Middle East war: Were SA and Dirco caught napping?

· Citizen

Criticism has mounted against the South African government and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) over their handling of the evacuation of South Africans stranded amid escalating conflict in the Middle East.

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As conflict engulfs the Gulf region and airspace closures strand thousands of South Africans, questions mount over whether the government has done enough to bring its citizens home and who should foot the bill.

Were they caught unaware?

When attacks on Iran and retaliatory strikes threw the Middle East into turmoil, thousands of South Africans found themselves stranded in Gulf states with no clear path home.

Among the loudest voices raising alarm was TV presenter and radio broadcaster Spitch Nzawumbi, who was himself stranded in Dubai and says he had no choice but to book his own commercial flight home.

He accused the government of having no evacuation plan and of showing up to defend itself with little more than spin. “We’re not going to come here and play PR. Those are people’s lives back there in Dubai,” he said.

International relations analyst Dr Ahmed Jazbhay went further, arguing that the crisis revealed a department that had failed to prepare despite ample warning.

“It is clear that Dirco was caught napping despite the war being on the horizon for many years,” he said, adding that the absence of pre-communicated triggers, timelines or transport arrangements “suggests institutional unpreparedness rather than a coherent evacuation strategy”.

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What the government says it can and cannot do

Dirco spokesperson Clayson Monyela, however, hit back at this characterisation, saying the department had in fact warned South Africans in the region before the attacks even began.

“We communicated with the South Africans that we had on our records, on our database, days even before the attack could happen, because other countries were already warning their citizens to get out,” Monyela said. “If an analyst says we’re napping, it’s that analyst who perhaps was napping by not following developments.”

Monyela pushed back strongly against what he called misinformed criticism, insisting that the department acted both proactively and within the bounds of policy.

He explained that South Africa’s consular assistance, like that of most governments globally, is non-financial by design.

“Government does not pay for hotel accommodation, does not buy flight tickets for anybody, does not buy food for anybody who is stranded abroad,” Monyela said. “There is no government that will ever have a budget big enough to do this sort of thing.”

Was the response too slow?

Jazbhay argued that South Africa’s handling compared poorly to countries that moved with speed and decisiveness.

“South Africa’s response contrasts sharply with countries such as Spain and the United States, which rapidly activated emergency diplomatic channels and deployed logistical resources to extract citizens,” he said, describing Dirco’s approach as “diplomatic caution bordering on inertia”.

“By comparison, Dirco’s measured and naive wait-and-see approach reinforces perceptions of diplomatic caution bordering on inertia, particularly in fast-evolving security situations such as the Middle East.”

Jazbhay raised a related concern, pointing to what he described as a notable absence of activated regional arrangements.

“There is little public evidence that South Africa has activated regional or bilateral arrangements such as transit or evacuation cooperation with Oman or neighbouring Gulf states to facilitate exits from Dubai,” he said.

This “suggests either underutilisation of existing diplomatic relationships or the absence of pre-negotiated contingency agreements, both of which point to strategic gaps in South Africa’s crisis diplomacy planning.

Nzawumbi initially shared his frustration, pointing to what he witnessed first-hand at the airport. “We have seen many other countries, the Spanish, Americans,” he said.

He also took issue with the suggestion that stranded South Africans could simply drive to Oman as an alternative exit.

“The driving route to drive from Dubai to Oman is about five hours. What about South Africans who are going there to work who don’t have the means to drive there? What is our government doing about that?”

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What Dirco has done to help

Monyela defended the pace of the department’s response, pointing to active operations already underway.

He described moving a group of 30 South Africans from Kuwait by land into Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from where they would fly home via Ethiopian Airlines.

“It’s the South African embassy that facilitated the hiring of the bus,” he said, noting that the group was part of a larger batch of 116 South Africans in Kuwait being moved in stages.

He also cited a practical constraint that, in his view, critics had ignored; the regional airspace closure.

“When the airspace is closed, even if the South African government were to take a decision and suspend the policy and say, perhaps, send an aeroplane, it was impossible because the aeroplane would not be granted clearance to fly to start with, because the airspace is closed.”

Financial burden of being stranded

Perhaps the sharpest point of contention is the government’s stance that citizens are largely responsible for funding their own repatriation.

For those who can afford it, this may be inconvenient. For the economically vulnerable, Jazbhay argued, it amounts to something far more serious.

“The government’s position that citizens must largely fund their own repatriation reflects a policy stance that prioritises fiscal restraint over humanitarian responsiveness,” he said.

“For economically vulnerable citizens, this effectively translates into abandonment, undermining constitutional commitments to citizen protection abroad.”

Monyela maintained that this is not unique to South Africa and that the standard policy is to encourage travellers to take out travel insurance before departing.

“Travel insurance kicks in in situations like this,” he said, “or even in cases where somebody passes on in a foreign country and the family wants to bring back the mortal remains for a burial.”

Was communication adequate?

Jazbhay was critical of how the government communicated with stranded citizens throughout the crisis, arguing that the approach had been inconsistent and insufficiently reassuring.

“Communication has been sporadic and procedural,” he said. “Dirco should hold proactive briefings, consistent updates and provide designated crisis hotlines since these would significantly restore public confidence. In crises, silence and ambiguity deepen anxiety and erode trust in state institutions.”

Monyela, however, maintained that the department’s communication had been both timely and effective, pointing to the Travel Smart app.

“In the last week, more than 8 000 South Africans have utilised the app to register with us. And we are in constant communication with them, providing information back and forth and updating them,” he said.

He added that the app enabled the department to send country-specific alerts to South Africans across the Gulf region, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.

Jazbhay acknowledged that improvements are possible, even if the situation is not entirely without remedy. “If anything, government needs to take lessons from this and improve going forward,” he said.

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