Bloomberg: South African authorities investigate alleged recruitment of women at 'shaheed' factory

The South African government is investigating Russian companies that hire female residents of the country as part of BRICS cooperation initiatives. This was reported by Bloomberg, citing an unnamed source familiar with the matter.

Russian companies' intentions are being scrutinized over fears that South African women may be recruited to work at a plant producing attack drones in Tatarstan.

The local chapter of the BRICS Women's Business Alliance signed an agreement in May to supply the Alabuga Special Economic Zone and the construction company Etalonstroy Ural with a total of 5,600 employees next year.

This comes after the South African-based BRICS Student Commission posted an ad in January for construction and hospitality jobs in Alabuga available to women aged 18 to 22, and South African influencers on Instagram and TikTok began advertising them.

"There is a demand for labor in Russia," Lebogang Zulu, who heads the Women's Alliance and signed the agreement during a visit to Russia earlier this year, told Bloomberg.

"South Africa is experiencing an unemployment crisis," the official added .

Reports from the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) state that African women are being forced to work at Alabuga to assemble Shahed kamikaze drones. According to the organization, women are considered more reliable than men for this particular type of work.

According to Bloomberg's source, South African officials may summon Russian diplomats for explanations.

"The South African government is actively investigating reports of foreign programs recruiting South Africans under false pretenses. The South African government has yet to find any verifiable evidence that job offers in Russia are not fit for purpose," the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation said in a response.

They added that the Russian Alabuga was also inspected.

Alabuga Start's recruitment department did not respond to a request for comment. The Student Commission and the BRICS Women's Business Alliance have denied that workers recruited with their help will eventually work at the facility.

The media reports that in April, representatives of the Student Commission and Alabuga Start visited a high school in Johannesburg twice to promote the employment program.

Bloomberg's interlocutors said they were given Alabuga-branded T-shirts and pens, promised jobs and free airline tickets, and told they could get their own apartment if they worked in the area. According to them, they were asked to register on a recruitment service on WhatsApp.

Officially, the Alabuga Start materials do not mention working at a military plant. However, experts from the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security and the Global Initiative to Fight Transnational Crime also noted in their reports that most of the program participants eventually found jobs at a UAV manufacturing plant.

"We estimate that about 90% of the women who go to Alabuga are in the drone program. They're building weapons and they're in the crosshairs because they're now part of the war," said Spencer Faragasso, ISIS senior researcher.

• Ukrainian UAVs regularly target Russian military facilities in Tatarstan. In particular, on August 9, SBU drones attacked the Shahed storage terminal.
• On August 12, this facility was again attacked by long-range drones of the special service.