Madam Speaker, you’re not special
The widely held view that South Africa’s politicians occupy a universe far removed from the daily lives of ordinary South Africans has found emphatic confirmation in the ridiculous circus accompanying the arrest, finally, of former National Assembly speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula. Ridiculous, because in what world is an accused in a criminal investigation allowed the leeway and prosecutorial generosity that Mapisa-Nqakula appears to have been afforded?
Granted, she held an important post in parliament, but the impression has been created that the state was taking an unprecedented step against high-born royalty. Far from it: she’s not the first senior politician to face such charges and won’t be the last.
Her imminent arrest was reported for the first time in this newspaper early last month. A defence contractor, Nombasa Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu, under protection of immunity from prosecution, alleged that she had personally handed R2.3m in bags to the minister at her home in Bruma, Johannesburg. If true, it would seem to be an open and shut case.
From the outset, she proclaimed her innocence, insisting that the case had no basis even while demanding that her lawyers be given a “judicial peek” to ascertain whether there was a case against her.
What followed was an application to the high court to stay her arrest, amid claims by Mapisa-Nqakula and those close to her that
“apartheid tactics” were being employed. The message was that she was being singled out for punishment.
It’s quite possible that, as a member of the ANC’s top brass, she imagined that the long arm of the law would never reach her.
Why would it single her out?
After all, it’s not the first scandal she’s survived.
After the defence force of which she was the political head stood by and watched while riots rocked the country in 2021, she was dropped from the cabinet but bounced back with the politically sensitive job of speaker of the National Assembly.
No wonder she believed she could do no wrong, with such a stamp of approval for her nonperformance at the defence ministry.
But it is in her rant in her affidavit to the high court that Mapisa-Nqakula exposes herself as expecting and insisting on special treatment. “SA’s prisons are dramatically overcrowded,” her affidavit to the Pretoria high court announced, as if it were breaking news to the rest of us. “SA’s correctional services don’t have the facilities available for me or make provisions for my safety and security,” her affidavit moaned.
Yet presumably these very same prisons are sufficient for other people’s children, and one can take it for granted that in her time in the security cluster as the minister of defence she failed to raise the appalling conditions in our prisons as a priority to be rectified. And why would she, with prison seen as a place for those without resources and political connections?
In rejecting this pampered politician’s request for a “peek” at the charges against her, judge Sulet Potterill commented: “If every suspect wrote an unfounded affidavit declaring that their imminent arrest was illegal, the entire justice system would collapse.”
None of which is likely to concern Mapisa-Nqakula as she embarks on the time-tested “Stalingrad strategy” that has served former president Jacob Zuma so handily, at taxpayers’ expense.
Every criminal suspect in the land must be wondering what they have to do to enjoy the accommodation afforded the former speaker. The notion, and it is an important one, that all in South Africa are equal before the law is being tested. Some, it seems, are more equal than others, while yet others, Mapisa-Nqakula among them, imagine themselves governed by laws that apply to all but them.
It’s quite possible that, as a member of the ANC’s top brass, she imagined that the long arm of the law would never reach her