Hawks defend arrest of Gigaba’s wife

The Hawks have strongly denied there was anything unlawful or malicious about its arrest of former finance minister Malusi Gigaba’s estranged wife Nomachule who, it says, is under investigation for allegedly stating in a text message she “would hurt and destroy” her husband.

In court papers filed on Tuesday, Mpumalanga Hawks Captain Kenneth Mavuso revealed that, during June 2020, Malusi Gigaba – who has reportedly sought to distance himself from his wife’s arrest – “laid a complaint under oath that he had reason to believe, and that he had been informed, that there was a conspiracy to kill him”.

Malusi Gigaba claimed under oath that his wife called “people from counterintelligence” to come to the couple’s home in the days before her arrest – an experience he said left him feeling “threatened, totally and unsafe in my own home”.

It was during the course of a Mpumalanga Hawks task team’s probe into these claims, Mavuso said, that the Hawks investigated, arrested and detained Norma Gigaba for charges of malicious damage to property and crimen injuria – both of which are linked to her marital disputes with her husband.

Neither of these charges fall within the category of “priority crimes” that the elite unit is mandated to investigate.

Now, in an attempt to explain why the Hawks had arrested Norma Gigaba for allegedly trashing a R3 million black Mercedes-Benz G63 AMG “G-Wagon” during a domestic dispute with her husband and sending an insulting WhatsApp message to his close friend Peterson Siyaya, Mavuso claims officers were informed that these charges may be linked to the alleged conspiracy to murder Gigaba.

“It was logical that our task team decided to investigate these offences as well and in continuation of our other investigation, to investigate these crimes as well which were allegedly committed by Mrs N Gigaba … to establish whether or not there was any link to the complaint of the conspiracy to commit murder,” said Mavuso.

“These other crimes were then duly investigated and the dockets were presented to the National Prosecuting Authority to consider prosecution and enrolment of the charges.

“A decision was taken to prosecute and arrest the applicant.”

Norma Gigaba, however, insists that her arrest was anything but routine. She is challenging the rationality, constitutionality and validity of the warrant used to arrest her on 31 July.

She also wants the high court to issue an order declaring that the confiscation of her “information and communication technology equipment” was “unlawful, unconstitutional and invalid”.

She was released on

R5 000 bail. – News24 Wire