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Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has defended her decision to assist a young Burundian woman to enter the country on board a state jet.
“I have no regrets ... it was the right thing to do,” she said, claiming that she had rescued the young woman “from a life of abuse and abandonment”.
The minister’s rescue mission, as reported in the Sunday Times, has stirred up a storm. The Democratic Alliance has accused the minister of abusing state resources and flouting the law. Calling for the minister to answer to Parliament, the DA said procedures needed to be followed before initiating humanitarian relief missions.
The newspaper reported that the minister had “smuggled” a family friend, Michelle Wege, into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo with fraudulent travel documents two years ago.
The documents were allegedly organised by the minister’s sister, who worked in the Burundian embassy at the time.
In a detailed statement on Sunday, the minister accused the Sunday Times of bias and of “twisting the facts” and she reserved her rights in seeking recourse. She denied allegations of irregularity and outlined her involvement in the mission.
The 20-year-old woman, whom she said was known as “Mimi” now lived with the minister and her family and had enrolled at a college in South Africa. Wege had become friends with the minister’s children during various holiday visits to Burundi between 2013 and 2014, she said.
Wege had been forced to leave her home to escape a life of abuse at the hands of her father. Aware of her case, the UN Refugee Agency had advised Wege to seek entry into the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The minister had become involved in her plight by writing to the South African embassy in the DRC to assist her in obtaining a South African visa because her case had become a “classical case for refugee assistance and protection”.
The minister denied that Wege had entered South Africa with a false passport or that she had organised a trip to fetch her.
“I was supposed to travel on official business,” she said, so she had arranged to collect Wege in the DRC en route to an African Union summit in Addis Ababa. Wege was released into her care after being detained in the DRC on suspicion of holding a fraudulent document for 10 days.
“To avoid her being deported, I offered to take her with me and to assist her in gaining her lawful travel documents,” she said.
The minister claimed that Wege had travelled to South Africa legally because she had kept a copy of her passport with a visa on a memory stick after it had been confiscated by her father.
Reacting to the report on Sunday, DA shadow Defence Minister Kobus Marais said the minister needed to account for her actions.
“Were there official requests from Burundi and the African Union? I am not aware of any briefing to Parliament of such humanitarian projects. It cannot be the decision of the minister alone. Otherwise this constitutes possible misuse of state assets and funds.”
In a statement, the DA accused the minister of showing disregard for the Immigration Act as well as the Executive Code of Ethics.
