On a farm in Limpopo, cash was hidden in a sofa. Six years later, the question of what that means for a sitting president is sitting with three judges in Cape Town, and the country is waiting for an answer that will not come this week.
Judgment has been reserved in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s bid to overturn the Section 89 independent panel report on the Phala Phala scandal. The Western Cape High Court heard final arguments on Friday, the third and final day of the case, before Judge President Nolwazi Mabindla-Boqwana, Judge Mark Sher and Jodge Ncumisa Mayosi. Nine respondents are cited, among them retired chief justice Sandile Ngcobo, who chaired the panel.
The panel found in November 2022 that Ramaphosa had a case to answer on four proposed impeachment charges arising from the theft of about US$580,000 from his Phala Phala game farm on 9 February 2020. If the report stands, the National Assembly can continue with the impeachment inquiry, raising the prospect of his removal from office. If it falls, the matter returns to Parliament to decide whether a new panel should be appointed.
Ramaphosa’s lawyer, advocate Wim Trengove SC, argued that the panel applied the wrong legal test. It was required to assess whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant a public inquiry, he said, but instead repeatedly found only a prima facie case. “If you ask the wrong question, it doesn’t matter what your answer is,” he told the court. He also argued that the panel failed to consider whether Ramaphosa acted intentionally or in bad faith, exceeded the scope of the charges, and relied on untested evidence, including allegations from former State Security Agency head Arthur Fraser.
The opposition was blunt. Advocate Dali Mpofu SC, for the MK Party, said the review was the opening move in an attempt to delay the impeachment process indefinitely. The Constitutional Court had foreseen that the report would be tied up in litigation, which is why it ordered in May that the report go directly to Parliament’s impeachment committee. Advocate Anton Katz SC, for the ATM, argued the application was premature. Judge Sher pressed on the evidence linking Ramaphosa to the concealment of the cash in the couch. Judge President Mabindla-Boqwana pressed Mpofu on the panel’s own admission that it had not been given all the available information and that people with first-hand knowledge had not come forward.
The May Constitutional Court judgment set aside the National Assembly’s December 2022 vote against acting on the panel report, reviving a case that had been dead for more than three years. In July, the Western Cape High Court granted Ramaphosa an interim interdict of limited duration, stopping Parliament’s impeachment committee from proceeding with public hearings while the review was pending. The Constitutional Court refused the ATM’s direct bid to challenge that interdict in August. The impeachment committee has since dropped its recommendation of advocate Thandazani Madonsela SC as evidence leader after Ramaphosa objected, and is searching for a new name.
For ordinary South Africans the legal machinery can feel distant. The dollars in the sofa, the panel in Cape Town, the committee in Parliament — each step is a process, not a verdict. But the question underneath is simple and old: whether a president can be held to the same standard of accountability as anyone else, and whether the process that tests that question is itself lawful. The judges have said they will think carefully and deliver as soon as possible. The nation is waiting.
