By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has denied there were dirty dollars on his Phala Phala farm, and urged parliamentarians to wait for investigations to be concluded by various state agencies.
Ramaphosa was back in Parliament on Thursday, responding to questions before the National Council of Provinces (NCOP).
He took on members about issues including load shedding and trimming the size of his Cabinet.
South Africa’s greylisting by the by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and its economic implications also came to the fore.
The Democratic Alliance’s Cathlene Labuschagne questioned how Ramaphosa could address the concerns raised by the FATF when he himself was implicated in alleged exchange control violations.
“At one point you said that this greylisting is an opportunity for us to get our house in order. But President you are part of the problem because you accepted dirty dollars that got into this country illegally,” she said.
But Ramaphosa maintained he did nothing wrong.
“I will continue to say there are no dirty dollars and I have said in various statements that this has been a result of a transaction as a farmer that I am, who has sold game and that process is being thoroughly looked at.”
Also on Thursday, ex-President Thabo Mbeki’s letter emerged, saying if the ANC believed its president did not do anything wrong, why would the governing party use its numbers in the House to defeat probes by Parliament?
“I would presume that as ANC members we would assume that our president would not do and has not done anything which Parliament should not investigate in the course of the discharge of its constitutional duties, “wrote ex-president Mbeki in the letter, dated 29 March.
The puzzle is — Why then did we stop an [ad hoc committee] being formed we would be convinced would exactly establish that our president has not done anything wrong?
Or are we saying that we suspect or know that he has done something wrong and therefore decided that we must protect our president at all costs by ensuring no [ad hoc committee] is formed?”
“If that is the case, what message are we communicating to the masses of our people about the values and integrity of the ANC?”
Mbeki’s leaked letter stands in contrast to the ANC MPs’ line during the 22 March vote against a Phala Phala ad hoc committee largely on the back of the ongoing criminal Hawks investigation and the SA Reserve Bank probe into exchange control violations.
It was the second DA motion for a special parliamentary Phala Phala probe motivated on the back of new developments. The first was voted down in late 2022 after some pushback over parliamentary rules.
Then, on 13 December 2022, the ANC used its numbers in the House to vote against establishing a presidential impeachment inquiry in line with the recommendation of the Section 89 independent panel that Ramaphosa had a case to answer.