Our Soil, Their War: How Ukraine, NATO and the DA Hijacked South Africa
Ukrainian military intelligence is reportedly conducting covert operations in South Africa, raising serious questions about the implications for national sovereignty and international relations.
Image: IOL / Ron AI
Last week I reported that Ukrainian military intelligence operatives are conducting clandestine activities in South Africa. Surveillance. Disruption of Russian linked logistics. Plans to attack Russian naval presence in Cape Town. These actions are carried out by GUR agents, foreign military operatives with protected diplomatic status, made legal under a visa agreement quietly ushered in by Democratic Alliance (DA) Minister Leon Schreiber in late 2024.
The story broke through veteran Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. His article was not just a piece of reporting. It functioned as an official communique from the heart of the United States intelligence apparatus. Ignatius has long served as a narrative conduit for the CIA and Pentagon. When he singles out South Africa in an exposé about Ukrainian covert war, the implications are pointed.
Yet the reaction from South Africa's leadership has been to bury their heads in the sand.
No word from President Cyril Ramaphosa. No inquiry from Parliament. No comment from Minister of State Security Khumbudzo Ntshavheni. No diplomatic protest from Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola. No explanation from Leon Schreiber, Minister of Home Affairs, a department now compromised by Democratic Alliance control.
And so the questions remain.
Who authorised the presence of a foreign military intelligence force in South Africa?
What role did Ramaphosa play in allowing Ukraine to wage shadow warfare from our territory?
Why has the state avoided even a minimal response?
The GUR claimed they tracked the Lady R to Simon's Town in 2022 and alleged that arms were being transferred to Russia. They admitted to interfering with a Russian cargo flight and acknowledged that their agents contemplated an attack on the Smolnyy, a Russian naval ship docked in Cape Town. These are acts of hostility against a BRICS partner. They were conducted from within our borders. And they have gone unchallenged by the executive.
The silence is coordinated.
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GUR chief Kyrylo Budanov has publicly declared Ukraine's mission to target Russian assets globally. He posed a rhetorical question to Ignatius: 'Why should Africa be an exception?' It wasn't a question. It was a threat veiled in smug certainty, certainty that the West's sphere of influence now includes South Africa.
Ignatius's article performs a layered function.
To Pretoria: You are being monitored. Your diplomatic alignments are under audit. The so called 'non aligned' position is seen as defiance, and defiance has consequences.
To Moscow: Your partners are compromised. Your alliances in Africa are penetrable. Your backchannels can be severed at will.
To Kyiv: Celebrate your reach, but stay within boundaries. The failed attempt to strike the Smolnyy is mentioned, but the narrative steers blame away from Washington. The mission was conceived in Kyiv, not coordinated through Langley. Deniability remains intact.
Ignatius uses his platform to draw the blueprint for a global dirty war, a campaign of psychological and covert disruption dressed up as proactive defence. The framing legitimises a foreign military's activities in sovereign countries far from the battlefield. Africa is presented as free territory for geopolitical experimentation.
Nowhere in his column does Ignatius interrogate the legality of these actions. He valorises GUR strikes in Mali and Central African Republic, including a drone attack that reportedly killed over 130 people. This is terrorism, not liberation. It is framed as righteous because it aligns with United States foreign policy.
The Gaze, a Kyiv based media outlet tightly aligned with Ukrainian government messaging, amplified the South African aspects of the Ignatius story almost immediately. Its coverage read like a warning to Pretoria. The timing points to a coordinated narrative campaign, not a random editorial interest in Africa.
The deeper objective becomes clear: push South Africa further from BRICS and closer to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) interests. Discredit its partnerships. Isolate its diplomatic independence. Expose the African National Congress (ANC)'s internal fractures and accelerate its ideological collapse.
Mali Has Severed Diplomatic Ties With Ukraine And is Now Set To Ban Ukrainian Goods From Entering The Country.
The decision follows allegations of Ukraine's intelligence support to rēbel groups behind several attācks on Malian Troops and Russian Wagner forces. pic.twitter.com/YiV4yszblF — Africa Archives (@AfricaArchives_) June 17, 2025
Ramaphosa's silence is more than evasion. It may point to collaboration. His grooming by corporate capital in the 1970s positioned him as a long game candidate for imperial management. Phala Phala exposed a man entangled in quiet deals and unaccountable wealth. His presidency survives scandals that would sink others, because he remains useful.
And with each silent concession, the idea of an ANC government dies a little more.
The visa exemptions that granted Ukrainian agents access to our soil were signed under a Democratic Alliance controlled ministry. They became active under Ramaphosa's watch. There has been no reassessment of that agreement. No attempt to vet or restrict those entering. No safeguards against abuse.
If Ukraine uses South African territory to target Russia, Pretoria becomes complicit. Under the United Nations Charter, this constitutes a breach of international peace. The consequences will not only be diplomatic. They will be structural. South Africa will be recast as a proxy zone in NATO's extended theatre. Its voice on global platforms will carry less weight. Its people will pay the price for elite submission.
The Black working class has already seen how white capital benefits from chaos. Under a Democratic Alliance led administration, land reform will stall. Redistribution will be erased. Afrocentric education will vanish. Political resistance will be criminalised under new definitions of extremism. What was claimed back after apartheid will be recolonised before decolonisation ever begins.
Black political movements—the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK), African Transformation Movement (ATM), and others—must see this moment clearly. Fragmentation will ensure the fall. A revolutionary coalition must form, rooted in sovereignty and grounded in anti imperialist clarity. Otherwise, we hand our country to NATO's security architecture wrapped in DA branding.
South Africa has become a chessboard. The pawns are moving. The king remains silent.
The war has arrived quietly.
And our government let it in with both hands.
Ukrainian military intelligence is reportedly conducting covert operations in South Africa, raising serious questions about the implications for national sovereignty and international relations.
Image: IOL
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