The problem for President Cyril Ramaphosa is one of plausible denial. He repeatedly professed ignorance on flagrant instances of state capture and has not always emerged with his credibility intact.(Photo by MIKE HUTCHINGS / POOL / AFP) (Photo by MIKE HUTCHINGS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
NEWS ANALYSIS
The ANC has used its majority in parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) to bury a move to call the party’s president to appear before it to explain a leaked partial recording of him allegedly admitting knowledge that state funds were diverted for party campaigns.
This comes despite Cyril Ramaphosa telling a media briefing on Wednesday that he would be willing to appear before the committee if called, and would not need to be summoned. He had already sent Scopa a written response to questions about the recording.
But public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane has started her investigation. On Tuesday, she wrote to Ramaphosa asking him for a sworn statement regarding the recording.
She has also asked other members of the party’s national executive committee (NEC) for affidavits. They include Tony Yengeni, one of Ramaphosa’s fiercest critics in the party who he had addressed by name in the recording of the March 2021 meeting.
The ANC’s MPs on Scopa outvoted those of the opposition by six votes to four after the matter of whether Ramaphosa should be called before the committee was put to the vote on Wednesday night.
The recording of Ramaphosa addressing the NEC meeting in which he said he would rather “fall on the sword” over his 2017 presidential campaign than have the public know that “some” of the candidates’ campaigns were funded with money from the state, was leaked to the media in December.
ANC MP Mervyn Dirks, a staunch supporter of former president Jacob Zuma, wrote to Scopa asking the committee to investigate the recording, which he said was evidence that Ramaphosa had knowledge of corruption but had failed to report it.
Dirks also asked Mkhwebane to investigate whether the president had violated the ethics code.
On Wednesday, the ANC members on Scopa said the committee should wait for the third and final Zondo commission report on state capture to be released at the end of February. This would prevent “duplication” of work regarding the alleged misuse of State Security Agency (SSA) funds in the run-up to the ANC’s national conference at Nasrec in December 2017, they said.
The ANC contingent said Ramaphosa’s written explanation — which referred them to the Zondo reports and that of the high-level panel he appointed to investigate the SSA in 2018 — was sufficient and that it was not necessary to try to “force” the president to “know what he does not know”.
Opposition MPs argued that Ramaphosa’s explanation that he had no direct information about corruption was not sufficient and needed to be interrogated by Scopa.
Thandiswa Marawu, of the African Transformation Movement, which has links to the ANC’s so-called radical economic transformation (RET) faction, wanted Ramaphosa to appear before the committee.
Economic Freedom Fighters chief whip Veronica Mente agreed: “We want that meeting with him to clarify himself because … he does not talk to the utterances in the recording … so we are not satisfied.”
At a wide-ranging question and answer session with the parliamentary press corps a few hours before the Scopa meeting, Ramaphosa had said he would readily appear before the committee.
“Now that Scopa is going through the response that I gave, if they ask me to come, will I go? Yes, of course. I will not wait to be summoned,” he said. “Scopa is an important body of our parliamentary architecture … I will not see it as an interrogation, I would see it as clarification that they may well want from me, so I have no qualms about that.”
In his letter to Scopa, Ramaphosa referred to testimony before the Zondo commission on the abuse of state funds by the SSA, particularly in the run-up to the Nasrec conference.
Witnesses at the Zondo commission implied that money was funnelled from the SSA, with the help of partisan ministers, to shore up the Zuma camp’s hopes of electing Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the next party leader.
When pressed on the matter, Ramaphosa told journalists that it was possible that Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s final report may yield findings on the subject.
But Mente questioned the president’s insistence that he knows nothing more than what is in the public domain and his approach of deferring to the state capture commission.
She said the committee could not be accused of attacking Ramaphosa, because its role was merely inquisitorial and ultimately it was up to Mkhwebane to determine whether he had committed an ethical breach.
“Ours is that the money that he knows of was filtered out of the state and into the wrong pockets, that must be accounted for… as Scopa we must satisfy ourselves that we get all the information.”
In her investigation, Mkhwebane will rely on the versions of the president’s enemies in the party — as well as his own — when it comes to whether his comments were general or referred to specific knowledge of corruption.
In his letter of complaint to Mkhwebane last month, Dirks asked her to investigate “the possible breach of the ethics code by the president” regarding his statement in the recording that he was aware of the misuse of public funds for party purposes.
“Failing to report such constitutes not only gross misconduct but also violation of the oath of office that the president took whilst also being in conflict with provisions of the prevention and combating of corruption legislation,” Dirks said.
Mkhwebane’s office has written to Ramaphosa and a number of the people at the NEC meeting, asking them for sworn statements about the recording.
Yengeni said he had received a letter from Mkhwebane’s office asking him to submit a sworn affidavit about the recording and would do so. “Of course I will comply. This is an organ of the state which has asked me for a statement under oath and I am legally compelled to comply with its instruction.”
Mkhwebane is also understood to have written to at least one former intelligence minister and several senior officials for their version of events.
Dirks’ Scopa complaint may have some unintended consequences for his faction in the ANC, in that Ramaphosa is off the hook with Scopa and its leaders are now firmly in the frame, facing a grilling over the funnelling of SSA funds into the 2017 presidential campaigns.
These include former state security ministers Ayanda Dlodlo, Bongani Bongo, David Mahlobo and Siyabonga Cwele — all key figures in the RET faction — and former SSA director general Arthur Fraser.
The committee is also likely to call former SSA officials who had testified before Zondo about its role in state capture, including former directors general Loyiso Jafta, Jeff Maqetuka and Moe Shaik.
The ANC Scopa contingent’s actions in backing Ramaphosa is an indication that he has the support of the parliamentary caucus in that they have closed ranks around him, rather than backing the attempt by Dirks to use the committee to pillory the president.
The problem for Ramaphosa is one of plausible denial. He repeatedly professed ignorance on flagrant instances of state capture when grilled by Zondo and his evidence leaders and has not always emerged with his credibility intact.
In April, advocate Anton Myburgh asked how everyone, including Ramaphosa, missed that former Transnet chief executive Brian Molefe frequented the Saxonwold home of the Guptas at the centre of state capture, while overseeing a Transnet contract to buy 1 064 locomotives that contributed to a total of R57-billion flowing to the brothers’ money-laundering interests
“I just want to ask you this, Mr President, for those people how is it possible this happened in the light of day? It was coordinated literally a few kilometres up the road,” Myburgh said.
The president replied: “Chairperson, it is possible and conceivable.”
He also denied the ANC’s deployment committee tried to direct judicial appointments but was contradicted by minutes of the committee’s deliberations, published early this year. These reflect that on 22 March 2019, the deployment committee received a briefing from then justice minister Michael Masutha regarding vacancies at the constitutional court as well as one in the Eastern Cape division and those of the deputy judge president of the supreme court of the appeal, the deputy judge president in the Northern Cape and the head of the labour court.
The committee then recommended several appointments, including that of judges Jody Kollapen and Zukisa Tshiqi for the constitutional court.
Zondo’s line of questioning to Ramaphosa and others has suggested that he will not spare the ruling party in his findings.
“If one looks at the types of issues that the commission is investigating one can see that whatever it is the ANC may say we did, simply didn’t work,” Zondo said in April, before asking Ramaphosa to reflect further on how the party could convincingly break with corruption.
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