Minister loses pay over Harare flight
President Cyril Ramaphosa has reprimanded defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula for transporting ANC leaders on an SA Air Force jet to Zimbabwe. She will also suffer a threemonth salary penalty.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has reprimanded defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula for transporting ANC leaders on an SA Air Force (SAAF) aircraft to Zimbabwe.
She will also suffer a threemonth salary penalty. It will be paid into the Solidarity Fund, which was established to deal with needs arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.
The presidency said in a statement on Saturday night that the sanction imposed on the minister “demonstrated the seriousness with which the president viewed the minister’s error of judgment given her high position in government”.
However, the “slap on the wrist” is not enough and the minister should be fired before the end of the week, the DA’s defence spokesperson, Kobus Marais, said. He noted this was not Mapisa-Nqakula’s first offence. She was also accused of having smuggled Michele Wege, the girlfriend of her late son, Chumani Nqakula, into SA on board an air force jet.
Mapisa-Nqakula was castigated for having transported an ANC delegation on September 8 to Harare. The team included secretary-general Ace Magashule and national executive committee members Gwede Mantashe, Lindiwe Zulu, Tony Yengeni and Enoch Godongwana. The delegation met with the ruling Zanu-PF to discuss the Zimbabwean crisis.
The ANC has agreed to repay the cost of the transport of the delegation to Harare. The amount to be repaid will be the excess of the costs that the minister would have incurred on her approved trip to Zimbabwe.
The presidency said that Ramaphosa’s decision followed his consideration of reports by the minister, who travelled to Harare to meet her Zimbabwean counterpart.
“While the minister was on an official trip for which the president had given permission and for which she was entitled to use a SAAF aircraft, he [Ramaphosa] found that it was an error of judgment to use the plane to convey a political party delegation.”
The president found that this error of judgment was not in keeping with the responsibilities of a cabinet minister and that she had not acted in the best interest of good governance as required by the executive members’ code. She had failed to adhere to legal prescripts relating to the care of the use of state resources and acted in a way inconsistent with her position, he said.
THIS ERROR OF JUDGMENT WAS NOT IN KEEPING WITH HER RESPONSIBILITIES AND SHE DID NOT ACT IN THE BEST INTEREST OF GOOD GOVERNANCE