Portia Anyamba: Former South African Brigadier General Jailed in US for Spying on Behalf of Pretoria
- Portia Anyamba, a former South African Air Force brigadier general, was jailed for spying in the US on behalf of South Africa
- Anyamba worked at the US's largest science and energy facility, while maintaining contact with a South African State Security Agency intelligence officer
- She also submitted false answers on a US government security clearance application
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A former brigadier general in the South African Air Force has been sentenced to six months in a US prison after pleading guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent for South Africa and making false statements during a security clearance application process.
Portia Anyamba, 59, was working as a programme management operational specialist in the National Security Programme Office at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, which the US Department of Energy describes as its largest science and energy facility, dedicated to energy, innovation and national security.
Source: Getty Images
The Daily Maverick reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents discovered that Anyamba had been in regular communication with an individual identified in court documents as IO-1, an intelligence officer linked to South Africa's State Security Agency who also had ties to the South African Embassy in Washington. In February 2024, IO-1 arranged a meeting with Anyamba in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Surveillance agents watched the pair meet at a restaurant before moving to a nearby hotel, accompanied by a second person known to the FBI to have South African government affiliations.
Ahead of a subsequent planned meeting, IO-1 sent Anyamba a message that read: "Please remember to also bring the laptop with!"
On 7 November 2024, FBI personnel intercepted Anyamba just before that meeting and confiscated a laptop computer from her.
Portia Anyamba's lies for security clearance
While she was operating under foreign direction, Anyamba simultaneously applied for a US government security clearance that would have granted her access to classified information.
On that application, she certified that she had no ongoing contact with foreign nationals and that she had not been in touch with any representatives of a foreign government in the preceding seven years. Court documents confirm she knew both answers to be false.
She also contacted people she had listed as personal references and instructed them: "I have just gotten information that they have started with the interviews. They are sensitive about foreign connections. So please don't mention anything about the embassy."
In addition to her six-month custodial sentence, handed out in June 2026, Anyamba was placed on two years of supervised release and ordered to pay a fine of $9,500.
US relations with South Africa
The US has generally had strong relations with South Africa, despite recent discontent from the Trump administration because of false claims of a genocide of white South Africans.
YEN.com.gh reported that President John Mahama had previously had cause to criticise US President Donald Trump over the false genocide claims.
The US established diplomatic relations with South Africa in 1929. Since the end of apartheid and with the advent of democracy in 1994, the two countries have enjoyed a solid bilateral relationship. South Africa is a strategic partner of the US in the areas of health, security, and trade.
Source: YEN.com.gh
