<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s parliamentary speaker faces imminent arrest over corruption charges after a court on Tuesday dismissed her bid to block police and prosecutors from arresting her.
\nNosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, who is a senior member of the ruling African National Congress party, is accused of receiving bribes from a defense contractor while she was defense minister.
\nAccording to prosecutors, she received 11 payments totaling $135,000 between December 2016 and July 2019. She sought another bribe of $105,000 but that wasn\u2019t paid, prosecutors said.
\nOpposition lawmakers have called for her to step down from her position as speaker over the allegations.
\nMapisa-Nqakula last week launched an urgent court bid to block her arrest, but a judge at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria dismissed her application on Tuesday.
\nSpeaking to reporters after the judgment was delivered, National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga did not say when the arrest would be made but confirmed the judgement paved the way for it to occur.
\n\u201cObviously the wheels of justice will now be in motion, as we were listening to the judgment, which was well reasoned,\u201d Mhaga said.
\n\u201cWe have always maintained that this is unprecedented and it was unnecessary for us to be brought to court. We have always maintained that the process of arrest will be done seamlessly,\u201d he added.
\nBefore launching her court bid, Mapisa-Nqakula was told by prosecutors she should turn herself in to authorities for processing and to appear before a judge.
\nMapisa-Nqakula is the latest African National Congress leader to face corruption allegations as the party prepares to fight tough national elections this year.
\nRecent polls suggest the party could receive less than 50% of electoral support for the first since time it came into power in 1994.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa\u2019s parliamentary speaker faces imminent arrest over corruption charges after a court on Tuesday dismissed her bid to block police and prosecutors from arresting her. Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, who is a senior member of the ruling African National Congress party, is accused of receiving bribes from a defense contractor while she was defense minister. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17456,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17453\/revisions\/17456"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}