Late on Sunday night, 8 November, South African police stopped nine young men before they could leave Johannesburg. Some were taken at OR Tambo International Airport, the country’s main door to the world. The others were taken at a hotel nearby, in the suburb of Bruma. The youngest was 20 and the oldest 26. According to police they were about to board flights to Russia, and the suspicion is that the war in Ukraine was where they would end up.

Al Jazeera reported the arrests the next day and set them inside a longer, darker pattern: people from Africa and other continents tricked into travelling to Russia and then, once they arrive, forced into Moscow’s grinding war against its neighbour. All nine are foreign nationals. Their countries have not been named.

The route

Police spokesperson Col. Katlego Mogale said the arrests followed an investigation involving the South African Police Service, the Hawks, Interpol and other law enforcement agencies at home and abroad, according to the Associated Press. The route was not a direct one. The Mail & Guardian reported that the men were to fly to Russia via the United Arab Emirates.

One question is still open. Al Jazeera described the nine as heading to join Russian forces. The AP, citing police, reported that officers had not said which side the men supposedly meant to fight for. Until a court hears the case, both versions are on the record.

The nine are expected to appear before the Kempton Park Magistrates’ Court. No date has been given. The charges fall under the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act 15 of 1998, a law passed four years after the end of apartheid. It bans mercenary activity and regulates any military help given to parties in foreign conflicts, including recruitment and training. It covers foreigners on South African soil as well as citizens.

A country as a departure lounge

None of the nine is South African. Even so, the Mail & Guardian observed that the case raises new questions about the country serving as a launch point for people allegedly being recruited into foreign military structures. South Africa already knows this story from the inside.

Last year Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, a daughter of former president Jacob Zuma, was accused of helping to lure 17 South African men to Russia with promises of security training. Al Jazeera has reported that the allegation came from an affidavit filed by her half-sister, which says the men were handed over to a Russian mercenary group and made to fight. Zuma-Sambudla has said she was deceived herself. She left parliament in late 2025. Police investigated her, and the AP reported this week that she was never formally charged.

In February the government said it had secured the return of 11 men lured into the war. In a separate case, a radio presenter, Nonkululeko Mantula, and four others face charges under the same 1998 act. That same month their case was postponed so prosecutors could seek mutual legal assistance from Russia. The irony is plain. To prosecute recruiters for Russia’s war, the South African court had to ask Moscow for help.

The arithmetic of a long war

The war is now four and a half years old. According to the AP, recruiters have been working across Africa, Asia and South America, often with offers of civilian jobs that lead in the end to the battlefield. In February Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said more than 1,700 people from 36 African nations were known to be fighting for Russia.

A reflection, not a finding: a war that goes on this long eats men faster than any state can find volunteers. At that point the people who gather soldiers stop looking for patriots and start looking for the poor, the young and the trusting. Those people rarely read the contract. Al Jazeera put one quoted line at the head of its March feature on the South Africans sent to the front: “Our children were sold off.”

Moscow, meanwhile, keeps courting the continent with summits and promises. In October African delegations came to Russia and heard those promises again, while Russian fighters stayed at work propping up juntas on African soil.

The nine are still unnamed, and so are their countries. What is known is their ages, 20 to 26, and the place they were stopped: an airport and a hotel in Bruma, one flight away from the Gulf. The magistrates in Kempton Park will decide whether they broke South Africa’s law. No court has been asked who sold them the journey, or what they were promised.