Mapisa-Nqakula: a law unto herself
● April 2013: When the Gupta family flew 200 wedding guests into the Waterkloof Air Force Base, they obtained clearance for the aircraft by dropping Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula’s name.
The then defence minister heard of the imbroglio via media reports during a visit to Ethiopia, and returned home to deal with the fallout. She claimed her ministry would never have approved such a request and declined an invitation to attend the wedding at Sun City.
During her term as defence minister, Mapisa-Nqakula used an air force helicopter to travel to Tlokwe, North West, on ANC business - receiving a
July 2013:
memorandum from local ANC members who were demanding political action against their former mayor. The DA and SA National Defence Union condemned the trip, which Mapisa-Nqakula defended as a mission to resolve “governance issues”.
May 2016: The Sunday Times reported that Mapisa-Nqakula had smuggled a Burundian woman, Michelle Wege, 22, into SA on a military aircraft in 2014.
The woman was believed to have been the fiancée of Mapisa-Nqakula’s late son Chumani Nqakula. She had been arrested at Kinshasa International Airport for using false travel documents when Mapisa-Nqakula came to her rescue. At the time, Mapisa-Nqakula said she was saving Wege from her abusive father and denied misuse of state power. Showing no remorse for her actions, she said she would “do it again if I had to”.
January 2019: Former Bosasa COO Angelo Agrizzi’s damning testimony at the Zondo commission into state capture implicated Mapisa-Nqakula as being a shareholder of Dyambu Holdings, which later became Bosasa.
The late Bosasa CEO Gavin Watson is alleged to have showered her brother, Siviwe Mapisa, with gifts.
Agrizzi told the commission that in 2007 Mapisa-Nqakula registered a trust in which Watson’s brother Valence and former Armscor CEO Kevin Wakeford were listed as trustees. Wakeford denied the allegations.
September 2020: Mapisa-Nqakula’s most controversial abuse of power was the trip in an air force plane to Harare when she flew with ANC comrades including Lindiwe Zulu, Ace Magashule and Nomvula Mokonyane to meet their counterparts in Zanu-PF.
President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a formal reprimand and withheld her ministerial salary for three months after concluding that she had violated the executive members code. To cover the party’s use of the aircraft, she sent the ANC an invoice for R105,000.
April 2021: UDM leader Bantu Holomisa asked the joint standing committee on defence to investigate allegations by a whistleblower that Mapisa-Nqakula received R5m worth of gifts and cash from an unnamed SANDF contractor between 2017 and 2019. Although the parliamentary committee agreed to investigate, the probe was dropped in August 2021 as the mandate expired and the whistleblower declined to submit an affidavit to the committee.
July 2021: A few days before riots broke out in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal due to the arrest of former president Jacob Zuma, Mapisa-Nqakula said she did not think the SANDF would be “dragged” into helping to maintain order.
She later described the looting and violence as a “wave of crime”, but backtracked after the minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni criticised her remarks. KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi slammed Mapisa-Nqakula’s testimony before the Human Rights Commission, where she claimed lack of police intelligence had hampered military intervention.
He said he had made an early plea for military aid and accused Mapisa-Nqakula of lying. Ramaphosa then dumped her from the cabinet and appointed her speaker.