Her D-day in court
FORMER National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-nqakula has formally been charged with 12 counts of corruption and money laundering and has been released on R50 000 bail.
The day for her to appear in the dock arrived yesterday, after she had handed herself over to the Lyttelton police station in Pretoria early yesterday morning.
She was detained in custody for about five hours before being granted bail by the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court. She is due back in court on June 4.
In a surprise turn of events, and shortly before the end of the bail proceedings, the prosecution said that the State was planning to add another accused to join Mapisanqakula in the dock on the next court date. Lead prosecutor Bheki
Manyethi told magistrate Ann Oosthuizen that the prosecution wanted to add another accused and that they needed a postponement until June to finalise their plans in this regard.
He remained mum about who the second accused would be, but said the decision to add this person followed the search and seizure operation at Mapisa-nqakula’s home last month. This had led to further investigation, he said.
While the prosecution did not oppose bail for Mapisa-nqakula, Manyethi did ask the magistrate to set the amount at R100000 in light of the R4.5 million involved in the alleged corruption charges.
Advocate Graham Kerr-phillips, on behalf of Mapisa-nqakula, stressed several times that she was now an ordinary pensioner, as she was no longer the Speaker.
He said in light of this, an amount of R100000 was too steep. He proposed that bail be set at R50000, which the magistrate accepted.
Mapisa-nqakula’s friends and family, including her husband Charles Nqakula, who were sitting in the public gallery, looked relieved when bail was set. It was said that R50 000 was the amount her husband had brought to court.
One of the bail conditions was that she must surrender her passport and may not travel abroad. The State said it would not curtail her travelling around the country.
It also accepted that she is not a flight risk and that, due to her age, she does have medical problems which would not warrant her remaining in custody.
Oosthuizen made it clear to Mapisa-nqakula that her bail could be revoked if she did not return to court on June 4. The former Speaker nodded her head and folded her hands together in a gesture of thanks.
While she was supported in court by her husband and friends, who included Baleka Mbete, she did not once look back to the public gallery to greet them. She also graciously endured the flashing of media cameras in her face, while she took her seat in the dock.
She appeared in the dock from an adjacent area to the court, where the holding cells are. She was brought into court by the State’s investigation team and the police and she was kept under watch until her bail was paid after the court proceedings.