In her eight years as the country’s defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula seems to have learnt nothing. If anything, she seems to think being defence minister gives her unfettered access to military assets.
In 2016 it emerged that Mapisa-Nqakula had smuggled a Burundian woman with a false passport into SA on an air force jet. According to the Sunday Times, the minister flew to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2014 where the woman, Michelle Wege, alleged to be her son’s girlfriend, had been arrested for trying to board a flight to SA.
Mapisa-Nqakula maintained at the time that she did the right thing and did not regret her actions. But the problem was not whether she was helping someone in need, but how she went about doing it — she smuggled Wege into SA on an SA Air Force aircraft.
Six years later, and once again Mapisa-Nqakula seems to have found it appropriate to misuse state assets, this time to fly her ANC colleagues to Zimbabwe. It emerged last week that an ANC delegation sent to Zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission had flown to the country on a SA Air Force aircraft with the minister.
The delegation, of which Mapisa-Nqakula was a part, was led by ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and included ANC national executive committee members Enoch Godongwana and Tony Yengeni, none of whom is a state official. Others on the flight as part of the delegation were two ministers — Gwede Mantashe, the mineral resources & energy minister who is also the ANC’s national chair, and Lindiwe Zulu, social development minister and head of the ANC’s subcommittee on international relations.
The defence department came to their defence, saying the ANC meeting coincided with a meeting between Mapisa-Nqakula and her counterpart in Zimbabwe. Shortly after this, after criticism of the decision — especially during a pandemic when the country’s borders are supposedly closed — President Cyril Ramaphosa instructed the minister to provide him with a report on the circumstances that led to the officials flying on a military plane. That report is now sitting with Ramaphosa.
There are certainly a lot of questions that need to be answered. It is not just about the ANC and how it is going to reimburse the state for the cost of the flight — never mind that it is reportedly struggling to pay its staff at Luthuli House — but comes down to an abuse of state resources and the flouting of government protocol.
So who knew what? Before a minister can fly out of the country in their capacity as a state official they need to obtain permission from the president. We know Mapisa-Nqakula had this permission, as it was confirmed by Ramaphosa last week. But was anyone informed that ANC officials would be travelling with her?
The ministerial handbook states that “air transport provided by the SA Air Force or any other government department may not be used by members for party political engagements, unless such transport enables the member concerned to fulfil important official engagements before or after the party political engagements”.
This means Mapisa-Nqakula had a right to use the plane to travel to Zimbabwe for official state work and add on party work, as these coincided. But it doesn’t clear up whether her ANC colleagues, who are not state officials, could travel with her. Mantashe and Zulu also have questions to answer. Here were two members of the executive using state resources to travel to another country to do political party work.
Did the ministers ask Ramaphosa for permission to travel abroad? There cannot be a conflation of state and party here. They cannot argue that they were leaving the country in their capacity as ANC officials and not state officials when they were using state resources.
According to the ministerial handbook, ministers and deputy ministers have to approach the president in writing requesting approval for an intended visit, which should be done at least two weeks before the departure, and in the case of a minister the request to travel should be accompanied by a request for the appointment of an acting minister. When asked about this and whether permission was sought from Ramaphosa, the presidency said it would only comment on the flight matter after the president had considered the report.
Then there is the question of flouting SA’s lockdown rules. Once again, as in the case of communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, these are members of Ramaphosa’s cabinet, who are part of the decision-making process around the pandemic. This calls into question the quality of people the president has deemed fit to serve in his executive.
In the end the buck stops with Ramaphosa, and he will have to show SA that he is serious about cleaning up the state by taking action against those who flout the rules. The president also needs to look SA in the eye and be honest about what happened here.
• Quintal is political editor.
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