Former SAA chairperson Dudu Myeni.
Former minister Malusi Gigaba’s estranged wife, Nomachule Mngoma, told the Zondo commission the reason Gigaba deleted her emails is that he denies former SAA board chairperson Dudu Myeni paid for his trips, including one to Mauritius.
Mngoma continued her testimony on Friday morning after the state capture commission adjourned on Thursday evening after “a protector-related issue”, said evidence leader advocate Anton Myburgh.
Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo did not elaborate on the security threat on Friday morning and immediately began hearing Mngoma’s testimony.
Myburgh asked Mngoma if she tried to bribe Gigaba by refusing to testify if “he pays you a big settlement and withdraws the criminal complaint”.
Mngoma denied this, saying her appearance before the commission has nothing to do with their divorce but rather with clarifying matters regarding her arrest in July and doing her duty as a South African citizen.
Mngoma was arrested in July last year by members of the Hawks on charges of malicious damage to property and crimen injuria. The high court in Pretoria has since ruled the arrest unlawful and a month later all charges against her were dropped.
She told the Zondo commission that her arrest, the confiscation of her electronic devices and the disappearance of her passports were orchestrated by her husband.
Mngoma said all her emails and photographs of their private trips were deleted.
Zondo asked her why Gigaba would not want to convey details about the trips.
“Firstly, in his affidavit, he denies that Ms Myeni paid for the trip. He doesn’t want that trip to be there. She did pay [for] our trip to Mauritius. She even emailed the whole itinerary to us,” Mngoma said. “Two, when we went to Dubai he didn’t want me to have proof of those trips. Hence he took my passports. And also we had our own private visits and we had state visits. I can’t keep all that in my head.”
She could recall trips in 2013 and 2014, a trip in 2015 with a friend and a trip in 2016 on her own that Gigaba paid for.
Testifying about her arrest by the Hawks, Mngoma said she questioned why the Hawks came from Mpumalanga and not from the police station in their immediate vicinity.
“I think it was [in] 2013 [when] Malusi was deployed to Mpumalanga. So there is a big possibility that he’s the one who knows those people because if I did something wrong Malusi was supposed to go to [the] police station just down the road to open a case.”
She asserts the members lied in their affidavits when they said they were from the police and not the Hawks.
Mngoma told the commission the Hawks knew where her devices were being kept, which she claims means it was Gigaba who told them.
“There was an iPad I haven’t used for two years, but members of the Hawks, when I gave them everything, they were, like, where is your iPad?”
Responding to Zondo’s inquiry about whether she has retrieved all her deleted information from the Hawks, Mngoma said the unit had not returned it.
The Zondo commission adjourned and resumed after lunch, with Gigaba taking the stand.