Ramaphosa’s political and business backers dig in as Phala Phala scandal deepens

Sometimes I think about the buffalo.

Do they pine for the familiarity of home, for the Phala Phala farm where they were reared among other luxury cattle species? Do they dream of the rotund, avuncular man in khaki who served for a time as their master, and then sold them for cold hard cash and shipped them off to a distant charnel house?

I mean, he did, didn’t he?

Didn’t he?

For clarity’s sake, we are referring here to the (imaginary) buffalo President Cyril Ramaphosa claims to have sold to a Sudanese businessman in 2020 for the sum of $580,000 in cash, which was subsequently stolen from his furniture following an inside job at his Phala Phala game ranch.

If I have the story straight, the thieves then absconded to Namibia with Ramaphosa’s security detail hot on their heels. The cops were not informed, and an invoice was only issued after the fact. When the National Assembly under an ANC majority was asked to consider whether or not the president should face impeachment for this nonsense, the can was kicked gently down the road.

Except the can wasn’t a can – it was a live grenade. Various opposition parties, led by renaissance-man Julius Malema, took the National Assembly decision to the Constitutional Court, which has determined that yes, the reasoning was flawed, and the matter must be returned to members of Parliament for an impeachment hearing.

This time, the ANC does not hold a majority. This time, Ramaphosa may be forced to answer some very uncomfortable questions.

After the oily gadfly Arthur Fraser first brought this issue to the attention of the authorities back in 2022, and a Section 89 panel found there was a prima facie case against the president, Ramaphosa was reportedly determined to resign. He was convinced otherwise by his friends and backers – Big Time Business Volk who didn’t buy him the presidency in order for him to turn turtle at the first sign of trouble.

I can no more anthropomorphise my way into the mind of buffalo than I can intuit what happens in the heads of the men in nice suits who are, once again, urging Ramaphosa to remain in office. I’m speaking here about the White Monopoly Capital (WMC) brigade (not all of whom are physically white, mind you), the business backline who a) helped Ramaphosa win the ANC presidency, and b) will do anything to make sure he keeps it, at least until a suitable succession plan is in place.

They do not want Deputy President Paul Mashatile to become president. It would be very bad for business.

Business, man!

Let’s step back for a quick moment, and try to recall how all of this began in the first place. We must start by reminding ourselves that Ramaphosa is a billionaire. After leaving politics in the 1990s, he was enriched by the magic wand of BEE, which installed him as part-owner of many powerful corporations – corporations, we should add, that he made even more powerful because he is ­savvy and genial and well connected.

Example: during the war between the platinum mining house Lonmin and its labour force, Ramaphosa, a former unionist, served on the Lonmin board and urged the police to intervene forcefully on the company’s behalf. Not coincidentally, in August 2012, the Marikana massacre left more than 34 striking mineworkers dead, many shot in the back by police as they fled the killing fields. Just four months later, Ramaphosa be­came deputy president of the ANC, serving then president Jacob Zuma’s kleptocracy faithfully until it was time for him to make a play for the top job in 2017.

His so-called CR17 campaign was un­­ambiguous: he would clean up the corruption he helped cause and fight for the formal economy, which would result in an explosion of so many different GDPs you wouldn’t believe it. A rising tide, we were told, would lift all superyachts.

Shortly before the ANC’s national conference, scheduled for December 2017, Ramaphosa made an appearance in Orlando, Soweto – yes, Soweto – with the full WMC rear guard in tow. Players on the pitch included Investec’s Stephen Koseff, Goldman Sachs’ Colin Coleman and FirstRand’s Johan Burger, to name a few. Ramaphosa ensured all of us present that his clean-up campaign would result in a New Dawn.

At least a billion rand was pumped into the ANC leadership contest, which pitted Ramaphosa’s reformers against the radical economic transformers associated with the Zuma faction. WMC against RET: an epic battle of the wallets. That it worked out in favour of the former came down as much to luck as it did to money.

But no one seemed to stop and consider what would happen to the ANC after the dust settled. Unable to pay salaries and administratively in a shambles, by 2019 the ANC was a corpse behind the joystick of a Boeing 747, screaming downwards into Sandton’s glorious towers. If there were a single functioning brain among Ramaphosa’s underwriters, they would have realised that their victory threatened to become pyrrhic if they didn’t immediately hose cash into the ANC. (This assessment should not be confused with political advice.)

But our unsullied and pure-hearted CEOs did not want to touch one of the most corrupt organisations in human history – which, to be fair, was entirely understandable. Except that the party would need to get money from somewhere. And the responsibility for raising it now fell to Ramaphosa.

All of which brings us back to the buffalo. The story of their cash sale to the Sudanese businessman is, to put it mildly, laughable. Ramaphosa doesn’t need the money, and although one can always do with more, he surely can’t be foolish enough to screw the South African Revenue Service out of a few grand for his personal enrichment. No, this was probably a party fundraising initiative gone wrong. So the question is: From whom or where did the money magically emanate?

Avoiding such questions becomes an existential task for Ramaphosa, who has no stomach for conflict, and whose an­­swers may bear geo­political implications, should the money have come from not-so-strait (wink, wink) players abroad.

Where the buffalo don’t roam

The situation is so absurd that it hurts one’s head to write about it. Part of the pain derives from the big business lobby, usually so vocal about the evils of dodging due process, having not insisted that Ramaphosa step down.

It’s also worth noting that this cohort is hardly consistent in its convictions. WMC luminaries were very quiet about Zuma’s dark work, right up until the moment he fired his finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, in December 2015. Then they grew fearful, which compelled them to make some small noises, and finally they began funding marches under the Save SA banner.

Not a single tough-guy CEO had the balls to do a TikTok video or write a verified Twitter thread. Rob Hersov was the quietest nepo baby in the country. The job was left to opposition parties, civil society and the media.

The Phala Phala matter demands answers. But the ring of protection that surrounds the president is more formidable than just his faction in the ANC. The Government of National Unity includes the DA, the PA and other players that may once have served as adversaries, but now enjoy Cabinet positions.

No one who matters is outright saying anything. But in saying nothing, they’re saying everything: our guy must stay.

The opposition now comes from Malema, who himself is appealing a conviction and jail sentence for firing an AK-47 at the clouds.

And while some may assume, Malema’s party is flatlining, performance in recent by-elections shows that its support is steady. A politically savvy Malema knows that exploiting the Phala Phala issue could be the thread needed to stitch an EFF/ANC coalition together.

This is an outcome that terrifies the formal business sector, and justifiably so. Ramaphosa has screwed up big time, and the more he and his allies dodge the issue, the more trouble they court. They can keep kicking the can, but it’s still not a can.

Ramaphosa has shed all credibility until he offers a plausible explanation for what happened on his farm.

The buffalo have gone nowhere. But like the up­­holstery on the couches in which the president hides his party’s money, eventually everyone has to come clean. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.