SA has sent additional troops and military equipment to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in recent days, political and diplomatic sources said, after 14 of its soldiers were killed in fighting with Rwanda-backed rebels last month.
The reinforcement comes amid fears that fighting in eastern DRC could spark a broader war in a powder keg region that has over the past three decades witnessed genocide, cross-border conflicts and dozens of uprisings.
Flight data reviewed by Reuters showed transport aircraft flying from SA to Lubumbashi in southern DRC. An airport employee there confirmed military planes had landed last week.
"We have been informed of a (SA National Defence Force) troop build-up in the area of Lubumbashi. We gather that about 700 to 800 soldiers had been flown to Lubumbashi," Chris Hattingh, defence spokesperson for the DA, wrote in a text message to Reuters.
Hattingh said it was "difficult to figure out what is unfolding" because parliament's defence committee had not been briefed.
The SANDF spokesperson said on Friday he was not aware of the deployment to Lubumbashi and declined to comment further on Monday. A DRC army spokesperson said he could not confirm the deployment.
Lubumbashi is about 1,500km south of Goma, the eastern city on Rwanda's border that the M23 rebels seized last month during an offensive that has killed more than 2,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.
SA is believed to have around 3,000 troops deployed in the DRC, both as part of a UN peacekeeping mission and a Southern African regional force tasked with helping the DRC's army combat the M23 insurgency.
Its intervention has drawn heavy criticism at home after the fall of Goma left SANDF soldiers surrounded and with no clear exit strategy.
"They're extremely poorly resourced and equipped," said Kobus Marais, who served as the DA's shadow defence minister before the party entered the governing coalition last year.
"This is not our war."
Marais, a defence analyst who said he was being kept abreast of the situation, said the flights to Lubumbashi carried medicine, ammunition and consumables. The additional troops were to assist in the case of further clashes and as a deterrent as negotiations to end the fighting get under way.
An IL-76 cargo plane with the tail number EX-76008 made five round-trip flights from Pretoria to Lubumbashi between January 30 and February 7, according to flight tracking data from FlightRadar24.
The flights left from the south side of Pretoria, where the SA air force has a base.
An employee at Lubumbashi airport told Reuters on Saturday he had seen several rotations of aircraft bringing troops and equipment. Three diplomats and a minister from a country in the region said they were aware of the deployment.
With M23 rebels controlling Goma's airport, SA troops there are cut off from resupplies.
"The pattern of chartered cargo flights under SANDF callsigns from SA to Lubumbashi and locations inside (neighbouring) Burundi points to the likely creation of some type of additional contingency force," said a defence expert who asked not to be named.
Two successive wars in the 1990s and 2000s grew out of the Rwandan genocide, drawing in a half dozen of the DRC's neighbours and killing millions, mainly through hunger and disease.
Uganda and Burundi, which have thousands of troops in eastern DRC, are also reinforcing their positions.
Rwanda has rejected accusations that thousands of its troops are fighting alongside M23, while African leaders have urged the parties to hold talks.
