Portia Anyamba, a retired South African Air Force brigadier general, was sentenced to six months in jail and fined in the United States last month after pleading guilty to acting as an agent for South Africa.
Anyamba admitted in a plea agreement that she received a laptop and cash payments from a South African State Security Agency official identified as IO-1. She attended think-tank events in the US and submitted written reports to South African officials.
She was intercepted by the FBI in November 2024 while attempting to meet IO-1 in Tennessee. Court documents detail her embassy visit in Washington, D.C. in April 2024 and her false statements on a June 2024 security clearance application.
Anyamba, originally from Johannesburg, retired from the Air Force in 2011 and had worked at a contractor for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The South African government has not commented on the case.
