Munyaradzi Javangwe, Knowledge Ndunduma, Weiught Mudhanyana, Tafadzwa Sithole and Abel Muchene spent this week in custody, their court dates stacked one after another as magistrates worked through their cases. The five Zimbabwean men, arrested at O.R. Tambo International Airport on November 8 alongside four others, are among nine now facing charges in South Africa after allegedly trying to leave the country to fight for Russia.
The men were arrested on November 8, five of them at the airport and four at a hotel in the Bruma neighbourhood of Johannesburg, after an investigation carried out with Interpol involvement. At first, police declined to identify the suspects or say where they were from. That changed on November 10, when the South African Police Service posted a court update on Facebook naming all nine.
For the five men taken at the airport, the past few days have moved quickly. Javangwe, 41, Ndunduma, 44, Mudhanyana, 20, Sithole, 24, and Muchene, 40, first appeared in the Kempton Park Magistrates’ Court on November 9. Their case was postponed to November 10 so they could arrange legal aid. According to the police post, they have since appointed legal representation and were remanded in custody. They return to the Kempton Park court on November 17, when a possible bail application will be considered.
Meanwhile, the four men arrested in Bruma faced their own hearing the same day. Batsiraj Shereni, 44, Liberty Shereni, 24, Bobo Chinhondo, 43, and Niombe Zhou, 37, appeared in the Johannesburg Magistrates’ Court on November 9 and were remanded in custody. Their case was postponed to November 12 for legal representation, meaning that as of the police update they were still working out who would defend them.
What connects all nine is the suspicion hanging over them: that they were trying to leave South Africa in order to join Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Police say they are suspected of breaching the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, the law that bars South Africans and others in the country from taking part in foreign armed conflicts without government permission. One question remains unanswered. Police have not said who allegedly arranged the men’s travel, leaving open who, if anyone, stood behind the plan that ended with nine men in police cells rather than on a plane.
For now, the men remain behind bars, their families and circumstances largely out of public view. What is known comes almost entirely from the police service’s own account: two arrest locations, two courtrooms, a series of postponements, and nine names read out days after the arrests. The next dates are set, November 12 for the four Johannesburg men and November 17 for the five in Kempton Park, and the question of bail will shape what the coming weeks look like for each of them.
The case also lands in a wider context the police statement itself acknowledged. Foreign nationals who have been lured into Russia’s armed forces, the service noted, have a way out: Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project offers a safe means of escaping the battlefield, and guidance is available for victims of Russian military recruitment and for their families. For the nine men in custody, and for the people back home waiting on news of them, that reminder sits alongside the court dates now governing their lives. Whether any of them seek bail, how their legal representation develops, and whether police ever identify who arranged the alleged travel will determine how this story unfolds.