Nokwazi Ngonyama set to appear in court for alleged assault of domestic worker in Tokyo

Nokwazi Ngonyama, wife of South Africa’s former ambassador to Japan Smuts Ngonyama, is set to appear in court on Friday, 29 November, facing charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm against her former domestic worker Tandiswa Tokwe in the official ambassadorial residence in Tokyo.

This follows allegations by Tokwe that she was attacked by Ngonyama with a broomstick in July last year when her husband was still ambassador. He has since ended his posting and returned to South Africa. After the alleged assaults, Tokwe fled the residence and returned to South Africa where she pressed charges against Nokwazi Ngonyama.

The Commissioner for Gender Equality also took up Tokwe’s case, urging the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to pursue charges against Ngonyama.

In a letter to Tango Pangelele, senior public prosecutor in Mdantsane, Eastern Cape, on 26 September 2024, Joel Sesar, deputy director of public prosecutions in Bhisho, informed Pangelele that he had decided to prosecute Ngonyama for assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. 

Sesar also informed the Commission for Gender Equality’s Eastern Cape office that he had decided to press charges.

Javu Baloyi, spokesperson for the commission, confirmed that it had sought the charges because, “The matter was within the legislative mandate of the Commission.”

Read more: Wife of SA’s ambassador to Japan Smuts Ngonyama allegedly assaulted domestic worker with a broomstick

Tokwe confirmed to Daily Maverick that she would appear in the Mdantsane Magistrates’ Court on 29 November.

“I feel anxious but at the same time I am panicking,” she said about the trial.

She also confirmed that Ngonyama had eventually paid her for the outstanding period of her employment contract after she was forced to end her work in July 2023.  She had battled for some time to receive the full payment. She had said last year that ambassador Ngonyama had been urging her not to press charges against his wife and to sign a non-disclosure agreement, both of which she had refused to do. 

Tokwe had been working in the ambassador’s residence since May 2019. She told Daily Maverick that Nokwazi Ngonyama offered no reason for laying into her with a broomstick on 14 July, beating her three times on her thighs and arms.

According to Tokwe, “Nokwazi said, ‘You have to tell me, what is going on in the house?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. There is nothing happening here.’ ”

After the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) heard of the incident, it sent an official to Tokyo to try to resolve the dispute. Ngonyama and his wife later apologised to Tokwe and she briefly stayed on in her job.

But she said she grew increasingly terrified of Nokwazi Ngonyama and on 27 July she quit and left Japan. Since then she has been back home in East London, an unemployed single mother struggling to make ends meet.

Read more: Domestic worker ‘grateful but disappointed at treatment’, as ex-boss Ngonyama finally settles debt after wife’s alleged broomstick attack

After she fled, Ngonyama agreed to pay Tokwe R195,231 — her salary for the five months which remained before her contract was due to expire at the end of December 2023. But the settlement which Ngonyama offered stressed that it was not an admission of any wrongdoing by the Ngonyamas.

Tokwe would also have to undertake not to take any legal action against Ngonyama or his wife, and not to disclose the terms and conditions of the settlement to any third party, including the media.

She refused all these conditions and continued to demand a full, unconditional payout, which she said Ngonyama eventually made to her.

Ngonyama was a political appointee to the post in Japan, although he had previously been SA’s ambassador to Spain. Before that, he was the spokesperson for the ANC, but left the party after then president Thabo Mbeki was ousted by the ANC in 2008. Ngonyama then joined the Congress of the People (Cope), but resigned from that party in 2014.

Nokwazi Ngonyama is a former director of the Department of Social Development, and an investor.

Ngonyama's case has been postponed to 13 January 2025 in order for her defense to make representations to the Director of Public Prosecutions about jurisdiction of the court.DM