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Minister of Defense and Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
Phill Magakoe, Gallo Images
- The DA and FF Plus asked President Cyril Ramaphosa to sack Defense Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.
- This after Ramaphosa sanctioned her for taking ANC officials on an air force plane to Zimbabwe.
- Opposition parties say the sanction is not serious enough.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s reprimand of Defense and Military Veterans Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula for taking ANC officials on an air force plane to Zimbabwe is not enough – she should be fired, two opposition parties said.
Late on Saturday night, the Presidency issued a statement announcing that Ramaphosa had issued Mapisa-Nqakula with a formal reprimand.
“The president has further sanctioned the minister by imposing a salary sacrifice on the minister’s salary for three months, starting on November 1, 2020.
“His salary for the three months must be paid into the Solidarity Fund, which was established to support the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic,” the statement read.
“The president also ordered the minister to ensure that the ANC reimburses the state for the costs of the flight to Harare and to inform it once it has been done.”
The action already taken against the minister was not good enough, DA deputy Kobus Marais said in a statement Sunday.
He demanded that Ramaphosa fire Mapisa-Nqakula before the end of this week.
“The president’s decision to simply reprimand the minister for deliberately overseeing the ANC’s abuse of an air force plane is simply not good enough.
“This reprimand does not illustrate how serious President Ramaphosa is about the minister’s breach of duty, it illustrates how weak he is in holding his party and executive members accountable.”
Abuse of state resources
He said Ramaphosa effectively downplayed this abuse of state resources by claiming it was a “misjudgment” by Mapisa-Nqakula.
“This smacks of how former President Jacob Zuma evaded accountability after the Nkandla scandal, which was another blatant incident of abuse of state resources.
“We simply cannot allow the minister to get away with it. The fact is that she deliberately allowed the ANC to abuse public funds to travel illegally to Zimbabwe and return aboard the air force Falcon-900 plane.”
READ | SANDF Says Defense Minister went to Harare for official duties and gave his ANC colleagues a push
FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald expressed a similar sentiment, saying the Ramaphosa sanction is “simply a ruse to pacify the public.”
“The FF Plus says that it is not a severe enough punishment for a very serious transgression. President Ramaphosa should have fired her immediately. That would have been the right decision,” Groenewald said in a statement.
He pointed out that the FF plus has already complained to the Public Protector about the matter.
“The president missed a golden opportunity to show South Africa that he is serious about eradicating corruption.”
“Once again he failed the country at the service of the ANC and this sanction is nothing more than a ruse after the serious negligence of the Minister of Defense, which amounts to corruption.
Mkhuleko Hlengwa, an IFP deputy and chairman of the parliamentary financial oversight committee, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, tweeted that Ramaphosa’s sanction is insufficient, unless the president publishes the report he requested from the minister on the matter.
“Transparency is good governance!” Hlengwa tweeted.
