President Cyril Ramaphosa. (Photo: Reuters)
The office of the public protector has concluded its investigation into a complaint that the burglary at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Limpopo game farm revealed that he had violated the executive ethics code and the Constitution.
This is according to an update provided to the leader of the African Transformation Movement (ATM) Vuyo Zungula.
“Kindly be advised that the investigation into this matter has been completed,” the executive manager of the investigations branch of the chapter nine institution, Vusumuzi Dlamini, said in the letter to Zungula.
“The interim report has been scheduled to serve through the internal review structures for quality assurance purposes.”
The interim report would be sent to the relevant parties once the quality assurance process has been completed, Dlamini said. This would allow Ramaphosa to comment on the findings before the report is made final.
The letter was sent to Zungula last Friday.
He filed the complaint on 3 June last year, shortly after Arthur Fraser, the former director general of the State Security Agency, opened a criminal case against Ramaphosa in relation to the theft of a large sum of dollars from his Phala Phala game farm in early 2020. The incident only became public knowledge, and the subject of a formal police investigation, after Fraser brought it to light.
Fraser submitted that some$4 million was stolen, and that the money had been concealed in a sofa that was transported from the Hyde Park home of presidential adviser Bejani Chauke to the game farm. It was, he alleged, part of a small fortune in secret donations Chauke smuggled into the country from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Egypt and Equatorial Guinea.
Ramaphosa has dismissed this as fiction. He has conceded that the money was concealed in a sofa, but told investigators that it was payment in cash from a Sudanese businessman who bought livestock from his farm on Christmas Day 2019.
The controversy brought Ramaphosa to the brink of resignation last year after a panel headed by former chief justice Sandile Ngcobo concluded that he had a case to answer on four charges contained in an impeachment motion tabled by the ATM and recommended that he face an impeachment inquiry.
The report was eventually rejected by the National Assembly after ANC MPs closed ranks around the president. But the ATM has filed court papers asking that the vote be set aside because the speaker acted irrationally when she refused an opposition request for a secret ballot.
The charges in the impeachment motion echoed those the two-seat opposition party formulated in their complaint to the public protector.
The ATM asked that the president be investigated for violating section 96(2)(a) the Constitution by performing paid work outside his official functions, as well as section 96(2)(b) by placing himself into a situation of conflict between his private interests as a game farmer and his official responsibilities.
Zungula said in his complaint that the public protector was under a legal obligation to complete the investigation within 30 days but a spokesperson for the institution pointed out that complaints about lapses in executive ethics traditionally took longer, and there was no absolute time frame imposed by the law.
Ramaphosa twice missed a deadline to reply to questions from investigators, drawing a warning from acting public protector Kholeka Gcaleka in July last year that he would be subpoenaed if he failed to submit answers forthwith.
He then responded within days.
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