By Armand Liebenberg, DefenceWeb
July 2 marked the final withdrawal of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) personnel from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The withdrawal represents not just an end to the SANDF’s longest-ever deployment, but the end of an era for South African peacekeeping.
Although South Africa’s first combat force, Task Force One, did not arrive in DRC until April 2003, the SANDF’s involvement with peace operations in DRC can be traced back to the 1999 Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement, when Col Hans Swart became South Africa’s first peacekeeper, deployed to Kampala, Uganda, to support the newly established UN Organisation Mission in DRC (Monuc).
A single staff officer appointment would grow throughout the 2000s and 2010s into a force of about 1,300 personnel at its peak, comprising combat, specialist air cargo, medical, engineering and aviation units. When the mission was renamed the UN Organisation Stabilisation Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (Monusco) in 2010, South Africa’s role expanded as its troops formed part of the UN’s Force Intervention Brigade, the first UN peacekeeping force authorised to take offensive action, enabling the Rooivalk attack helicopter’s combat debut against the M23 rebel group in 2013.
In 2025, South Africa’s decades-long commitment to peace in DRC came under severe strain, not because of concerns about Monusco’s progress, but because of the failure of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Mission in DRC (SAMIDRC).
January 2025 saw one of the heaviest casualty events for the South African military in the democratic era, resulting in the deaths of 14 soldiers during clashes with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern DRC. While the subsequent, and shambolic, withdrawal saw the return of about 1,700 troops, the South African government reaffirmed the country’s commitment to regional peace and multilateral peacekeeping.
About 12 months later, near-identical language has accompanied the final Monusco drawdown, even as the logistics of bringing the last troops and equipment home have again proved contentious. The ongoing Ebola outbreak, coupled with delays ascribed to both the UN and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), has yet again led to serious concerns about the manner in which the SANDF manages such operations.
According to Rapport’s Erika Gibson, the final 350 SANDF troops deployed with Monusco, based at Beni in eastern DRC, were originally meant to fly to Entebbe, Uganda, and then on to the SANDF’s mobilisation centre at De Brug outside Bloemfontein after the South African flag was lowered for the last time at the UN mission’s eastern DRC headquarters on June 26.
However, this plan soon fell apart after Uganda suspended flights out of DRC over the Ebola outbreak, forcing the group onto an unarmed, roughly 12-hour bus journey along what is considered to be one of the region’s most dangerous routes. Unnamed sources told Gibson that it would have been far safer to have flown the repatriated soldiers directly from Beni to De Brug.
According to Rapport, soldiers had also been complaining about a lack of direction and clarity throughout their withdrawal, as it was unclear who was actually in command of the operation.
The SANDF has rejected suggestions of mismanagement, with Brig-Gen Selinah Rawlins, director of Defence Corporate Communication, telling Rapport that air transport from Beni was not viable as the airfield could not handle the size of aircraft required for the mission.
‘Like a concentration camp’
The homecoming has also attracted growing criticism as the troops, upon their arrival, were immediately confined to a mandatory 21-day Ebola quarantine at De Brug in what several complaints described as substandard conditions. The soldiers are being housed in tents in a fenced-off area as part of what the SANDF describes as a “standard military quarantine facility”.
The SANDF also strenuously rejected reports that have described the living conditions in the camp not just as inadequate, but dehumanising, taking particular exception to the description of the De Brug facilities as similar to a “concentration camp” and accusations that service personnel were being effectively treated like “animals”, describing such characterisations as “sensationalised and highly inaccurate”.
“To equate a standard military quarantine facility to a ‘concentration camp’ is not only factually malicious but deeply insults the professional standard of the South African Military Health Service (SAMHS) and the logistical teams working tirelessly on the ground,” Rawlins said in a media enquiry response to Rapport seen by DefenceWeb.
Unsurprisingly, the De Brug reports have drawn a political response, with the EFF’s Carl Niehaus condemning the conditions as dehumanising and arguing that the SANDF’s rebuttal was highly defensive but failed to provide any meaningful counterfactual evidence. He added that the party, through its members on the portfolio committee on defence and military veterans and the joint standing committee on defence, was calling for an urgent oversight visit covering accommodation, ablutions and medical facilities, confidential engagement with soldiers, and scrutiny of quarantine and catering arrangements.
“It is utterly unacceptable that men and women who risked their lives in DRC — a deployment that has already claimed South African lives in previous phases — should return home to such conditions,” Niehaus said.
South Africa’s largest military labour organisation, the South African National Defence Union (Sandu), has members among those quarantined and enduring a harsh Free State winter. National secretary Pikkie Greeff confirmed that a number of issues had been taken up with military authorities regarding the situation on the ground at the mobilisation centre, including the quarantine issue.
In her media response, Rawlins said “strict, mandatory 21-day quarantine protocols” were being observed to ensure public health safety at the mobilisation centre. That was questionable, Greeff said, noting that both the World Health Organisation (WHO) and South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) did not prescribe quarantine for Ebola, with a current death toll of 506 reported from 1,561 cases in President Félix Tshisekedi’s country.
Sandu gave the SANDF until Wednesday to respond to issues raised with at least another 100 military personnel expected at the mobilisation centre later this week on their return from DRC.
Equipment recovery has proceeded on a separate, and similarly contentious, track.
Armscor contract
Two Ilyushin Il-76 heavy-lift cargo aircraft have been making daily flights between Air Force Base Waterkloof, just south of Pretoria, and Tanzania, repatriating various pieces of SANDF equipment over a roughly two-week period from late June to early July 2026. According to Rapport, the flights were made possible courtesy of a somewhat dubious R225m contract between the SANDF and Armscor in February.
The use of these two particular aircraft has raised some concerns. Not only is the supplier/operator unknown, but one (7P-HAR) is registered in Lesotho while the other (XT-ABN) is registered in Burkina Faso, neither of which is thought to have the capacity to ensure the aircraft are fully compliant with government or international aviation standards.
The EFF has raised additional concerns over the growing domestic demands being placed on the SANDF and its personnel, particularly those returning from external deployments. These concerns are not unfounded, particularly as both SAMIDRC and Monusco have freed up a substantial number of personnel and equipment just as domestic demand rises. Operation Prosper, a standing deployment in support of the South African Police Service (SAPS), has seen about 2,200 personnel deployed in five provinces, while more than 3,000 additional troops have been placed on standby for anti-immigration marches through July.
“Even more disturbing is the emerging pattern of soldiers being demobilised from DRC deployment only to be rapidly funnelled into new internal operations,” Niehaus said, adding, “The EFF is deeply concerned that exhausted troops emerging from quarantine at De Brug are being moved with undue haste into these high-pressure internal deployments without adequate rest, mental health decompression or proper reintegration.”
• This article is published here courtesy of DefenceWeb
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