- Par Nomsa Maseko
- BBC News, Johannesburg
Photo credit, Getty Images
President Cyril Ramaphosa met potential voters in Cape Town on Saturday.
MPs at a special session of the South African parliament voted to reject the opening of impeachment proceedings once morest President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The president was accused of concealing the theft of a large sum of foreign currency from his farm in 2020, some of which had been hidden in a sofa.
Debate before the vote centered on an independent report concluding that he may have violated the constitution.
Mr Ramaphosa, who is running for re-election as head of the ANC, denies any wrongdoing.
Voting details
The African National Congress had told its MPs to block possible impeachment – although a handful of them broke ranks and sided with opposition parties to accept the report and make way for an impeachment procedure. impeachment.
Now that Mr Ramaphosa has survived the vote, it is believed he is likely to be re-elected at his party’s conference, which begins on Friday. He will then be in pole position to become the ANC presidential candidate in the next election in 2024.
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Supporters of the president gathered outside the venue where ANC leaders were meeting to discuss the future of Cyril Ramaphosa.
The report’s discussion session, which was commissioned from a panel of legal experts, opened with a discussion regarding whether to vote in secret for MPs, which the speaker had rejected.
At the end of the debate, the names of individual MPs were read and each MP verbally recorded their vote. Mr Ramaphosa needed a simple majority in the 400-member parliament to overturn the impeachment measures.
The 70-year-old leader denied any wrongdoing calling the report, which he challenged in the Constitutional Court, “flawed”.
Mr Ramaphosa became president in 2018 pledging to fight corruption. He replaced Jacob Zuma, whose term had been marred by numerous such allegations.
What is this scandal that splashed Ramaphosa?
This scandal erupted in June, when a former South African spy chief, Arthur Fraser, an ally of Zuma, filed a complaint with the police accusing the president of having concealed a theft of 4 million dollars (2 billion 400 million CFA francs) in cash on his Phala Phala farm in 2020.
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Cyril Ramaphosa came to power promising to end the corruption that plagued the country under his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.
Mr Ramaphosa admitted that money, which had been hidden in a sofa, had been stolen, but said it was $580,000 (35,999,1326 F CFA) and not $4 million .
The president said the $580,000 came from the sale of bison, but the panel, led by a former chief justice, said it had “substantial doubt” whether a sale took place.
South Africa has strict rules on holding foreign currency, which state that it must be deposited with an approved dealer such as a bank with 30 days. It appears the president broke those rules, according to the panel’s report.
Also, if the money came from the sale of bison, as he said, that money should have been declared rather than kept in cash.
In his submission to the Constitutional Court, Mr Ramaphosa wants the nation’s top judges to declare the panel’s findings illegal and overturned.
The president argues that the panel went beyond its scope when considering whether it had a case to answer regarding the farm theft.
He also asks the court to declare that any action taken by Parliament following the publication of the report will be declared illegal and invalid.
