‘Cyril misled Parliament over campaign funds’

The report into Ramaphosa found that the President lied when he answered a question from then DA leader Mmusi Maimane on why R500 000 was paid to his son

PUBLIC Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane's legal counsel, Muzi Sikhakhane, argued at the Constitutional Court yesterday that the North Gauteng High Court had erred in dismissing her probe into President Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR17 presidential campaign.

Mkhwebane’s report into Ramaphosa found that the President lied to Parliament when he answered a question from then DA leader Mmusi Maimane on why R500 000 was paid to his son, Andile, by controversial former Bosasa boss Gavin Watson.

Ramaphosa had said this was a legitimate business transaction only to backtrack a week later and say it was for the CR17 campaign. Mkhwebane in her probe found Ramaphosa to have violated the Executive Ethics Code by not disclosing the millions of rand that were received by his ANC presidential campaign while he was deputy president of the country.

The high court had found Mkhwebane to have acted unlawfully in exercising her powers, that the probe into the CR17 campaign fell outside her field of competence and powers, and that her findings were invalid.

Sikhakhane insisted that Ramaphosa had misled Parliament, adding that “one has to look at this with sympathetic eyes and no loathing eye. And then you can move to whether later things were changed”.

Sikhakhane moved to dispute the high court ruling that the millions of rand that were pumped into Ramaphosa’s ANC election campaign were a private matter band beyond Mkhwebane’s jurisdiction.

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, for Ramaphosa, accused Mkhwebane of having had a clear prior outcome in mind while conducting her report as she discarded facts that did not coincide with her preferred conclusion.

Ngcukaitobi, who was working alongside advocate Wim Trengove as Ramaphosa’s counsel, pointed out that Mkhwebane had insisted on describing the CR17 funds as personal sponsorship from which he directly benefited financially while there was evidence to the contrary that had been given to her.

Ngcukaitobi said Ramaphosa and his family had accrued no financial benefits from the campaign and that he instead pumped millions of rand into CR17, which he said Mkhwebane failed to refute.

Trengove told the court that there was no merit to suggest that Ramaphosa misled Parliament when he answered Maimane as he knew about his son’s relationship with Bosasa.

Judgment has been reserved.