Nosiviwe Noluthando Mapisa-Nqakula (; born 13 November 1956) is a South African politician of the African National Congress (ANC). She was a cabinet minister from 2004 to 2021 and the Speaker of the National Assembly from 2021 to 2024. A former president of the ANC Women's League, she was an elected member of the ANC National Executive Committee between 2002 and 2022.
Raised in the Eastern Cape, Mapisa-Nqakula trained as a teacher and worked in youth development until 1984, when she left South Africa to join Umkhonto we Sizwe in exile. She returned to the country in 1990 and became a national organiser for the newly relaunched ANC Women's League; she was later its secretary-general from 1993 to 1997 under league president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. She joined the National Assembly as a backbencher in the April 1994 general election and chaired Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence from 1996 to 2001.
Her political rise accelerated during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, with whom she was close. In December 2001, she was appointed Chief Whip of the Majority Party, and merely six months later she became Deputy Minister of Home Affairs under Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi. She served as deputy minister until the April 2004 general election, after which she joined Mbeki's cabinet as minister in the same portfolio. Concurrently, she was the president of the ANC Women's League from August 2003 to July 2008.
After the April 2009 general election, President Jacob Zuma moved her to a new portfolio as Minister of Correctional Services, where she served until she was appointed Minister of Defence and Military Veterans in June 2012. She was retained in the latter position by Zuma's successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, and remained in the ministry for almost nine years. She was sacked from Ramaphosa's cabinet on 5 August 2021 in the aftermath of severe civil unrest, and she was elected as Speaker on 19 August 2021.
After less than three years as Speaker, Mapisa-Nqakula resigned from the National Assembly on 3 April 2024 amid revelations that she was under investigation by the Investigating Directorate. The following day, she was charged with corruption and money laundering, accused of having accepted bribes while serving as Minister of Defence. She has since been released on bail and is awaiting trial.
Early life and career Born on 13 November 1956 in Cape Town, Mapisa-Nqakula grew up in the Eastern Cape in what she later described as a conservative family. She matriculated at Mount Arthur High School in Lady Frere and completed a primary teaching diploma at Bensonvale Teachers' College. Her first job was as a teacher, and she later worked in youth development; she was also a founding member of the East London Domestic Workers Association in 1982.
Anti-apartheid activism In 1984, with her husband Charles Nqakula, Mapisa-Nqakula left South Africa to enter exile with the anti-apartheid movement, undergoing military training with Umkhonto we Sizwe in Angola and the Soviet Union. She spent the next six years in exile in the political and military structures of the African National Congress (ANC), beginning with a post in the Soviet Union in 1985 and later representing the ANC Women's Section at the Pan-African Women's Organisation from 1988 to 1990.
In 1990, after the ANC was unbanned by the apartheid government to facilitate the negotiations to end apartheid, Mapisa-Nqakula returned to South Africa on the party's instructions to help rebuild its internal organisation. She worked for the newly relaunched ANC Women's League (ANCWL) as a national organiser and was also elected as a member's of the league's National Executive Committee in 1990. In December 1993, at the ANCWL's second national conference since its relaunch, she was elected to succeed Baleka Mbete as secretary-general of the ANCWL, serving under league president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. She held that office until she was succeeded by Bathabile Dlamini in 1997, although she was a member of the group of 11 league leaders who resigned from their offices in February 1995 in protest of Madikizela-Mandela's leadership.
National Assembly: 1994–2002 While still serving as ANCWL secretary-general, Mapisa-Nqakula stood as an ANC candidate in the April 1994 general election and was elected to a seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of the South African Parliament. After two years as a backbencher, she succeeded Lindiwe Sisulu as chairperson of Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence in September 1996. In August 2001, she was additionally appointed deputy chairperson of the ANC's new 22-member political committee in Parliament, chaired by Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
In December 2001, the ANC announced that it would appoint Mapisa-Nqakula to succeed fraud-accused Tony Yengeni as Chief Whip of the Majority Party. The Mail & Guardian reported that she had "lobbied long and hard" for the promotion. She soon oversaw a major reshuffle of the ANC's parliamentary caucus, and she was praised "for her energy and efficiency". During this period, she was labelled a "rising star" in politics, in part because both she and her husband were known to be close to, and highly loyal to, President Thabo Mbeki.
Home Affairs: 2002–2009 On 6 May 2002, President Mbeki announced that Mapisa-Nqakula would succeed her husband as Deputy Minister of Home Affairs in a cabinet reshuffle occasioned by the death of Steve Tshwete. She deputised Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party, and she was viewed as a likely candidate to succeed him as minister if his party withdrew from the government. Indeed, after the 2004 general election, Mbeki appointed her as Minister of Home Affairs in his second-term cabinet, with Malusi Gigaba serving as her deputy.
Her ministry introduced the landmark Civil Unions Act of 2006, which legalised same-sex marriage. However, the Department of Home Affairs was a notoriously troubled portfolio. In January 2008, Patrick Chauke, the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs, complained about the lack of improvement in the department's management. Chauke said that despite various interventions by Mapisa-Nqakula, including the recruitment of a team of turnaround experts, "For the past few years there had been this chaos we had to deal with in the department. We are sick and tired of having to deal with the same problems time and again."
Later the same year, Chauke's committee drafted a report for the Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete, that asked Mbete or Mapisa-Nqakula to intervene in his extremely tense relationship with Mavuso Msimang, who was appointed as Mapisa-Nqakula's director-general in 2008. Mapisa-Nqakula's deputy, Gigaba, reportedly backed Chauke in this conflict; unlike Mapisa-Nqakula and Msimang, Gigaba and Chauke were political supporters of Jacob Zuma, Mbeki's principal political rival.
Immigration and xenophobia Under Mapisa-Nqakula, the home affairs portfolio confronted a major increase in immigration to South Africa from neighbouring countries, especially due to ongoing political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe. Shortly after becoming minister, in September 2004, Mapisa-Nqakula appeared before the South African Human Rights Commission during hearings on xenophobia in South Africa; she acknowledged administrative problems in the asylum system and treatment of refugees, but said that she had set up an anti-xenophobia unit and was working to address other challenges. However, by March 2008, observers reported that her department was "in constant violation of the laws regulating processing of asylum-seekers" and that asylum-processing systems had "just about collapsed and are spinning out of control". At that time, a task team appointed by Mapisa-Nqakula to clear the backlog in asylum applications warned in its exit report that "we see the same chaos we first experienced when joining home affairs in September 2005, with a new backlog larger than the one that has just been effectively cleared... Whatever work we have done is being ignored or is already becoming undone."
Shortly after this assessment was published, a major wave of xenophobic violence broke out in Gauteng in May 2008. Blaming criminals for the violence, Mapisa-Nqakula committed at an early stage to protect foreign residents and promised that those affected would not be deported. She repeated this assurance on later occasions. However, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) was critical of Mapisa-Nqakula's role; its chief whip, Ian Davidson, urged her to "pull her head out of the sand" and acknowledge the true causes and extent of the violence. According to Davidson, Mapisa-Nqakula had a "long history of denial" about the extent of illegal immigration to South Africa; he held the government responsible for the crisis insofar as it had presided over "one of the largest human migrations of the last quarter-century, without any comprehensive plans on how to cope with the influx".
In December 2008, Mapisa-Nqakula said that she did not support stronger border control measures, explaining that, in her ministry, "Our emphasis is on facilitation of movement rather than tighter border control... then you know who is in the country and what they are doing." On 2 April 2009, in a move welcomed by human rights groups, she announced that the government would exempt all Zimbabwean citizens from visa requirements and grant them special residency permits allowing them to work inside South Africa; this policy was retained and expanded under the next administration.
Rise in the ANC During her tenure as deputy minister and minister in the home affairs portfolio, Mapisa-Nqakula continued to rise through the ranks of the ANC, joining the party's National Executive Committee. Having formerly served as an ex officio and co-opted member of the committee, she was directly elected at the ANC's 51st National Conference in 2002; by number of votes received, she was ranked 37th of the 60 members elected to the committee. She was also elected to the influential National Working Committee.
The following year, at the ANCWL's fourth national conference at Nasrec in Johannesburg on 29 August 2003, Mapisa-Nqakula was elected as president of the ANCWL. She received 1,454 votes across 2,030 ballots, beating the other contender – league deputy president and acting president Thandi Modise – by 528 votes. Health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang had also been nominated for the position but declined to stand on the ballot. Mapisa-Nqakula was believed to be the preferred candidate of the national ANC leadership under Mbeki, as well as the preferred candidate of Bathabile Dlamini, who was re-elected as secretary-general at the same conference. However, she denied rumours that there had been a fierce contest between her and Modise, saying that they were "good comrades".
In her maiden speech as ANCWL president, Mapisa-Nqakula demanded 50 per cent representation for women in all spheres of government, but declined to support calls for South Africa to elect its first woman president, saying, "We believe in rallying behind the president we have. It's a tradition we grew up with in the ANC. We have a capable leader." Indeed, she went on to support Mbeki's bid to win a third term as ANC president in 2007.
At the party's hotly contested 52nd National Conference in Polokwane in December 2007, Mbeki lost to his former deputy, Jacob Zuma, but Mapisa-Nqakula was re-elected to the newly enlarged National Executive Committee, ranked 68th of 80. She was not re-elected to the National Working Committee. She stepped down as ANCWL president when her term ended on 6 July 2008, ceding the office to Angie Motshekga.
Correctional Services: 2009–2012