Nkosi Zwelivelile Mandela, a grandson of Nelson Mandela, was triggered by the U.S.’s charges against RT as being a conspiracy to undermine U.S. elections, to issue a harsh critique. Mandela told RT: “The rhetoric that is coming from the U.S. is the same that we have been witnessing in occupied Palestine with Al Jazeera having been banned and kicked out of occupied Palestine.... You today are witnessing the same hypocrisy in the U.S. where RT is being subjected to the same banning that Al Jazeera has witnessed.” He called upon U.S. citizens to not stand quiet as freedom of speech and journalism are being silenced. He stressed in the exclusive interview with RT: “It cannot be accepted that in the free world, as it were, you have such oppression.”
RT also talked with the secretary general of the South African Congress of Traditional Leaders Zolani Mkiva, who noted: “It’s very interesting that a country that has positioned itself as the ultimate representative of democracy in the universe would think that its own processes could easily be interfered with or hacked by countries that it sees as secondary countries.” He questioned that Russia would have any incentive to tilt the election one way or the other, adding: “Russia as we know it and as we’ve always known it is a country that has a huge respect for the sovereignty of the nations of the world.”