The Handbag Incident: Did Minister Nkoana-Mashabane have something to hide?

The Ministry of International Relations and Co-operation has justified chartering a private jet at a cost of R235,000 to avoid Oslo airport security on the grounds that scanning a Minister's luggage is in breach of the Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations.

This is false.

The Vienna Convention does not exempt the luggage of diplomatic officials from pre-flight x-ray scanning. Article 36 merely prohibits the routine inspection (i.e. searching) of diplomats' luggage unless it is suspected to contain items "prohibited by the law or controlled by the quarantine regulations of the receiving State."

The Convention says nothing about scanning the luggage in an x-ray machine.

In fact, according to according to the provisions of Annex 17 of the International Civil Aviation Organisation on Aviation Security (Doc. 8973), diplomats and their personal baggage must always be subject to routine pre-boarding screening as it applies to civil aviation security.

In other words, the Vienna Convention is a convenient red herring cited by Ministry spokespeople in an attempt to save the Minister from embarrassment. The rules state clearly that she should have allowed her handbag to be scanned by airport security officials.

This raises the key question: why did the Minister refuse to put her handbag through the scanner as required by the International Civil Aviation Organisation? Was she trying to hide something?

According to reports, she didn't just refuse. She kicked up a fuss that was clearly audible to other passengers boarding the flight. And, when that didn't work, she relinquished her first class ticket to Sofia and chartered a private jet at a cost of a quarter of a million Rand.

One is left wondering why a Minister would go to such great lengths to prevent her handbag from going through an airport x-ray scanner if she had nothing to hide. 

We may never know what was in the Minister's handbag. But we can recoup the public money that was spent on the private jet. I re-iterate my call for Minister Nkoana-Mashabane to pay back the money from her own purse.

Statement issued by Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, DA National Spokesperson, September 18 2011

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