Mystery surrounds the docking of a commercial vessel at a naval base – and a sanctioned ship no less as it’s sailing under the Russian flag – at Simon’s Town on Tuesday night.
It remains unclear what cargo, if any, is currently on board the Lady R, a roll-on roll-off (ro-ro) vessel that has been added to a list of maritime vessels banned by the United States Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
Questions sent to the South African Navy since the vessel quietly sailed into Simon’s Town sometime after 20:00 also remain unanswered.
Adding to the secrecy of it all, since the quiet seaside hamlet was experiencing load-shedding, the Lady R’s automatic identification system (AIS) was conveniently offline.
Vessel tracking has nevertheless mapped the ship’s route to Dar es Salaam at the time of its unscheduled visit to Simon’s Town.
The Democratic Alliance’s Shadow Minister of Defence, Kobus Marais, has since said that from what he had found out, the Lady R had experienced trouble while at sea and, in accordance with international maritime protocol, was assisted by the nearest navy.
There’s still no explanation though about why a supposedly distressed commercial vessel, whose AIS location was placed south of Cape Agulhas before it made for the nearest port or base, backtracked all the way to Simon’s Town when it was on its way to Tanzania.
Marais said he suspected it was because the Lady R would be towed to Table Bay for repairs.
Earlier this year another vessel, the Liberian-flagged Elandri Denali, laden with Russian oil, also raised eyebrows when it appeared to be in the process of offloading its US-sanctioned cargo at Saldanha.
As with the Lady R, information surrounding the why and wherefore of the 330-metre crude carrier was also not transparently dealt with by South Africa’s maritime and naval authorities.
In the absence of any official information about the Lady R, jokes on social media about the surprise visit of a Russian vessel to Simon’s Town have been coming through thick and fast.
One person suggested that the reason for the docking of a commercial vessel at a naval base was that the mariners wanted to see the penguins at Boulders Beach.
