By Johnathan Paoli
The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria on Monday dismissed former minister and National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula’s bid to have her corruption and money-laundering case thrown out.
Judge Mashudu Munzhelele rejected the defence argument that the State’s evidence was too weak to sustain a conviction.
“Having regard to the totality of the evidence, the State has established more than mere suspicion. In the result, the application for discharge in terms of section 174 in respect of all counts is denied,” she said.
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The court found that the evidence of key State witness Nombasa Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu, together with WhatsApp communications, financial records, documentary evidence and Mapisa-Nqakula’s own admissions, amounted to more than mere suspicion.
Munzhelele said that the court was not being asked at this stage to decide whether Mapisa-Nqakula was guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
“The inquiry is whether the State has established a sufficient evidential foundation upon which a reasonable court might convict. Section 174, therefore, empowers the court to decline to put the accused on her defence where there is no case for her to answer,” Munzhelele said.
She also rejected the defence’s attack on Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu’s credibility, saying contradictions in her evidence did not automatically render it unreliable.
“In my view, the evidence of Nombasa does not reach that threshold. There is considerably more than mere suspicion in her evidence and that of the other State witnesses. The criticism advanced by the defence, including the contradictions and inconsistencies relied upon, concerned matters that can properly be evaluated against the totality of the evidence at the conclusion of the trial,” Munzhelele said.
The court similarly rejected arguments concerning the admissibility of WhatsApp messages between Mapisa-Nqakula and Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu.
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Munzhelele found that Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu had personally identified the communications and confirmed that they accurately reflected messages retained on her cellphone and iCloud account.
“The fact that the messages were reproduced in printed form does not, without more, render them inadmissible. What is material is whether there is sufficient evidence establishing the origin, the integrity, and the reliability of the communication,” she said.
The judge also found that the alleged code words used between the two women, including references to “impepho”, “medicine”, “dream”, “wig” and “padkos”, could not simply be dismissed at the Section 174 stage.
Munzhelele said their significance had to be assessed alongside what happened after the messages were allegedly exchanged.
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“It is the repetition and correspondence of these events that give the alleged code words their evidential significance. The existence of the direct evidence of actual payments corresponding with some of the alleged coded requests strengthens the evidential significance of the code words,” she said.
Mapisa-Nqakula faces 12 counts of corruption and one count of money laundering relating to allegations that she solicited about R4.55 million and received about R2.15 million from Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu between December 2016 and July 2019 while serving as Defence Minister.
The prosecution stems from allegations made by Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu, which were first raised publicly by UDM leader Bantu Holomisa before he lodged a criminal complaint.
Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu testified as a section 204 witness, with indemnity dependent on her testifying honestly.
Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu previously testified that she personally handed Mapisa-Nqakula money on several occasions, including R200,000 in July 2017, R150,000 in November 2017, R250,000 in August 2018, further payments in September 2018, R300,000 at OR Tambo International Airport in 2019 and R400,000 at Mapisa-Nqakula’s home.
Mapisa-Nqakula resigned as National Assembly Speaker and as an MP in April 2024, a day after the High Court struck from the roll her urgent application seeking to prevent her arrest.
