It’s the stuff of movies: an apparently dodgy defence minister; black market forex deals; bribes code-named “wigs”, “snuff”, “impepho” (incense) and “imithi” (medicines); cash stashed in high-end handbags and handed over clandestinely in VIP areas; and the businesswoman at the centre of it all insisting on being given a ballpark figure of how much she still needs to stump up so she can “budget properly”.
That’s just some of the detail in an affidavit that alleges Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula solicited R2.3m in cash bribes during her tenure as defence minister. As the Sunday Times reported at the weekend, the parliamentary speaker is apparently front and centre in an “advanced” probe by the Investigating Directorate.
According to the publication, Nombasa Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu, a contractor to the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), said she’d paid Mapisa-Nqakula R2.3m in 10 cash tranches from November 2016 to July 2019.
In 2019, it transpired that her company had scored R210m in defence contracts while she was married to Maj-Gen Noel Ndhlovu, an officer in the military health service.
The ANC-controlled parliament has, predictably, closed ranks, releasing a statement maintaining that Mapisa-Nqakula “has upheld the highest standard of integrity and ethical conduct and has fiercely advocated against corruption”. And a less-than-deft deflection: the way the matter has been handled and shared with the media is “highly objectionable”.
It’s hard to take these assertions about integrity and ethics too seriously, given Mapisa-Nqakula’s track record. She was on more than one occasion accused of abusing her position by using military aircraft. In 2020, she memorably took then ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and an ANC delegation on a jaunt to Zimbabwe on an SANDF plane. She got a reprimand and had her pay docked for facilitating the ANC-Zanu-PF love-in.
Instead of shuffling her out of a position of power, President Cyril Ramaphosa elevated her from defence minister to speaker of parliament
This is not the first time she’s been accused of impropriety. In 2021 UDM leader Bantu Holomisa requested that the joint standing committee on defence investigate allegations she’d received R5m worth of bribes from an SANDF contractor. That fell apart after the whistleblower — now claimed to be Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu — failed to disclose their identity.
Mapisa-Nqakula was also in the hot seat during the SANDF’s disastrous deployment during both Covid and the July 2021 unrest — an abject failure by the country’s security cluster.
Yet instead of shuffling her out of a position of power, President Cyril Ramaphosa elevated her from defence minister to speaker of parliament.
If the current allegations are true, this is yet another instance of the type of corruption and blatant abuse of power that makes a mockery of Ramaphosa’s hand-wringing pretensions at clean governance.
Despite his “new dawn” promises, the president has done little to combat corruption in his party’s ranks. He has yet to take any concrete action on the recommendations of the Zondo report on state capture, for example, and continues to surround himself with a number of those implicated in the report. Then there’s the step-aside rule, which has basically been sidestepped.
If anything, having the tick of impropriety behind your name — or at the very least a charge of incompetence — would seem to be a badge of honour in the ANC.
For someone who’s made an art of failing upwards, this won’t necessarily spell the end of Mapisa-Nqakula. She is, after all, happily ensconced in a party that is a revolving door of ineptitude and venality.
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