Jacob Zuma’s State Security Agency secretly funded embassy of Central African Republic in Pretoria since 2014

South Africa’s State Security Agency (SSA) has been secretly funding the Pretoria embassy of the Central African Republic (CAR) for more than eight years, at an unknown cost to the taxpayer.

The funding began during Jacob Zuma’s presidency in 2014 and has reportedly just been terminated by the SSA under its current leadership. CAR’s ambassador to South Africa, André Nzapayeké, believes Pretoria is doing this in retaliation for the CAR government’s cancellation of an oil exploration concession to a South African company.

But Nzapayeké said he had been told Pretoria cancelled the sponsorship because it was irregular and because it is trying to cut costs. Nzapayeké was also told that some members of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration believe the 2014 sponsorship deal was done to advance the personal interests of members of Zuma’s family rather than in the national interest.

Zuma’s SSA gave CAR a building for its embassy, another one for the ambassador’s residence, and three vehicles. It also paid the embassy’s operational expenses, including the salaries of South Africans working in the embassy and supplementary allowances for the CAR’s own diplomats, who were underpaid by their government. 

The secret project emerges from a letter which Nzapayeké wrote to his boss, CAR Foreign Minister Sylvie Baïpo-Temon, on 13 November this year, urgently requesting money to keep the embassy going in a new building he hoped to rent in Pretoria to house both the embassy and his own residence.

He told Temon the new director-general of the SSA appointed by Ramaphosa had been trying to terminate the financing deal for more than two years.

Nzapayeké said he had been doing his utmost to prevent this, but had failed and had been recently told the sponsorship would end on 30 November. The buildings would be taken back and he and his staff would be “out on the street” if Temon did not come up with urgent funds.

Daily Maverick was unable to reach Nzapayeké to find out what had happened on 30 November.

In the letter to Temon, Nzapayeké explained that Zuma’s government ostensibly decided to finance the embassy to open a channel of communication between the two capitals, Pretoria and Bangui.

Shootout with Séléka rebels

This followed the deaths of 15 South African soldiers in a shootout with Séléka rebels on the outskirts of Bangui in March 2013. The rebels were marching on Bangui to depose President François Bozizé, which they did days later.

The real purpose of the presence of the South African troops has never been explained. A small contingent of troops had been in CAR for many years, training Bozizé’s presidential guard. When Séléka began its march on Bangui in late 2012, Zuma made the fateful — and fatal — decision to reinforce the training contingent rather than withdraw it.

The SANDF sent in about 250 more troops. But they were not enough and were not properly armed. A much larger Séléka force overran them, killing 13 South African troops on the day and injuring many more, two of whom later died.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2021-06-29-2013-battle-of-bangui-time-for-commission-of-inquiry-into-all-aspects-especially-zumas-role/

This military disaster exposed massive gaps in South Africa’s intelligence about what was happening in CAR and may have inspired South Africa’s decision both to open its own embassy in Bangui and to help CAR establish one in Pretoria.

Nzapayeké recounted how when he arrived in South Africa in October 2014 as ambassador, he had no embassy, no vehicles, no office equipment and no archives. His hosts gave him everything he needed.

The idea was to end the sponsorship when CAR stabilised, but due to  “repetitive crises in CAR” the arrangement had continued.

Things changed in February 2018 when Zuma was removed from office. Nzapayeké said some of Ramaphosa’s people saw the deal as serving the personal interests of Zuma’s family and wanted to put an end to it as soon as possible. Suspicion still lingers that the South African troops were in CAR in the first place to protect these commercial interests. Zuma’s nephew Khulubuse, for instance, had oil extraction concessions in the region.

Political turmoil in SA

Other factors were also pushing South Africa to terminate the sponsorship, Nzapayeké said, including the weakening of the economy and the political turmoil in South Africa. The SSA had come under close scrutiny by Parliament and the Zondo Commission. New officials were put in charge of the SSA and decided to slash the budget drastically, in part by cutting projects.

Nzapayeké said he had fought hard over the past two years to maintain the financial support. Once Ramaphosa himself had reprieved the deal, he wrote.

But then he received a letter from the new SSA director-general on 12 July 2022 informing him of the decision to end the support on 30 November 2022.

Despite his entreaties, a second letter arrived at the embassy on 4 October confirming the decision and a third letter on 18 October, providing the details of how the support would end.

The SSA said it would recover the embassy, the residence, the three vehicles and all the furniture and equipment in the residence. But the SSA agreed to let the embassy keep the furniture and office equipment and provided a final payment on 25 October of R790,000 for running expenses.

Nzapayeké said he was still waiting for a response to his appeal to let the embassy keep two of its three vehicles. The SSA had declined his request to it to give CAR the embassy building.

Nzapayeké said the South African authorities had said they were ending the financial support because it had been continuing for so long without any prospect of recovering the money.

The SSA also said supporting a foreign diplomatic mission was not part of its mandate. Pretoria suggested that the two governments could adequately communicate through South Africa’s embassy in Bangui.

Oil exploration concession

However, Nzapayeké told his foreign minister he believed the real main reason for Pretoria’s decision was Bangui’s decision to withdraw an oil exploration concession which it had granted in 2012 to South Africa’s DIGOIL in the southeast of CAR. DIGOIL incurred the wrath of environmentalists in 2019 when it emerged that departing DRC President Joseph Kabila had given it a concession to drill for oil in the DRC’s Salonga National Park.

Some sources say the CAR concession taken from DIGOIL was given instead to Russians. CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra is being kept in power by operatives of the Russian private military company Wagner which is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is believed Wagner is being paid for its protection in part by oil and mining concessions.

Nzapayeké said his government had assured Pretoria that South Africa would get priority in the next allocation of oil blocks, but this had not appeased it. He believed South Africa also had other grievances, including Bangui’s unilateral annulment of a contract given to the communication company Sentech for rehabilitating CAR’s national TV and radio, CAR’s failure to honour other contracts and also to provide South Africa with a site for its embassy in Bangui and for a planned memorial to the South African soldiers who died in 2013.

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Overall, Nzapayeké said the perception of the South African government and business was that CAR had not treated South Africa well. He said the director-general of the SSA had recently remarked that the fact that CAR had made no effort to finance its Pretoria mission showed a lack of interest in cooperating with South Africa.

He was also told that South Africa felt it had made a large investment in CAR, including its support for elections and the peace process; for the lifting of the arms and diamond embargoes on CAR and for its mining sector. Yet South Africa had received nothing in return, including no CAR support for SA’s candidates for leadership of international organisations.

He urged Temon to get the CAR government to address these concerns.

Nzapayeké said he felt that the termination of the sponsorship of the CAR embassy was ultimately the “collateral damage” of wider circumstances: the global economic crisis, the Ukraine war, political tensions in SA, the weakened position of Ramaphosa over Phala Phala, Ramaphosa’s fight against corruption, the ANC leadership race and the approaching ANC leadership elections and the increasingly strict surveillance of institutions and state expenses after State Capture.

Daily Maverick asked both the SSA and Dirco for comment, but had not received any by the time of publication. DM