ANC stands by S. Africa president

Probes continue ahead of election

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress, is standing by its president, Cyril Ramaphosa, rejecting calls that he face an impeachment hearing over accusations that he kept a large sum of cash in a sofa at his game farm and failed to report a crime when it was stolen.

The decision by the executive committee of the ANC was announced Monday after an allday meeting — essentially killing a report that had been prepared by a three-member panel recommending that impeachment hearings go ahead.

“It means the president continues with his duties as president of the ANC and the republic,” said Paul Mashatile, the ANC’s treasurer general, at a news conference after the meeting. “The decision that we take is in the best interest of the country.”

But the president is hardly out of the woods. He still has to answer to several other investigations, including by the ANC’s integrity committee, the national prosecutor’s office, and the public protector, a corruption watchdog, as Mashatile pointed out. And his bid to win a second term as ANC president in elections to be held in less than two weeks is hardly a sure thing.

Ramaphosa has been under fire since a criminal complaint filed by a political foe in June alleged that millions of dollars in US currency was stolen from a couch in a game farm, Phala Phala Wildlife, owned by the president. The complaint alleged that Ramaphosa never reported the theft and tried to cover it up to avoid the publicity — and potential legal violations — over having that much foreign currency hidden at his private residence.

A damning report issued last week by two retired judges and a lawyer said that he might have violated the constitution and recommended that Parliament begin impeachment hearings. On Monday, Ramaphosa filed a legal challenge in the nation’s highest court challenging the report.

Parliament is scheduled to convene Tuesday to vote on whether to adopt the report and hold impeachment hearings ANC members hold a majority of the seats in Parliament. While they are not required to do what their executive committee says, analysts say it is highly unlikely that they will break ranks in what is expected to be a public vote.

The executive committee’s decision may be a sign of Ramaphosa’s strength within the party ahead of elections for the party’s leadership. The president is seeking a second term, but he has been under heavy pressure from opposing factions and is expected to face a tough battle to remain in office. The elections come at a particularly fraught time for the ANC, Africa’s oldest liberation movement. Its support has been waning. Its next leader faces the tall task of helping to boost public confidence in the party as it tries to retain its outright majority in Parliament in the 2024 elections.

Since Ramaphosa is challenging the report in court, analysts say, Parliament may delay voting on it. Mashatile said the ANC’s 80-member executive committee was mostly united in the view that it was the president’s prerogative to challenge the report in the Constitutional Court.

But there was a lengthy debate over the content of the report, he said. Some wanted to reject it, while others thought its findings should be considered. Ultimately, he said, the committee decided the report should not be adopted while it was up for legal review.

Opposition political parties are planning to vigorously push for Parliament to proceed with an impeachment hearing.