South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said the ruling African National Congress will decide his fate this week after signaling he would push back against a damning report of a scandal involving a theft at his game farm.
On Monday, the ANC’s highest panel will debate a report by a panel led by a former chief justice that suggests Ramaphosa may have committed serious wrongdoing in connection with the 2020 incident, although his lawyers prepared to challenge his findings .
“It’s up to the national executive committee, to which I am accountable, to make whatever decision,” Ramaphosa said Sunday, just weeks before the party held a leadership election in which he had been widely tipped for re-election. He will attend the NEC meeting, he added.
Ramaphosa has come under pressure to resign after the panel told lawmakers this week it had serious doubts about his account of why he kept half a million dollars in cash in a sofa at his Phala Phala game reserve before it was stolen.
The panel’s findings seriously damaged Ramaphosa’s reputation as a reformer, who came to power in 2018 on a promise to restore clean government after years of looting the state under his predecessor Jacob Zuma.
The parliamentary report said there appeared to be more unbanked cash stored at Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala Game Reserve than the $580,000 stolen and that he may not have reported the theft through the proper police channels.
A legal refutation of the report is being prepared, the spokesman for the president said on Saturday.
Ramaphosa’s supporters have urged him to file a court challenge over serious flaws in the report. They complain that it overstepped its mandate and relied on limited evidence.
South African lawmakers will vote Tuesday on whether to accept the report and begin a full impeachment process.
A court challenge to the president’s report would freeze or complicate that process, legal experts said.
Ramaphosa has always denied any wrongdoing in the phala phala theft, saying he reported the crime to his Presidential Protection Unit as soon as he found out about it and that the money was the rightful proceeds from the sale of buffalo to a Sudanese businessman.
The panel said those explanations were insufficient because there were significant doubts about the legitimacy of the source of the money, leaving the president with a case to answer.
A court battle over the Phala Phala report could overshadow Ramaphosa’s presidency even if he is restored to the ANC’s leadership. Africa’s most industrialized economy is plagued by power outages and sluggish growth.
Arthur Fraser, a former head of South Africa’s espionage agency under Zuma and prison commissioner under Ramaphosa, revealed the robbery earlier this year and accused the president of covering it up.