.S.
U.S. Ambassador Reuben Brigety accused South Africa in
May of having weapons intended for Russia loaded on to the Lady R when the
container ship docked near Cape Town in December. The ship is under U.S.
sanctions for ties to a company that transported arms for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
South Africa denied there was a government-approved
deal to ship weapons to Russia from the country, which officially has taken a
non-aligned stance on the Ukraine war. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed a
three-person panel led by a retired judge to oversee an inquiry into the
matter.
An executive summary of the
panel’s report released Tuesday night stated that the ship offloaded military
equipment but no weapons were loaded onto it. The panel also said that South
African officials had no say in how the equipment ordered from the United Arab
Emirates was shipped.
Ramaphosa made the summary public but has
said the full report would remain classified. “To reveal the details of the
equipment offloaded would compromise important military operations and put our
soldiers’ lives at risk,” he said.
Brigety
asserted during a May news conference that U.S. intelligence showed ammunition
and weapons were put on the Lady R in South Africa and carried to Russia. A
bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers subsequently asked the Biden
administration to punish South Africa and questioned the country’s
ability to receive trade benefits under a U.S. law, the African Growth and
Opportunity Act.
The secretary-general of South
Africa’s ruling African National Congress party, Fikile Mbalula, last month
openly questioned why Brigety remained in the country after allegedly “lying”
about South Africa supplying Russia with weapons.
The panel’s findings elicited
calls from several quarters, including the ANC-aligned South African Communist
Party, for the ambassador to be expelled.
“We appreciate the seriousness
with which the panel of inquiry undertook to investigate irregularities
surrounding the Lady R’s presence in South Africa in December 2022,” David S.
Feldmann, a spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, said Wednesday. “The
U.S. government shared certain information pertaining to the Lady R and its
presence in South Africa in support of the investigation.”
According to the inquiry
report, the Russian ship was redirected to the Simon’s Town naval base after
shipping agents at the Ngqura-Port Elizabeth port, where it intended to dock,
refused to service the ship due to the U.S. sanctions.
“This only became apparent as
the ship was already approaching South African waters,” the panel found, adding
that the ship was redirected “to rescue the situation.”
The investigating panel
accepted the nighttime work to offload the military equipment, saying it was
loaded on pallets and would be visible to anybody within site of the Simon’s
Town dock. The vessel switched off its identification transponder because it
was being tracked by foreign intelligence agencies, the panel said, without
naming those agencies.
The panel also concluded that
the U.S. sanctions were not binding on South Africa because United Nations had
not endorsed them.
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