The report into the docking of the Lady R in Simon’s Town has left an even thicker fog of war, instead of clarifying the details surrounding the armaments on the vessel.
The executive summary of the report was released on Tuesday night. The independent panel chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Phineas Mojapelo stated it had to rely heavily on letters by President Cyril Ramaphosa. The presidency issued public invitations, after which the panel interviewed 47 people under oath or affirmation.
Spokesperson for the US embassy in Pretoria, David Feldman, confirmed the US government shared certain information pertaining to the Lady R and its presence in SA in support of the investigation.
“We will let SA speak to the panel’s findings,” he said.
It was the US ambassador to SA, Reuben Brigety, who in May publicly accused SA of supplying arms to Russia. He said he would bet his life that SA loaded weapons to Russia on board the Lady R after offloading the armaments ordered by the SA National Defence Force (SANDF).
While the Russian origins of the vessel and Brigety’s alleged cargo were the main points of contention all along, the panel found that the only consignment delivered was from the UAE and not from Russia.
However, the manufacturing, packaging and delivery of the consignment was delayed since 2018 because of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian-Ukraine conflict. It does not explain why a delivery from a company in the UAE would have been delayed by that conflict.
Minister of defence and military veterans Thandi Modise stated that the delivery was an “old, outstanding order for ammunition used by the special forces”. She reiterated during a later session in the National Assembly that the Lady R delivered a consignment from Russia — not equipment ordered from the UAE.
According to sources connected to the special forces, they have never used any equipment or ammunition manufactured in the UAE. What was urgently awaited was an order for arms and ammunition from Russia, which had been delayed for a number of years.
The panel report refers to an order dating back to 2018, but a cross reference to the National Conventional Arms Control Committee’s (NCACC) report for arms imports and exports for 2018 specifies no imports to SA from the UAE.
The NCACC report for 2019 specifies only one import from the UAE — one for eight armoured personnel carriers. From industry sources, those vehicles were an order by Botswana which was delivered at Durban harbour before they were transferred to Botswana.
The 2019 NCACC report does specify an order for ammunition from Russia for 5-million rounds of ammunition. The order’s value was R11m and was the one Modise rightly referred to as also confirmed by Business Day’s special forces sources. This has been the “accepted” narrative of the Lady R shipment until the panel’s findings suddenly discovered a new order from the UAE that has not been under discussion at any stage of the controversy.
According to the report, neither Armscor nor AB Logistics — Armscor’s supplier of freight logistics — nor the SANDF had any say in which vessel was contracted to deliver the “equipment” (thus not ammunition).
“Nor did they have control over the process, in terms of the relevant contractual arrangements. SA in fact had no control over the selection of the vessel.
“Though the Lady R was under US sanctions (which was only discovered by Armscor and AB Logistics in mid-October 2022 when the ship was already on its way), those sanctions had not been endorsed by the UN and were therefore not binding on SA.
“The shipping agents at Ngqura/Gqeberha, where the ship was at first intended to dock, were unwilling and refused to service the ship as a result of the US sanctions. This only became apparent as the ship was already approaching SA waters.
“In order to rescue the situation, the SANDF, in collaboration with Armscor and the supplier, decided and directed the ship to dock at [the naval base at] Simon’s Town, where the goods/equipment were offloaded,” says the report.
“As part of the standard practice in relation to this kind of equipment (specifically in relation to its intended use), the goods were offloaded at night, under cover of darkness. This was during the nights of 7-8 and 8-9 December 2022.”
The dockyard was brightly lit on the nights of activities in Simon’s Town, giving retired naval officers a clear view of what was happening.
The equipment had not been properly contained and was packed in pallets when it arrived. This necessitated the transfer of the consignment into empty containers, which was done during the two consecutive nights.
Shipping agents at Ngqura harbour refusing to service the ship is assumed to correspond to handling agents and fuel suppliers at SA’s main international airports refusing to service Russian aircraft. The reason for that is because the suppliers’ head offices are in countries that have sanctioned Russia.
The report provides the reason the Lady R’s crew turned off the vessel’s automatic identification system (AIS) before docking at the Simon’s Town naval base. It was turned off “as a result of the urgent circumstances in which the docking at Simon’s Town was procured, and the tracking of the vessel by foreign intelligence agencies”, the report stated.
“The vessel and those who assisted it contravened a number of provisions that relate to commercial vessels docking at SA ports, including Sars [SA Revenue Service] designation of a port of entry. The panel made recommendations in relation to the future management of foreign vessels’ docking at SA ports.”
The panel also made findings and recommendations about the NCACC, the communication between ministers, government officials and the failure to write reports while neglecting to keep the Ramaphosa abreast of matters of national importance.
Sources in the arms industry said there is something “not right” about the panel’s findings about the arms consignment.
The DA’s Kobus Marais, who was vocal about the party’s own intelligence that SA armaments were indeed shipped to Russia, rejected the panel report and its credibility — especially as it provided only an abbreviated version of all the information at its disposal.
“Without total transparency of all the relevant information this summary cannot be accepted as the alpha and the omega of the whole saga. The president needs to be honest and clear — that is the only way we would be able to understand what transpired here. Why all the secrecy if the consignment was really only an ordinary delivery?
‘’Further denials and cover-ups will not bring the whole Lady R issue to a conclusion.”
Helmoed-Römer Heitman, a defence analyst, in reaction said he was confused by the order from a UAE company unless they were just the middlemen.
“Given the reference to the war as one delaying factor, whatever it was, clearly came from Russia, not the UAE. The stupidity with which the whole Lady R saga has been handled is infuriating. Only Thandi Modise got it right, albeit too slowly.
“The question is whether Brigety was on a jolly of his own with an eye to limelight and promotion, on the basis of information whispered in his ear by someone in SA here or acting on wrong information from Washington.
“If it came from Washington, was the aim to fire a shot across our bows and chose a particularly stupid way to do it or specifically to damage the US-SA relationship? Unless there is something we do not know, the US should cut him down to size and cut his term short.”
According to Feldmann, Brigety is President Joe Biden’s personal representative in SA.
“The president and the secretary of state retain full confidence in him.”
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