Editorial: Minister’s defence looks a flight of fancy

Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula will have to try a little harder if she wants South Africans to accept her version of how and why an Addis Abababound state jet was diverted to Kinshasa to bring a family friend to South Africa — at a cost of hundreds of thousands of rands to the taxpayer.

This newspaper last Sunday revealed shocking details of how, on the morning of January 28 2014, Mapisa-Nqakula, a senior cabinet member and a former minister of home affairs, took off from Waterkloof Air Force Base for Kinshasa to pick up a 20-year-old Burundian national, Michelle Wege.

Well-placed sources in the Department of International Relations and Mapisa-Nqakula’s own department claim that Wege had earlier fled her own country for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There she was detained after she tried to board a Johannesburg-bound South African Airways flight with bogus travel documents. The Sunday Times has since established that Wege was travelling on a fake DRC passport.

She was arrested after authorities there became suspicious when Wege, despite travelling on a Congolese passport, could not respond to questions in French, the official language. They soon realised she did not speak any of the local languages.

She was released 10 days later after Mapisa-Nqakula’s intervention. At a meeting in Kinshasa with Mapisa-Nqakula’s counterpart in that country and senior immigration officials, whom she confirmed she knew well from her time at home affairs, she pleaded that they release Wege into her care. After securing her release, Mapisa-Nqakula continued with the original purpose of the trip, to go to Addis Ababa to attend an African Union meeting on the turmoil in the DRC.

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She was dropped off in Addis Ababa for a four-day visit, with the state-owned jet flying back to South Africa with Wege on board. It landed at Waterkloof and Wege entered South Africa — we believe without being vetted.

This is not the version the minister would like you to believe. She would like you to see as her as a hero who rescued an African child from her abusive father — a hero who brought this child to South Africa for a chance to make something of her life.

While it may be true that Wege was rescued from abuse (the father denies this), was smuggling her into South Africa the only option available?

We think not. When Mapisa-Nqakula learnt of the alleged abuse, her sister was South Africa’s deputy ambassador to Burundi. Why did they not, on learning of Wege’s plight, alert that country’s authorities?

There must be another reason why the minister went to the dizzy heights she did in order to bring Wege to South Africa — even risking compromising national security by allowing someone to land at a national keypoint without being vetted.

When provided with an opportunity to explain her actions by this newspaper at her Johannesburg home last weekend, Mapisa-Nqakula chose to be emotional instead of logical, claiming she acted as she did because she is a woman and a mother.

While her stand against child and women abuse should be commended, it is the abuse of state resources, including hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ hard-earned rands, we are opposed to. As defence minister, Mapisa-Nqakula should be protecting our borders, not compromising our national security.