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.

During that period, in September 2020, Mapisa-Nqakula was reprimanded by the president for using a South African Air Force jet to transport an ANC delegation to a party-political meeting in Harare.

[3] In 1984, with her husband Charles Nqakula,[4] 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.

[14][15][16] 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.

[23] 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.

[27][28] However, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) was critical of Mapisa-Nqakula's role, with its chief whip, Ian Davidson, urging her to "pull her head out of the sand" and acknowledge the true causes and extent of the violence.

[29] 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".

"[30] 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;[31] this policy was retained and expanded under the next administration.

[43][44] Mapisa-Nqakula was one of only a few Mbeki supporters who outlasted the change of government,[45] but observers noted that she was "handed a department left in a dire state by outgoing minister, Ngconde Balfour".

[46][47] She took office amid ongoing public controversy about Schabir Shaik's release from prison,[48][49] and she conceded in December 2009 that the country's medical parole framework required improvement.

A preliminary agreement with Boeing was allowed to expire, with Mapisa-Nqakula suggesting that the expiry might be fortuitous because "the aircraft being negotiated was not necessarily what the defence force would have advised us to buy";[55] and she went to court to challenge a contract with AdoAir, claiming that the terms of its award had not been compliant with the Public Finance Management Act.

[56][57] During the same period, Mapisa-Nqakula was involved with a public row with her predecessor over a related matter: in October 2012, in response to a parliamentary question from David Maynier, she reported that Sisulu had taken 203 private flights, at a cost of over R40 million to the South African Air Force, between 2009 and 2012.

The Mail & Guardian subsequently questioned the motives behind the deployment, suggesting that the government sought to protect ANC-linked business interests and the regime of François Bozizé.

[81] Although the deployment was welcomed by politicians across the political spectrum,[82] the Mail & Guardian said at the end of the year that it had been "disastrous", with 214 misconduct complaints laid against SANDF members during the lockdown, including one pertaining to the killing of Collins Khosa in Alexandra.

First, in July 2013, she travelled in an air force helicopter to Tlokwe, North West to accept, on the president's behalf, a memorandum from local ANC members, who were demanding political action be taken against their former mayor.

The DA accused Mapisa-Nqakula of abusing state resources to conduct party-political business, thus contravening the ministerial handbook and appearing to "treat the South African Air Force as the ANC's own airborne taxi service".

[87] The woman, Michelle Wege, had left Burundi for the Democratic Republic of Congo in January 2014 and had been arrested at Kinshasa International Airport for attempting to travel using fraudulent documents.

[87] Mapisa-Nqakula denied having abused state resources, pointing out that she had flown with Wege from the Congo to Addis Ababa, where she was in any case scheduled to appear on a working visit to an African Union conference.

[90] Finally, and perhaps most controversially, on 8 and 9 September 2020, Mapisa-Nqakula transported an ANC delegation to and from Harare, Zimbabwe, where they met with leaders of the Zimbabwean ruling party, Zanu-PF.

They travelled on ZS-NAN, a Dassault Falcon-900B owned by the air force and allocated for VIPs, and the delegation included ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule as well as Lindiwe Zulu, Nomvula Mokonyane, Enoch Godongwana, Tony Yengeni, and Dakota Legoete.

[94] Two weeks later, Ramaphosa said that he had concluded that Mapisa-Nqakula had contravened the Executive Members Code and "failed to adhere to legal prescripts warranting care in use of state resources", in an "error of judgment... not in keeping with the responsibilities of a minister of Cabinet".

In this connection, Mapisa-Nqakula later told an investigation established by the South African Human Rights Commission that the military response had been obstructed partly by a lack of cooperation and intelligence-sharing from officials in KwaZulu-Natal, including the provincial police commissioner, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi.

[119] She also presided over the National Assembly's response to the findings of the Zondo Commission, which implicated several members of the executive and legislature in serious misconduct and corruption;[120][121] in this connection, Siviwe Gwarube, the deputy chief whip of the DA, accused Mapisa-Nqakula of evasiveness and undue delay.

[126]Amos Masondo, the chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, disputed that Mapisa-Nqakula had indeed called EFF members "animals"; the unrevised Hansard recorded her as using the word phumani, meaning "get out".

However, although just a year earlier the Business Day had labelled her a "political heavyweight" and "integral cog in the ANC's internal dynamics",[131] she did not receive enough votes to be re-elected to the 80-member committee.

[132] When Parliament opened for its final session of the term in early 2024, Mapisa-Nqakula told the press that she hoped to retire after the May 2024 general election, saying, "I think that it is time for me to hand over the baton to the younger ones...

"[133] However, in the final weeks of the parliamentary term, she was subject to renewed allegations of bribery (see below), leading the opposition DA to lodge a referral to Parliament's Joint Committee on Ethics and Members Interests.

On 3 April, after a failed attempt to interdict any potential arrest, she announced that she had resigned from the National Assembly with immediate effect in order to focus on fighting the allegations.

[136] In early March 2024, while Mapisa-Nqakula was concluding her term as Speaker, the Sunday Times reported that she was the subject of a bribery investigation in connection with her tenure as Minister of Defence.

[137] According to the newspaper, a SANDF logistics contractor, Nombasa Ntsondwa-Ndhlovu, had told law enforcement agencies that Mapisa-Nqakula had solicited and received up to R2.3 million in cash bribes.