Phala Phala presidential scandal
Defending its leaders despite its renewal claims. By
After the parliamentary debate on Tuesday, DA Chief Whip Siviwe Gwarube, who sponsored the Phala Phala ad hoc committee motion, said the ANC “have pretzelled themselves explaining the law enforcement agencies do their work while Parliament sits on its hands…”
After the vote on Wednesday Gwarube didn’t mince her words. “The ANC is beyond the point of self-correction. [It has] learnt no lessons from the past decade. Instead [it continues] to hollow out the Parliament in order to shield many in [its] ranks from accountability…”
On Thursday Ramaphosa changed tack, for the first time, to provide Parliament with some details. Previously, the stance was to invoke “due process” and “advise and counsel” to speak after all probes were completed.
“I have said and admitted there was a theft on the farm and I reported that to a general in the SAPS… I deny there is any form of money laundering. I have said … publicly [that] it was proceeds of sales of game…”
This echoes what the President had told the Limpopo ANC conference in early June, just after the claims first emerged from ex-spy boss Arthur Fraser’s statement to police. “I’m a farmer. I’m in the cattle business. I’m in the game [farming] business… This was a clear business transaction of selling animals…,” said Ramaphosa then.
The hint to that it’s-just-business approach had emerged in Tuesday’s parliamentary debate when the ANC separated Ramaphosa the individual and politician from Ramaphosa the businessman and shareholder.
“As we speak none of us know the legal entity, which was involved in the transaction, which resulted in the theft. We all assume it’s Phala Phala because it’s the headquarters of Phala Phala, but we actually do not know…,” said Lesoma.
“They will fail to distinguish between the legal personality of an entity in which the President is a major shareholder and the President himself as an individual.”
Though this line of defence seems a neat sleight of political hand, it may yet turn into a political pickle.
Alongside a financial disclosure regimen, the Executive Members’ Ethics Act and code include stipulations against “exposing themselves to any situation involving the risk of a conflict [of interest] between their official responsibilities and their private interests”.
But in Thursday’s presidential Q&A Ramaphosa reiterated that all interests were disclosed, dismissed claims of abuse of power or conflicts of interest, and repeated pledges of being accountable and cooperating with investigations.
This week the Hawks confirmed investigations were still under way. The Office of the Public Protector indicated that the probe was progressing well, without providing time frames. The South African Reserve Bank, in an emailed response to questions on the probe’s status and time frames, said: “The SARB does not comment on any exchange control investigations of individuals or entities.”
With a Phala Phala ad hoc committee blackballed, the parliamentary ANC has made much of holding Ramaphosa accountable through the Section 89 impeachment inquiry based on a motion from the African Transformation Movement.
But an impeachment motion is a narrow, constitutional process on removal from office for serious violations of the Constitution or the law, serious misconduct or incapacity.
It’s a very different standard from a potentially wide-ranging public ad hoc committee inquiry that might ask awkward questions of ministers and senior officials. Also, at this stage the Section 89 proceedings remain away from the public eye – the independent panel appointed to assess whether Ramaphosa has a case to answer will do its work on the papers, not public hearings.
However, the independent panel’s report and recommendations will be published in the Announcements, Tablings and Committee Reports, Parliament’s record of work.
The governing ANC and Ramaphosa, who has pledged his full cooperation, may well hope that this independent panel, when it completes its work in 30 days, will dismiss the whole matter.
If the panel finds there is a case for the President to answer, it’s back to the political starting blocks for the ANC.
Although the Phala Phala scandal has a whole range of smoke and mirror plays and peccadilloes, much seems not to point directly to Ramaphosa, even if he’s known to spend considerable time at the farm. However, a finding of exchange control and tax violations would be devastating.
This may at least in part explain the ANC in Parliament moving to shift responsibility away from Ramaphosa.
It’s after all what the ANC habitually does for its leaders – particularly one already backed for a second term as party boss by six ANC provincial executives, except KwaZulu-Natal (even if the branch delegates may still show a mind of their own).
When former president Thabo Mbeki publicly ventilated HIV/Aids denialism, the governing ANC remained quiet. It took the Treatment Action Campaign going to court to ensure HIV-positive mothers could get nevirapine for their babies at birth. The ground-breaking Constitutional Court ruling brought about a change of policy – and saved lives.
Ad hoc committees were used to absolve former president Jacob Zuma in late 2015 from repaying the public money for the cattle kraal, chicken run, swimming (fire) pool, amphitheatre and visitors’ centre, as the public protector had ordered. In its seminal March 2016 judgment the Constitutional Court found that by doing this parliamentarians had acted “[inconsistently] with the Constitution”.
With less than three months to go to the governing ANC’s 2022 elective conference and Ramaphosa endorsed for a second term – at least publicly – again Parliament is being leveraged for damage limitation to take the sting out of the presidential Phala Phala scandal.
Amid declining public trust in political parties and institutions like Parliament, without electoral and other fundamental change, history looks to be on repeat.
The ANC is beyond the point of self-correction. It has learnt
no lessons from the past decade. Instead, it continues to hollow out the Parliament in order to shield many in its
ranks from accountability