TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM?
Cyril Ramaphosa has about a week left to respond to parliament about the ANC’s alleged abuse of public money. It’s not a good look, given that he’s supposed to be the face of reform
Acomplaint to parliament, based on a recording of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s remarks to a closed ANC meeting about the party’s internal campaigns, is unlikely to weather legal scrutiny. But it could severely dent the president’s credibility.
Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) has given Ramaphosa until February 10 to divulge what he knows about the alleged abuse of public funds for party campaigns.
The deadline coincides with the state of the nation address (Sona), in which Ramaphosa will outline his government’s priorities for the year. Sona is the biggest event in parliament’s political calendar — so it’s not a good day for the president to have his credibility tested like this.
It’s also a bad look for Ramaphosa, who built his presidential campaign on reforming the ANC and cleaning up corruption — and who made promises about this to voters during national and local election campaigns.
He’s taken some steps on that front, including strengthening the National Prosecuting Authority and setting up the Special Investigating Unit tribunal to deal more speedily with asset forfeiture related to corrupt tenders.
But the complaint to Scopa presents a different view of the president: it suggests Ramaphosa knew about public funds being used inappropriately and failed to act upon this knowledge, effectively putting party unity before the interests of SA.
In a recording leaked last year to The Insight Factor, a website aligned with Ramaphosa’s detractors, the president appears to say: “Investigations will reveal that a lot of money — of public money — was used, and I said in this case I am prepared to fall on the sword. So that the CR17 campaign [for the ANC presidency, in 2017], yes, should be the only one that’s looked at. And not the others, because the image of the ANC is what I am most concerned about.”
Ramaphosa apparently goes on to say he would rather a probe focus on the money his CR17 campaign received from businesspeople “than for the public to finally hear that their money, public money, was used to advance certain campaigns”.
The recording is said to have been made during a virtual meeting of the national executive committee (NEC). The date isn’t clear, but it apparently took place before Ace Magashule was suspended from his position as party secretary-general last May.
Ramaphosa hasn’t confirmed or denied whether the recording is genuine but ANC presidency head Sibongile Besani has said it was taken out of context.
Proving the authenticity of the recording and admitting it as evidence in court might prove tricky, as it would have been illegal for Ramaphosa to have been recorded without his consent. But politically, it’s damaging.
“This could spell real trouble for Ramaphosa,” says Susan Booysen, Wits emeritus professor and author of Precarious Power: Compliance and Discord Under Ramaphosa’s ANC. “It could delegitimise and discredit him and show the public this is a president who is not always speaking the whole truth.”
She adds: “He had to do this [suggest that he would draw the focus to the CR17 campaign] for the sake of peace and harmony in the ANC.”
There’s an ironic twist in this: Ramaphosa is now being taken to task for his apparent defence of the faction that ran against him at the party’s 2017 Nasrec conference and for telling ANC leaders to close ranks.
But by trying to foster “unity” in the party in this way, Ramaphosa may have had another aim, too — “to strengthen his own position in the ANC and to retain his hold on the NEC”, Booysen says.
In any event, it places Ramaphosa in something of a predicament. When he was president, Jacob Zuma was taken to task for saying the party came before the country. Ramaphosa has tried hard to portray himself as the polar opposite of Zuma — but the recording will cast some doubt on that.
As part of the inquiry, Scopa chair Mkhuleko Hlengwa has asked Ramaphosa eight questions, among them for the names of ministers or officials whom he knows were
What it means: The complaint to Scopa suggests the president puts party unity before the interests of the country
involved in the misuse of public funds for ANC election campaigns, and for any records that may relate to these unauthorised funds. (Some of this may already have been aired at the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture.)
The questions arise from a letter that ANC MP and Scopa whip Mervyn Dirks wrote to Hlengwa. Dirks has since been suspended from his parliamentary positions by the ANC and is set to face a disciplinary hearing for bringing the party into disrepute.
It’s a series of events reminiscent of those involving Andrew Feinstein more than two decades ago, a former ANC MP tells the FM.
Feinstein, who was an ANC MP at the time, was demoted from his position on Scopa after he blew the whistle on corruption in the party related to the multibillion-rand arms deal.
“It was essentially about breaking ranks with the party over a matter that should first have been handled internally,” the former MP says.
Still, there are fundamental differences in the two cases.
Feinstein, who subsequently resigned his parliamentary seat, has always described the arms deal as “the point at which the ANC lost its moral compass”.
With Dirks, the situation is perhaps more overtly political. The MP is a known Ramaphosa detractor, and the timing and nature of the complaint is generally considered to be aimed at discrediting Ramaphosa ahead of the ANC’s leadership election in December. But it’s possible that Dirks was also putting up his hand for a position ahead of the party’s elective conference.
Party battles aside, Scopa has the power to investigate the matter. Lawson Naidoo of the Council for the Advancement of the SA Constitution says section 56 of the constitution “provides that the National Assembly or any of its committees may summon any person to appear before it to give evidence on oath or affirmation, or to produce documents”.
This extends to the president.
It’s also possible that Scopa members could call upon Ramaphosa to appear before the committee to answer any follow-up questions after receiving his reply. They “would in fact be fulfilling their constitutional responsibility by doing so and by seeking to hold a member of the executive to account”, Naidoo adds.
Still, the nature of the complaint against Ramaphosa is unprecedented, according to advocate Romeo Nthambeleni. He believes this is likely to be the first Scopa inquiry that deals with what someone has said, rather than what they’ve actually done.
What’s important, he told news channel Newzroom Afrika, is who was saying these things. As president, Ramaphosa took an oath to uphold the constitution and the law.
The matter doesn’t rest with Scopa alone. Dirks has also laid a complaint with controversial public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane about the matter.
Like the Scopa compliant, this too is without legal substance, North West University politics professor Barry Hanyane told Newzroom Afrika — which means, once more, that state resources will be used to settle internal party battles. It will also give Ramaphosa’s detractors another opportunity to probe the CR17 campaign funds.
Mkhwebane has already tried that, unsuccessfully. She’s claimed the CR17 campaign raised millions of rands, giving rise to the “risk of some sort of state capture”.
Though the Constitutional Court ruled her investigation unlawful, bank records from the Financial Intelligence Centre were handed to the court as part of the case — an issue promptly taken up by the EFF. (The party’s efforts to have these records unsealed have been dismissed by the courts.)
This could spell real trouble for Ramaphosa. It could delegitimise and discredit him, and show the public this is a president who is not always speaking the whole truth
Susan Booysen
Historically, the ANC doesn’t permit open campaigning for internal leadership positions, so this has always been a grey area in the party’s rules. Still, it seems Ramaphosa hasn’t been entirely open about what he knew about his campaign funding.
In 2019, some of the bank statements related to his campaign were leaked, along with emails between campaign insiders dealing with fundraising initiatives. The contents appear to contradict the claim, made to Mkhwebane, that Ramaphosa “was unaware of the identity of donors to the CR17 campaign”.
On top of this, R500,000 came from facilities management company Bosasa — which was under investigation for receiving a number of inflated security tenders, and which was a big donor to ANC campaigns.
So damning was the testimony before the state capture inquiry about its activities that Bosasa was liquidated before the commission even wrapped up oral testimony.
Ramaphosa has three options now. He could break ranks with the party and disclose what he knows about the abuse of public money by his colleagues. Or he could fall on his sword as he said he would and open up his own campaign books to scrutiny. More likely is that he will raise questions about the context of the recording, while trying to offset the damage by suggesting the allegations have already been covered at the state capture commission.
Commission secretary Itumeleng Mosala on Tuesday handed the second part of the report to presidency director-general Phindile Baleni, while part three is expected at the end of the month.
The damage, however, will have been done. Booysen says the Scopa complaint will not only dent Ramaphosa’s image, but the ANC is set to suffer, too, in the 2024 general elections.
“We know that one of Ramaphosa’s strengths is that he could help win the ANC the elections in 2019,” she says, referring to the fact that Ramaphosa consistently polls higher than the party itself. “He is a president with broader appeal beyond the ANC.”
That wasn’t enough to stop the ANC from sliding below the 50% mark in last year’s local government election. So in the unlikely event that Ramaphosa’s image is so dented that he loses the leadership campaign in December, the party will have to start looking at coalition scenarios on provincial and even national level, come 2024.