Senior officials from South Africa’s ruling ANC party announced on Thursday an urgent meeting to discuss the fate of President Ramaphosa, under pressure with the threat of impeachment proceedings hovering over his head after publication of a damning parliamentary report.
The summit meeting is due to take place on Friday. The head of state must make a statement on Thursday, Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesman told AFP, without giving further details.
Late the day before, the publication of the report of an independent commission appointed by Parliament sparked a storm by concluding that “the president may have committed” violations and misconduct, in the context of a scandal that has plagued him for years. month.
In February 2020, burglars broke into one of his luxurious properties in the northeast of the country. Large sums of cash were found under the cushions of a sofa. A complaint filed in June accuses him of not having reported the incident, neither to the police nor to the tax authorities.
Mr. Ramaphosa denies, but the report submitted to Parliament clearly casts doubt on the explanations given by the president on the presence of more than half a million dollars in his home, hidden in furniture.
The committee’s findings pave the way for a possible vote to impeach the president. Parliament meets Tuesday in extraordinary session to debate, ten days before a crucial deadline for the political future of the Head of State.
The ANC meets in mid-December to designate its next leader. The winner will become head of state at the end of the general elections of 2024, if however the party faced with growing disenchantment wins the ballot.
Resignation
The dismissal process, if it is initiated, however, has little chance of succeeding, the ANC chaired by Mr. Ramaphosa holding a comfortable majority in Parliament. But the president is weakened and in recent hours calls for his resignation have multiplied. Both from the opposition and from members of the ANC, plagued by factional wars.
The opposition First Party (DA) called in a statement for a snap general election, saying the country is facing “seismic change”.
According to a source close to the presidency, Cyril Ramaphosa is currently “studying all the possibilities”.
In the wake of the report’s release, his office immediately called for “careful reading and proper consideration” of the document, “in the interest of the stability of the government and the country”.
But Thursday, cascading cancellations were announced by the government: a press briefing which was to “address current issues of interest to the public and the media”, a question and answer session in the upper house of the Assembly as well as a speech by the vice-president, David Mabuza, who would automatically become acting head of state if Cyril Ramaphosa resigns.
Mr Ramaphosa “categorically denies” having done anything wrong. In an official statement to the commission which conveniently leaked the day the parliamentary report was submitted and of which AFP had a copy, he sets out in detail his version of the facts.
According to him, a Sudanese businessman bought buffaloes in his field two hours drive from Pretoria where he raises game and cattle. “He chose those he liked and paid the amount of 580,000 dollars in cash,” explains the president.
The money was hidden “under the cushions of a sofa in a little used room”, by an employee who considered this hiding place safer than the safe of the property.
Cyril Ramaphosa is also the subject of a criminal investigation by South Africa’s elite police unit, the Hawks.