A British non-profit organisation has claimed that former president Jacob Zuma’s daughter Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla was at the centre of a Russia-backed Twitter campaign to bolster support for the attack on Ukraine.
Bloomberg reports that a study commissioned and funded by the UK-based non-profit Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) claims that Zuma-Sambudla acted as a ‘super influencer’ for the Russian campaign against Ukraine, likely receiving both authentic and artificial amplification of her content.
Zuma-Sambudla, according to CIR, was at the forefront of Russia’s drive to sway public opinion to its side in South Africa and beyond. Posts bearing her name were reused in other regions in the #IStandWithRussia and #IStandWithPutin Twitter campaigns.
Bloomberg reports that South Africa is fertile ground to stoke sympathy for Russia. The former Soviet Union supported the ruling ANC during the decades-long struggle against apartheid and the party has maintained ties with Russia’s current leaders since the end of white-minority rule in 1994.
It notes South Africa has been criticized by the US and European nations — among its biggest trading partners — for refusing to condemn Russia’s war with Ukraine by backing United Nations’ resolutions and hosting exercises with the Russian navy over the anniversary of the invasion.
ANC officials today still refer to each other as comrades and use Marxist terminology in their policy papers, often attacking the West as imperialist and hegemonic.
Bloomberg quotes Nina Jankowicz, vice president at the CIR, as saying of Zuma-Sambudla: ‘The evidence is compelling. She was a clear driver of the campaign and the origin point for many of the tweets that were replicated around the South African information environment, and eventually even further afield.’
Zuma-Sambudla is described as a prominent figure on South African Twitter, with about 237 000 followers.
She was notoriously active on social media during the violence and unrest in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July 2021, events avowedly spurred by the imprisonment of her father, Jacob Zuma, for contempt of court after his refusal to appear before the Zondo inquiry into state corruption.