By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Pretoria High Court issued a warrant of arrest for the former defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula after she was a no-show at her corruption trial on Friday, 02 October 2026.
Mapisa-Nqakula was due back in the witness box under cross-examination.
Her lawyer, Siyabulela Mapoma, handed in a medical certificate and asked for a postponement.
The state did not oppose the postponement but asked the court to authorise the warrant. The court granted the request and ordered that the warrant be stayed until her next appearance.
The trial is set down for further proceedings from 11 to 20 November 2026, and from 30 November to 4 December 2026.
Mapisa-Nqakula faces 12 counts of corruption and money laundering, and she maintains her innocence.
The charges stem from explosive affidavits Nombasa Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu, made to the NPA’s Investigating Directorate Against Corruption (IDAC) in 2023 and early 2024.
Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu alleged that she paid the then defence minister a total of R2.15-million while profiting from large military logistics contracts.
IDAC offered Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu indemnity for her part in Mapisa-Nqakula’s alleged corruption in exchange for her testimony. Under section 204 of the Criminal Procedure Act, the trial court will confirm the indemnity only if she testifies “frankly and honestly”.
Compounding the indemnity decision is the way separate fraud-and-corruption charges, brought against Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu in 2020 by another NPA unit – the Specialised Commercial Crime Unit (SCCU), were thrown out of court two days before Mapisa-Nqakula’s arrest.
The SCCU charges against Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu also related to military logistics contracts, but did not include her payments to the minister.
Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu hails from the Eastern Cape, where she attended school in Gqeberha’s KwaMagxaki township. The Ntsondwa siblings – Nombasa, brother Sabelo, younger sister Andiswa and elder sister Siphokazi Sowazi – were cared for by their aunt and uncle after their parents and baby sister died in a 1988 car accident.
After school she enrolled at Gqeberha’s Charlotte Searle nursing college. She left before completing the course. Later, she joined SAA as a flight attendant before being promoted to the ground-based job of cabin crew relations manager.
CIPC registration data shows that she registered two businesses, TM IT Consulting and Sinopi Event and PR Management, in 2007 and 2008 respectively.
Coincidentally, then-president Jacob Zuma appointed Mapisa-Nqakula as minister of defence in a cabinet reshuffle two weeks after Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu registered Umkhombe.
Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu also became a 30 percent shareholder in a local offshoot of the controversial UK-Zimbabwe aviation group Avient. The local company wanted to tender for SANDF work and needed a black economic empowerment partner.
Avient Air, another company in the group, was flagged in a United Nations Security Council report a decade earlier for its alleged involvement with international arms trafficker Leonid Minim during the DRC civil war.
Umkhombe, according to Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu’s 2023 IDAC affidavit, won its first SANDF tender, valued at R1.5-million, in 2013. It was for “dry goods” – coffee and tea apparently.
Umkhombe landed a series of large logistics contracts in the years to follow. They were for the transportation of equipment to and from SANDF contingents deployed on peacekeeping missions in the DRC and Sudan.