Nowhere left for Ramaphosa to hide

President will face his enemies at an ANC national executive committee meeting on Monday

After months of dodging questions on his handling of the theft of a large sum of dollars from his Limpopo farm in 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa will finally be forced to provide answers in coming days.

He will face off against his political enemies in the ANC — including his main opponent in the party presidential race, former health minister Zweli Mkhize, as well as the ANC’s KwaZulu-Natal leadership, who have called for Ramaphosa to resign — at a national executive committee (NEC) meeting scheduled for Monday morning.

The NEC is the ANC’s highest decision-making body between national conferences. It was this body that recalled two former presidents from office: Thabo Mbeki in 2008 and Jacob Zuma in 2018. Notably, that happened only after their terms as party president had ended.

Mbeki has led the charge for Ramaphosa to account to the NEC. Mbeki, who famously pipped Ramaphosa at the post for the deputy presidency under Nelson Mandela, objected publicly to Ramaphosa’s refusal to account to the party up to now. Ramaphosa has always insisted that parliament is the appropriate platform.

Justice minister Ronald Lamola said at the weekend it was Ramaphosa’s right to challenge the independent panel’s adverse findings against him through a legal review, but this should not stop the parliamentary debate going ahead on Tuesday. Sources close to the presidency said a review application could be submitted as early as Monday morning.

Lamola said Ramaphosa has a right to apply for a judicial review of the panel’s report, which several legal experts have criticised as flawed, but the ANC has to debate the report in the meantime to be able to give direction to its parliamentary caucus on Tuesday.

“I am dealing with the content of the report. We should not play the man. Let’s play the ball,” Lamola said in an interview with Business Day.

He defended Ramaphosa’s

decision to continue to contest for ANC president at the party’s elective conference in two weeks, saying that because Ramaphosa got the overwhelming majority of nominations — 2,037 compared with Mkhize’s 916 — to remove him as a candidate would be tantamount to a power grab.

“For me at this stage, there is no basis for the president to step aside on the basis of a report which legal academics say is fatally flawed. It does not help with accountability. It would be unjust. It would also be very dangerous to remove a president abruptly in a constitutional democracy,” said Lamola.

Markets in SA were sent into a tailspin last week after the release of the parliamentary panel’s report, which stated that he may have a case to answer in relation to obscuring details about the foreign currency stashed in a sofa.

However, finance minister Enoch Godongwana has sought to allay investor fears, saying SA assets will be safe even if the president resigns or is forced to step aside. The minister, appointed by Ramaphosa in August 2021 as former minister Tito Mboweni’s replacement, says he has been fielding queries from stakeholders in the market over policy certainty if the president resigns.

“One of the key questions is not about whether he leaves, it’s about the credibility of the person who is going to replace him,” Godongwana told Business Day.