The Scandal Embroiling South Africa’s President

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has been caught up in a scandal almost five years after he took office with a pledge to fight corruption. The bizarre case revolves around the theft of cash that robbers found stuffed into a sofa at his game farm. A panel headed by the nation’s former chief justice said there may be grounds for impeaching the 70-year-old leader because of the way he handled the matter. The panel’s findings were rejected by parliament and Ramaphosa comfortably won a second term as head of the governing party. But the drama has blotted his distinguished political career and compounded the woes of a country contending with unprecedented power outages, rampant unemployment and surging living costs.

The furor erupted in June, when former chief spy Arthur Fraser laid criminal charges against Ramaphosa, accusing the president of concealing the theft of more than $4 million from the farm in the northern Limpopo province in February 2020. The suspected thieves were also illegally detained and interrogated by presidential security staff, according to the charge sheet. Fraser is a close ally of Jacob Zuma, Ramaphosa’s predecessor and political nemesis, and the source and accuracy of his information remain unclear. The police, the graft ombudsman, tax authorities and the central bank all instituted investigations. Parliament appointed the three-member advisory panel headed by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo to determine if lawmakers should consider Ramaphosa’s dismissal.