Cyril Ramaphosa was under increasing pressure to resign as South Africa’s president after a parliamentary report concluded he abused his office as a result of the theft of more than $500,000 in cash that was stuffed inside a sofa on his private farm.
Ramaphosa would not be “rushed” into a decision and was keeping all options open, his spokesman said late on Thursday, as delays to a planned address to the nation and a series of consultations within the ruling African National Congress indicate that his presidency was ready. line
“We are in an extraordinary and unprecedented moment as a constitutional democracy,” added his spokesman.
Ramaphosa’s authority has been left hanging by a thread after a tribunal headed by a former South African chief justice found he may have breached an anti-corruption law over the farm theft scandal and should be investigated by a possible dismissal.
Ramaphosa canceled a scheduled appearance before South Africa’s upper house of parliament on Thursday, heightening the sense of crisis. The rand fell against the US dollar and South African government bonds sold off strongly.
“President Ramaphosa must now resign or face impeachment without further delay,” said Herman Mashaba, leader of ActionSA, South Africa’s third opposition party. Both he and the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition, called for bringing forward elections from 2024.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said the panel’s findings were a “seismic shift in South African politics”. . . Ramaphosa is not a helpless victim in all this. The collapse of his presidency is entirely his own.”
Senior ANC leaders are due to meet on Friday to discuss the fate of Ramaphosa and the deepening sense of crisis over the investigation, which it said did not adequately report the 2020 theft to police and called erroneously the assistance of his Namibian counterpart in the matter.
“The vultures are circling,” said Judith February, executive officer of Freedom Under Law, a legal watchdog. “If the facts are not on your side, we tend to be evasive and drawn to the inevitable conclusion that the president has something to hide.”
The report’s findings are a major body blow to Ramaphosa’s image just weeks before he stands for re-election as ANC leader on an anti-graft platform.
Ramaphosa, one of South Africa’s richest men, won a clear lead in party nominations for leader last month, nearly five years after the trade unionist-turned-businessman replaced corruption-tainted Jacob Zuma and promised to clean up the state.
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He has always denied botching the robbery at his Phala Phala farm, which was revealed only this year when a former head of South Africa’s spy agency under Zuma accused the presidency of a cover-up.
However, the court found that “there was a deliberate decision to keep the investigation secret” after the robbery. “The president abused his position as head of state to investigate the matter and sought the assistance of the president of Namibia to arrest a suspect” in the neighboring country, the panel said.
Namibian President Hage Geingob has denied giving Ramaphosa any inappropriate assistance in the Phala Phala case. Neither government has denied that a request for aid has been made.
Ramaphosa told the panel that the money was legitimate proceeds from the sale of buffalo to a Sudanese businessman for $580,000, and that he had reported the theft to his presidential security chief.
But the panel said the law required it to have been reported directly to the police. Ramaphosa may have committed a serious fault “by exposing himself to a situation involving a conflict between his official responsibilities and his private business”, he said.
The panel added that there were “a number of important questions relating to this transaction that remain unanswered”, including why the buffaloes that were sold remained on Ramaphosa’s farm more than two years later and why the money was hidden inside a couch.
It also appears that more money was stolen from the couch than the sum received from the sale of buffaloes, the panel said.
“The cumulative effect of all of this is that there is substantial doubt about the legitimacy of the source of the currency that was stolen. This is a very serious matter.”
South Africa’s central bank has been conducting its own investigation into whether the money was correctly declared as foreign currency under South Africa’s foreign exchange regulations. It has yet to be reported.