The lawmaker who resigned as the leader of South Africa’s major dwelling of Parliament this week was arrested on Thursday on rates that she had taken bribes in her previously function as defense minister.

The arrest of the lawmaker, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, adopted a tense, weekslong standoff with regulation enforcement officials in excess of a corruption circumstance that has dealt a blow to the governing African National Congress two months prior to a essential countrywide election.

The A.N.C. faces the risk of getting rid of its complete greater part in the national federal government for the to start with time due to the fact the conclude of apartheid 30 several years ago when voters go to the polls on Might 29. Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula’s arrest exposes the get together to a person of its greatest vulnerabilities — charges of corruption.

Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula, who had fought in opposition to the apartheid routine as an A.N.C. activist in exile, managed her innocence on Wednesday in a information release saying her resignation as speaker of the Nationwide Assembly. Element of her choice to move down, she said, was to “protect the image of our firm, the African Nationwide Congress.”

“My resignation is in no way an sign or admission of guilt with regards to the allegations being leveled towards me,” she added. “I have made this conclusion in get to uphold the integrity and sanctity of our Parliament.”

A.N.C. leaders have faced a litany of corruption allegations around the yrs that have ignited community furor as the country and lots of of its citizens battle economically. Most notably, investigators uncovered that Jacob Zuma, a former president of the get together and the nation, oversaw the popular looting of condition coffers to enrich himself, his family members and his good friends.

Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula is just one of the highest-ranking A.N.C. officers to be accused of criminal expenses for conduct in workplace, soon after Mr. Zuma, who faces expenses for actions that transpired a technology in the past, when he was vice president. (Since departing workplace, he has remaining the A.N.C. and shaped his have social gathering.)

But in some strategies, Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula’s scenario offers an option for the party to present that it is tackling potential wrongdoing between its users.

Less than the recent president, Cyril Ramaphosa, the A.N.C. has mentioned it is aggressively doing work to root out corruption in its ranks. In a assertion produced right after Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula’s resignation on Wednesday, the A.N.C. seemed to express relief that she experienced voluntarily stepped down.

Had she not, the bash would have faced the prospect of implementing a new rule requiring its associates to phase aside from their celebration and governing administration posts although going through criminal charges.

“We value her commitment to protecting the image of our organization, as it displays our rules of organizational renewal that encourage proactive responsibility-using among associates,” the A.N.C. assertion reported.

Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula, 67, was the minister of defense and military veterans from 2014 to 2021. Through her final 12 months on the task, some of the worst rioting of South Africa’s democratic era erupted in parts of the country, and Mr. Ramaphosa named it an tried insurrection. Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula publicly contradicted her boss, saying that the violence was not an insurrection. Soon afterward, she was eliminated as minister and became the National Assembly speaker.

She has argued that the prosecution’s situation versus her is a politically inspired attempt to tarnish her standing and the A.N.C.’s during campaign season.

Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula is accused of soliciting far more than 2.3 million rand ($123,000) truly worth of bribes from a protection contractor in trade for awarding contracts in between 2016 and 2019. The police raided her home last thirty day period. Soon after the raid, she submitted an software in court producing the unconventional demand that prosecutors turn about their proof to her prior to her arrest, arguing that their case was weak.

In a court affidavit complicated her arrest, Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula claimed that prosecutors were abusing their powers for political uses, as the apartheid-period govt did. She feared, she reported, “that this observe has once once more reared its unpleasant head and, if not stopped, carries the true hazard of additional fraying the constitutional cloth of our young democracy.”

Justice Sulet Potterill dismissed Ms. Mapisa-Nqakula’s initiatives to avert her arrest, expressing on Tuesday that “the floodgates will be opened” for each and every suspect to request the court to quit his or her arrest “on speculation that there is a weak case.”