South African social-media influencer Cyan Boujee posted TikTok and Instagram videos promoting a Russian recruitment scheme. The videos have since been deleted from her accounts.Tiktok/Supplied
A deceptive campaign to lure young South African women into jobs at a Russian military drone factory has ignited a firestorm of criticism, sparking stern government warnings and a public backlash against the TikTok stars who promoted the campaign.
South Africa’s ministry for women and youth said it was gravely concerned about the Russian-led social-media campaign, which targeted women between the ages of 18 and 22. The ministry urged young people to be “vigilant” and “exercise extreme caution.”
The controversy erupted this past weekend after a popular South African social-media influencer posted TikTok and Instagram videos that painted a glowing picture of a Russian recruitment scheme. “Apparently girls are treated fairly here,” Cyan Boujee said as she strolled through a Russian industrial park.
“Africans, Asians, Latin Americans – they’re given housing, jobs, and on top of that, they are taught how to speak Russian,” she said, displaying kitchen appliances and sports facilities in gleaming new apartment towers.
“Every six months brings a promotion, a salary increase and new professional skills. Conversations, languages, new friendships – it happens right inside the residence.”
Ms. Boujee, whose real name is Honour Zuma, has said that she is the granddaughter of former president Jacob Zuma, although her claim is unconfirmed. The 24-year-old social-media celebrity has 1.7 million TikTok followers and 900,000 Instagram followers.
In a country suffering from high unemployment and poverty, Ms. Boujee’s videos about Russian jobs attracted huge attention. But her videos failed to disclose that the jobs in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone would involve working at a factory that produces thousands of military drones for Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Reports over the past year have revealed that Russia uses deceptive tactics to recruit young women from the developing world for the drone-factory jobs, to fill the labour shortage caused by Moscow’s mass mobilization of young men for the war.
Many of the drone-factory workers are now recruited from African countries such as Uganda, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso and Botswana. They are often led to believe that they are enrolling in a work-study program, according to a report by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, an independent Geneva-based organization.
At the factory, the women often suffered “long hours under constant surveillance and health issues caused by working with caustic chemicals,” the report said. It noted that the recruits also faced other dangers: The factory has sometimes been attacked by Ukrainian drones.
The Alabuga recruitment program is “an exploitative use of juvenile and migrant labour to support the Russian war economy,” the report said.
“There is a clear disjoint between the upbeat promises of the glossy marketing campaign made to young women from predominantly the Global South and the harsh realities of the working conditions, and the deception, coercion and risks to safety that the work exposes them to.”
Within days of the release of Ms. Boujee’s videos and similar videos from other TikTok and Instagram celebrities, there was a huge public outcry in South Africa, with critics warning of the risk of human trafficking if women accepted the Russian offer. Phumzile Van Damme, a former South African MP, said the recruitment campaign “has all the markers of a human-trafficking operation and modern slavery arrangements.”
The government swiftly issued official warnings about the recruitment scheme and promised to investigate it, while Ms. Boujee responded by removing the video from her social-media accounts.
“I apologize and I believe this is not something that will be repeated,” she said in a new video on Tuesday.
“I believe this is a huge learning curve for me and the other influencers,” she added. “Human trafficking is a very serious matter and I do not stand with it.”
Another South African influencer, Seemah Mangolwane, said she had failed to do enough research on the Russian job scheme before agreeing to promote it. “I apologize for being ignorant and putting young people’s lives in danger,” she told a South African newspaper, Sunday World, this week.
The newspaper said the influencers were paid the equivalent of $4,000 to $12,000 each and were flown to Russia for three-day visits to record the social-media videos.
The Russian embassy in South Africa, in a statement on Monday, said it had “no information” about foreigners at Alabuga being tricked or subjected to violations of their rights. It complained of reports from “biased” media outlets, and it said the allegations of exploitation were unfounded.