Empathy could ease the pain

“I was misled.”

This is what defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said last week, in an attempt to justify her deeply disturbing posture on the Collins Khosa matter.

Khosa died at the hands of soldiers who stormed his home, accusing him of breaking lockdown rules earlier this year.

An internal investigation report by a military board acquitted the soldiers involved in the incident, claiming there was no evidence that the altercation between the officers and Khosa led to his death.

Not only was the report a sham, it further sought to apportion blame on Khosa by characterising his challenge of the soldiers’ behaviour as provocation.

It was also the basis on which Mapisa-Nqakula suggested that the soldiers were provoked.

Last week the military ombud Lt-Gen (ret) Vusumuzi Masondo released his report into the incident.

He found that the soldiers acted improperly, irregularly and in contravention of their code of conduct. He also found that when entering the Khosa residence for the search and seizure of liquor, the soldiers did so in the absence of the Johannesburg Metro Police Department and the SAPS, who they were meant to be supporting.

When asked last week how she reconciled the two vastly different reports on the same incident, Mapisa-Nqakula said she was misled about the first report.

“All that matters now is that I have given South Africans the facts about what they should know,” she said.

Only this is disingenuous. It attempts to absolve her of liability for her mishandling of the matter, further magnifying the family’s grief.

From the beginning, the minister adopted an insensitive posture which sought to use unfolding legal processes to escape moral accountability.

She has never demonstrated the type of empathy that we ought to expect from leaders when a tragic incident such as that has occurred.

Instead of pursuing the truth about what happened that day, she readily accepted, without question, a report that was evidently designed to conceal wrongdoing.

This is why Mapisa-Nqakula has much to answer for and cannot be trusted to hold those who broke the rules accountable.