Daily Maverick and other publications reported last week that the State Security Agency (SSA) had provided the Central African Republic (CAR) with buildings for its embassy and the ambassador’s residence, as well as three vehicles, and had paid the salaries of local staff as well as the running costs of the embassy. 

This sponsorship was revealed in a letter ambassador André Nzapayeké wrote to his foreign minister, Sylvie Baïpo-Temon, in November this year. 

In the letter, Nzapayeké said the extensive sponsorship had begun in 2014 under Jacob Zuma’s presidency as a result of both the CAR and South Africa feeling a need to open embassies in each other’s countries in order to communicate better. 

This flowed from the deaths of 15 South African soldiers in a firefight with Seleka rebels on the outskirts of CAR’s capital, Bangui, in March 2013. The rebels went on to topple President François Bozizé days later, plunging the already unstable country into even greater instability from which it has still not completely recovered. 

In the letter to Baïpo-Temon, Nzapayeké pointed out that the SSA, under President Ramaphosa, had decided to terminate the sponsorship on 30 November and so he was appealing to his foreign minister for more funding to keep the embassy running.  

However, in a statement issued this week, the embassy said “articles and documents circulating in various newspapers and social media that purportedly bear the stamp of the embassy” had come to the embassy’s attention.

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“The CAR embassy hereby categorically refutes any involvement in these publications and does not have any connections whatsoever with their authors. Moreover, the embassy has never made any public statement expressing such views or concerns. It is not the custom of the embassy to engage on state affairs through the media.

“The objective of those polemical publications is clearly to tarnish the excellent relations and cooperation based on formal agreements between the Central African Republic and the Republic of South Africa.

“Therefore, the embassy disclaims all responsibility in this matter and will not make any other statement or comment thereof.”

The embassy’s statement seems carefully worded to distance the embassy from the leaking of ambassador Nzapayeké’s letter, rather than to deny the existence of the letter or its contents. Daily Maverick tried last week to confirm Nzapayeké’s letter, but received no response. 

Nzapayeké’s letter revealed that the SSA, under Ramaphosa, told him it was obliged to terminate the sponsorship as it was outside its mandate to finance such activities and it was, in any case, trying to cut costs.

But Nzapayeké expressed his own opinion that the real reason for South Africa ending its financing was that the CAR government had withdrawn an oil concession granted to South African company, DIG Oil, and also because Bangui had failed to provide land in the capital for Pretoria to build an embassy, or land on which to erect a memorial to South Africa’s fallen soldiers.

Nzapayeké noted in the letter to Baïpo-Temon that the current SSA suspected that the sponsorship might have had more to do with personal commercial interests in the CAR rather than boosting relations between the two countries.

This appeared to be a reference to Zuma’s nephew, Khulubuse Zuma, who reportedly had oil interests in the CAR. According to the British journal Africa Confidential, he is on the board of DIG Oil, but has also been reported to have other interests in the company. DM