Executive report on Lady R docking in Simon’s Town provides more detail

Lady R, the Russian-registered cargo ship which docked in Simon’s Town Naval Base in December last year, delivered equipment for the SA National Defence Force, which had been ordered from a company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2018. 

Despite rumours that some equipment or arms were loaded on Lady R, the panel appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa found no evidence to substantiate these claims. 

Ramaphosa released an executive summary on Tuesday after he had appointed a panel chaired by judge Phineas Mojapelo to probe claims made about the docking of the ship.

The contents of the executive summary are similar to what he said during his address to the nation on Sunday.

In May, US ambassador to SA Reuben Brigety told media in Pretoria that Washington had established that the vessel was loaded with weapons while docked at the naval base in December.

The report said the manufacturing, packaging and delivery of the equipment was delayed, among other things, by the outbreaks of Covid-19 and of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“Although 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 United Nations and were therefore not binding on South Africa.”

The report said the shipping agents at Ngqura in the Eastern Cape, 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 South African waters.

The report said in order to rescue the situation, the SANDF, in collaboration with Armscor and the supplier, directed the ship to dock at Simon’s Town, where the goods/equipment were offloaded.

It said as part of the standard practice in relation to this kind of equipment, the goods were offloaded during the nights of December 7 to 8 and December 8 to 9 last year.

“The details of the equipment offloaded and its intended use were made known to the panel. In light of this classified information, the panel accepted the reasons provided for the decision to offload the equipment at night.”

The report said available evidence only confirmed the offloading and that there was nothing loaded.

The panel found the equipment had not been properly containerised and it was packed in pallets.

“As a result, containers were brought to the port, empty, by trucks, and the pallets were loaded into the containers on the dock, after which the containers were then loaded on the trucks.”

The panel was informed that, 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 vessel switched off its automatic identification system (AIS) transponder.

The vessel and those who assisted it contravened a number of provisions that relate to commercial vessels docking at South African ports, including Sars designation of a port of entry. The panel made recommendations in relation to the future management of foreign vessels’ docking at South African ports.

In a statement accompanying the report, the presidency said due to the classified nature of the evidence that informed the report, government will not publicly engage further on the substance of the report. 

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