Dembe Zuma is Raymond Reddington's bodyguard.

Dembe is introduced as a Muslim former freedom fighter from South Sudan. It was assumed that he was Raymond Reddington's bodyguard. The episode "The Mombasa Cartel" revealed that he was born the youngest son of a farmer named Samwel Zuma. When he reported a number of low-ranking operatives of a poaching organization, the Mombasa Cartel, to the authorities, the cartel killed Dembe's father, mother and siblings and sold him to human traffickers. At some point, he was being held by the Eberhardt Cartel. He spent eight years in the world of human trafficking and was enslaved until the age of 14, when Reddington found him half-dead and chained to a pipe in the basement of a brothel in Nairobi. Reddington took care of him, nursed him back to health and made sure he got an education. Dembe eventually got a Bachelor's degree in English Literature, learned to speak four languages fluently and learned six others well enough to get by.

There are confirmed reports that Dembe was with Red in Sierra Leone and Brussels, Belgium. Other reports place him and Red in Murmansk and Belfast.