The acting Public Protector, Advocate Kholeka Gcaleka, sent the political sphere into an uproar when her report cleared President Cyril Ramaphosa from wrongdoing in the ‘Phala Phala’ scandal.
Here’s why Ramaphosa was cleared from ‘Phala Phala’ scandal
Nine months after former spy boss Arthur Fraser first introduced the saga, Ramaphosa was vindicated when the Public Protector’s investigation determined he had fulfilled his presidential obligations in declaring his business interests and used the appropriate channels to report a crime that had occurred on his Waterberg farm in 2020.
Before we dive into details about why Advocate Gcaleka cleared Ramaphosa, let’s harken back to the scandal that nearly forced the president to resign.
On Wednesday, 1 June 2022, Fraser sent shockwaves reverberating across South Africa’s political realm when, in a statement, he revealed that he had laid criminal charges against the president for the alleged “theft of millions of US dollars (in excess of four million US dollars) concealed within the premises of the president’s Phala Phala farm in Waterberg, Limpopo.”
We now know that the amount involved in the scandal was, in fact, $580 000, a cash sum that was paid to Ramaphosa’s farm manager, Sylvester Ndlovu, by Sudanese businessman Hazim Mustafa for a gang of buffaloes on Christmas Day in 2019.
While the cash was received and held at Phala Phala, a farm situated near Bela-Bela, Limpopo, the buffaloes were never shipped to Mustafa, which presented another technical difficulty from the side of the South African Revenue Services (SARS), but we will revisit this later.
On the evening of Sunday, 9 February 2020, two suspects broke into the president’s farm and stole the cash, which, Ndlovu, had supposedly stashed beneath a sofa.
This is where things get blurry. For reasons not yet established, several figures in the president’s inner circle took matters into their own hands and improperly used unscrupulous means to not only track down the suspects, but also recover the stolen cash.
Fraser’s criminal complaint catapulted a series of events that saw Ramaphosa investigated by an independent Section 89 panel that found probable cause for a thorough probe into the president’s involvement in theft, money laundering and unlawful interrogation.
However, Advocate Gcaleka, following an intensive investigation, arrived at a different conclusion. According to the acting Public Protector, Ramaphosa had followed due process in declaring his business activities in the farm trade and reporting the theft to the police.
Here’s a look at why Ramaphosa was cleared from the Phala Phala scandal:
Fingers point at Ramaphosa’s head of Presidential Protective Service as the enforcer
Suggesting the president had no knowledge of the acts that followed the theft at Phala Phala, the public protector found that the head of the Presidential Protective Service Major General Wally Rhoode was the one who used police resources to track down the thieves, off-the-books.
The president’s advisor used connections in Namibia
The report also found that Ramaphosa’s advisor, Bejani Chauke, abused state resources to solicit the help of Namibia’s President Hein Geingob in tracking down the suspects.
According to the public protector, national police commissioner Khehla Sitole was not only aware of the Phala Phala scandal, but he had fraudulently authorised Chauke’s use of a police escort on his Namibia visit
The SARS dilemma
While it seems, Ramaphosa managed to skirt accountability by hiding behind his inner circle, eyebrows will be raised after the public protector revealed that SARS did not allow her access to thoroughly inspect Ramaphosa’s tax activity, to specifically ascertain whether he had flouted any foreign exchange control regulations when he accepted $580 000 in cash.
However, earlier this week, the revenue authority issued a statement confirming that Ramaphosa’s Ntaba Nyoni Estates and Ntaba Nyoni Feedlot books were clean and compliant.
Of course, the other questionable aspect of the scandal involves the source of the money, Mustafa, who insisted that he’d submitted a form declaring the cash when entered South Africa.
However, according to SARS, no such record exists. This begs the question: How exactly did the $580 000 make it to Phala Phala if SARS had not declared it when Mustafa arrived in South Africa?
These questions and more remain unanswered.
The president by proxy of his spokesperson Vincent Magwenya had this to say about the outcome of the report.
“As stated before, we reiterate that the president did not participate in any wrongdoing, nor did he violate the oath of his office. Instead, the president was a victim of a crime that he duly reported to the relevant authorities.”