Exclusive: Second Cabinet minister implicated in Chinese SUV scandal

Additional reporting by Tembile Sgqolana

Daily Maverick can reveal that Minister of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Maropene Ramokgopa now stands accused alongside Minister of Social Development Sisisi Tolashe of having accepted luxury Chinese SUVs allegedly intended as donations for the ANC Women’s League — but instead passed them on to her inner circle.

Tolashe, as Daily Maverick revealed last week, is accused of accepting two BAIC SUVs, allegedly from Chinese officials, without disclosing them as personal gifts.

Ramokgopa allegedly accepted three of the same BAIC SUVs.

She did not disclose receiving any gifts for the 2023, 2024 and 2025 Parliament Register of Members’ Interests.

“The minister has never received any cars from Chinese officials,” Ramokgopa’s spokesperson, Phetole Rampedi, told Daily Maverick last week.

Yet Daily Maverick’s investigation suggests differently.

These new allegations, implicating a Cabinet minister who is not just one of Cyril Ramaphosa’s most trusted allies, but also a member of the ANC’s Top Six, are likely to cause a significant political headache for the President.

Same cars, different minister

While Daily Maverick was investigating Tolashe’s car donations, multiple sources alleged to us that Ramokgopa had been part of the same transaction. We could not publish the Ramokgopa allegations simultaneously with the Tolashe claims as we were still assessing information.

The account given by sources was consistent: five BAIC X55 vehicles were donated by Chinese representatives in late 2023, intended for the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL).

At that point, Tolashe was the president of the ANCWL and Ramokgopa was the national coordinator, positions both women still hold.

Tolashe was additionally, at the time, the deputy minister in the Presidency for women, youth and persons with disabilities, while Ramokgopa was the minister in the Presidency responsible for planning, monitoring and evaluation.

As we reported last week, Tolashe did not deny to Parliament in February that “two luxury 4x4 vehicles” had been received from “officials representing a foreign government”, but instead claimed: “The vehicles were donated to the ANCWL and there was therefore no need to declare or record” the cars.

Both the ANC and the ANCWL have said they have no knowledge or record of this donation.

When ANCWL Treasurer Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae was asked by Daily Maverick this week if the three SUVs allegedly given to Ramokgopa might indeed have reached their intended destination of the ANCWL, Letsoha-Mathae’s response was the same.

“I don’t know of any cars, as indicated earlier,” she replied.

Daily Maverick’s information remains that the donation was made either by or through the embassy of China in Pretoria under the leadership of former Chinese ambassador Chen Xiaodong, who left his post in March 2024.

Numerous phone calls, emails and WhatsApps from Daily Maverick to the Chinese embassy in Pretoria, the Chinese consulate-general in Johannesburg, individual embassy staffers and embassy spokesperson Wang Chuan on this matter went unanswered.

A Dirco official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Daily Maverick this silence was unsurprising.

“They [Chinese officials] will be watching this closely, but they hate to get drawn into the domestic politics of another country,” he said.

Tracking the other SUVs

Tracing the whereabouts of the cars allegedly given to Ramokgopa was considerably more complex than the Tolashe SUVs and took Daily Maverick to a township in the heart of the Eastern Cape.

Our information was that the five donated BAIC SUVs allegedly split between Tolashe and Ramakgopa were all the same model: the BAIC X55, which retails at around R500,000.

Our breakthrough came when we traced a yellow BAIC X55 first registered in the name of Xhantilomzi Ntuli on 30 January 2024.

Ntuli is Ramokgopa’s son.

The timeframe of the registration also fits with our information that the SUVs had been handed over to the two women in late 2024.

Ramokgopa had flatly denied receiving “any cars from Chinese officials” when we originally approached her spokesperson, Rampedi.

We wrote back to Rampedi to tell him that we had “had evidence to prove that a BAIC SUV of the same kind that Minister Tolashe received from Chinese officials was registered in the name of Minister Ramokgopa’s son Xhantilomzi Ntuli” and offered Ramokgopa the opportunity to amend her response.

“The response is still the same. The minister did not receive any cars from a Chinese official,” Rampedi responded.

In a final attempt, Daily Maverick sent Rampedi the relevant BAIC registration records and asked if the minister would be able to provide some evidence to prove the alternative provenance of her son’s vehicle, such as a record of purchase.

We received no further responses.

Luvo Makasi enters the picture — again

That potentially accounted for only one of the three SUVs allegedly given to Ramokgopa, however.

Sources claimed that one of the other vehicles was used by Ramokgopa’s elderly mother in Limpopo with the aid of a driver. Daily Maverick was unable to verify this allegation, or even the whereabouts of Ramokgopa’s mother.

Our tip-offs indicated that the remaining BAIC SUV might be in use by the Makasi family, in a township near Whittlesea in the Eastern Cape. The existence of this vehicle is allegedly widely known by members of the Eastern Cape ANCWL.

The central figure here is Luvo Makasi, a controversial sometime businessman, lawyer, public servant and now the bishop of a small church.

Makasi did not respond to Daily Maverick’s request for comment on Monday.

Makasi first rose to dubious public prominence in 2017 when reports surfaced that, in his capacity as then Water Minister Nomvula Mokonyane’s alleged “Ben 10” — slang for a younger male romantic partner — Makasi had begun exerting unearned authority over Mokonyane’s department.

Makasi was subsequently booted from his post as chairperson of the Central Energy Fund for allegedly attempting to solicit bribes from oil companies on behalf of senior politicians, which he denied.

He next popped up in July 2025 with claims that he was in some way involved in the Sector Education and Training Authority (Seta) panel scandal that saw Minister Nobuhle Nkabane fired, again denied by Makasi.

These days, however, he spends at least part of his time serving as a bishop in his home township of Sada, near Whittlesea, in the Eastern Cape — having replaced his late father in the same role at the helm of the small Bantu Congregational Church of Zion.

It is understood that Makasi is now a close associate of Ramokgopa.

ANC social media shows that in April this year, Ramokgopa led an ANC delegation to spend Easter at Makasi’s little-known church.

Our sources claimed that members of the Makasi family had been seen driving a BAIC SUV.

Daily Maverick’s investigation had determined that no BAIC SUV seemed to be registered as formally belonging to Luvo Makasi — but could Ramokgopa be granting his family prolonged access to a car allegedly intended for the ANCWL?

We went hunting for the last BAIC.

Eastern Cape ahoy

Daily Maverick visited both Makasi’s church and home in Sada over the weekend. The BAIC X55 was nowhere to be seen. However, residents who were asked about the car confirmed its existence immediately, saying that the SUV was well known in the area and was assumed to belong to the Makasi family.

The car was always destined to stand out, because in this small, underprivileged, semi-rural township, the sight of any new SUV is highly uncommon — let alone a red one.

Resident Akhona Khondlo confirmed that a red BAIC vehicle had often been parked at Makasi’s home, but was not permanently kept there.

One neighbour told Daily Maverick in isiXhosa: “When [Luvo Makasi] came to Sada, he was driving Beijing [the X55].”

Another said that he had assumed the SUV belonged to Makasi’s mother, Nomvula, as she appeared to also have had use of it.

What were the chances that two members of Ramokgopa’s inner circle — son Ntuli and close associate Makasi — would end up coincidentally driving the same model of car that Tolashe had apparently given to her own two children in the same period?

During January 2024, when Ntuli’s SUV was first registered in his name, figures show that BAIC sold just 295 vehicles across all models in South Africa.

Ramokgopa’s BAIC connection

BAIC South Africa denied all knowledge of the alleged donation of SUVs to the ANCWL last week, and on Monday did not respond to Daily Maverick’s further questions.

Ramokgopa’s official Facebook profile, however, includes a photograph of the minister being handed a BAIC-branded box by CEO Yang Yixin on 24 May 2025.

There is no suggestion that this interaction was linked to the donation of the five ANCWL SUVs, as it took place around 18 months after the fact.

The photograph was taken at what the government’s communications unit termed an “oversight visit” by Ramokgopa to the BAIC car manufacturing plant in Gqeberha in May 2025 in her capacity as minister, aimed at exploring “opportunities for deeper collaboration between the government and BAIC South Africa to accelerate inclusive development through coordinated reforms and strategic partnerships”.

South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation owns a 35% stake in the R11-billion BAIC manufacturing plant, with the rest owned by BAIC — whose primary owner is the Beijing municipal government.

City Press reported in August 2024 that the Gqeberha plant, opened to much fanfare in 2018, had built just 300 cars over six years at that point — a situation described by motoring analysts as a “dismal return on investment”.

The political headache brewing

The alleged involvement of Ramokgopa in the SUV scandal is unexpected and will disappoint many if proved accurate.

The 46-year-old Ramokgopa is widely viewed as one of the most promising and energetic young ANC ministers and one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s closest allies. Until now, she has avoided any suggestion of corrupt or untoward conduct.

The esteem in which she is held by Ramaphosa and ANC leadership is evidenced by the three significant hats she wears simultaneously: as a minister, as the ANC’s second deputy secretary-general, and as the ANCWL national coordinator, which was a role she was brought into in 2022 because she was seen as the right person to galvanise the moribund ANCWL.

A further uncomfortable aspect for Ramaphosa will be the fact that both Ramokgopa and Tolashe held positions, as minister and deputy minister, within the Presidency at the time of the alleged donations.

Neither the Presidency nor ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula responded to Daily Maverick’s questions about Ramokgopa on Monday. DM