Former National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula was granted R50 000 (fifty thousand rand) bail on Thursday at the Pretoria Magistrates Court.
Mapisa-Nqakula handed herself over to the police at the Lyttleton Police Station in Centurion, Tshwane early on Thursday morning before subsequently appearing at the Magistrates Court.
Her bail conditions entail that she must surrender her passport to the investigating officer and must not have direct contact with the state witnesses in her case.
The matter was postponed to 4 June 2024 so that the police would be able to arrest her co-accused.
“The Investigating Directorate (ID) of the National Prosecuting Authority brought 12 charges of corruption and one of money-laundering against Mapisa-Nqakula following investigations into allegations that during her tenure as the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans from 2016 to 2019, she allegedly solicited an amount of approximately R 4,5 million, of which R 2,1 million was received in cash,” said spokesperson for the NPA Investigating Directorate Henry Mamothame.
Mamothame explained that prior to the former speaker handing herself to the police, a search and seizure operation was carried out at her home in Bruma, on the East Rand on 19 March this year.
On Tuesday this week, Mapisa-Nqakula lost her bid in the Pretoria High Court to interdict the NPA and the police from arresting her.
The case was dismissed with costs as the judge ruled that Mapisa-Nqakula has no legal grounds to stand on in her attempt to prevent her arrest.
In her affidavit to prevent her imminent arrest, Mapisa-Nqakula had cited factors like public humiliation, old age, leaking of her case docket to the media and the state’s case being weak against her.
She had demanded that the docket of her case including the statements of witnesses and their identities be revealed to her before she could be arrested and charged.
Mapisa- Nqakula resigned from her position as speaker of the National Assembly yesterday and also stepped aside from her duties as an ANC leader.