FILE PHOTO: President Cyril Ramaphosa at the Presidency Budget Vote Debate on June 10, 2022 in Cape Town, South Africa. The President responded to a debate on his budget vote that he tabled on June 09th. PICTURE: Gallo Images/Brenton Geach
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0 The Phala Phala Scandal and the ANC’s Betrayal of the Voter
There is something deeply revealing about a president who, when confronted with a damning independent panel report that finds prima facie evidence of constitutional violations, retreats into silence and deliberation. While President Cyril Ramaphosa weighs whether to challenge the findings of the Section 89 Independent Panel — the report that recommended Parliament proceed with impeachment proceedings over the Phala Phala farm scandal — millions of South Africans are left watching a man place his political survival above the dignity of the office he swore to protect.
The question before the nation is no longer simply whether Ramaphosa violated the Constitution. The question is: what does it say about the ANC, and what must voters do about it?
The Phala Phala Affair: A Scandal of Concealment
The facts, as they stand, are stark. In February 2020, a reported R10 million — some accounts suggest far more — was allegedly hidden in furniture at Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala game farm in Limpopo. The money was stolen in a burglary. No police report was filed immediately. No disclosure was made to the South African Reserve Bank, as required by law. Instead, a private intelligence operation was reportedly launched to recover the cash and silence those involved.
The Independent Panel, led by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, found sufficient evidence to conclude that Ramaphosa may have violated sections of the Constitution relating to his oath of office, his duty to uphold and defend the Constitution, and his obligation to act in the best interests of the Republic. These are not trivial procedural infractions. These go to the heart of what it means to hold the highest office in the land.
And yet, rather than stepping aside with the grace of a leader who respects institutions, Ramaphosa has reportedly been weighing whether to seek judicial review of the panel’s report — a legal manoeuvre that critics have rightly described as yet another attempt by the powerful to use the courts not as a last resort of justice, but as a first tool of delay.
The ANC First, South Africa Second
This moment of presidential indecision is not an aberration. It is the natural expression of an organisation that has, for decades, placed the survival of the ANC above the welfare of the country it claims to serve.
The ANC’s internal logic has always been the same: protect the party, protect the leader, manage the crisis, and trust that loyalty will be rewarded at the ballot box. It has worked before. But South Africa is a different country today — poorer, angrier, and far less forgiving of leaders who treat public office as personal property.
Load shedding has ravaged what remains of the economy. Unemployment sits at catastrophic levels, particularly among the youth. Public healthcare is in collapse. Basic service delivery — water, sanitation, housing — remains a broken promise in community after community. The state, under ANC stewardship, has been systematically hollowed out by corruption so brazen that a sitting president can allegedly hide millions of foreign currency on a private farm and still command the loyalty of his party’s parliamentary caucus.
This is an organisation that has long ceased to serve the people it claims to represent. The Phala Phala scandal is not a crisis for the ANC. It is merely the most recent and most visible symptom of a party in deep moral decay.
The ATM and EFF Were Right to Stand Firm
Credit must be given where it is due. The African Transformation Movement and the Economic Freedom Fighters stood on the right side of this constitutional moment. Both parties supported the Section 89 motion, recognising that the issue was never partisan — it was about whether South Africa is a country governed by law or by the ruling party’s tolerance for its own leader’s misconduct.
The EFF has long argued that the ANC’s hold on power is incompatible with accountable governance. The Phala Phala saga has done more to validate that position than any opposition campaign could. The ATM, a party with only two parliamentary seats and a proud tradition of principled opposition, also understood what was at stake: not the fate of one man, but the integrity of the constitutional order.
Their stand is a reminder that multiparty democracy is not merely a procedural formality. It is the mechanism through which citizens hold power accountable. When the ruling party refuses to do so from within, other parties must. And they did.
What Voters Must Remember Come Election Time
South Africa’s local government elections will again test the patience and memory of its citizens. And here lies the critical message:
The ANC does not serve you. It serves itself.
Every time a municipality collapses under ANC mismanagement, every time a tender is looted while schools crumble, every time a president ponders judicial manoeuvres to avoid accountability — that is the ANC in its truest form. Not the liberation movement of memory and mythology, but the governing machine of entitlement and impunity.
Ramaphosa came to power on a platform of renewal. He spoke of a new dawn. That dawn has not come. Instead, South Africans have been given rolling blackouts, a weakened currency, collapsed infrastructure, and a president whose relationship with R10 million in concealed foreign currency requires a constitutional panel to investigate.
Voting for the ANC — in any ward, in any municipality, in any province — is a vote to continue this. It is a vote that says: the corruption is acceptable, the dysfunction is tolerable, the broken promises are forgiven. It is a vote that says: we do not expect better.
South Africa deserves better. And the only language that political parties — any political party — truly understand is the language of votes lost.
The Moment to Punish Complacency is Now
Opposition parties, the ATM and EFF among them, are not without their own imperfections. No party is. But at this particular inflection point in South African history, the imperative is clear: the ANC must be punished at the polls, harshly and without sentimentality, until it learns that power is not a birthright but a trust — one that can be revoked.
Local government is where ordinary people feel the consequences of governance most acutely. It is where water either flows or it doesn’t. Where refuse is collected or it piles up. Where street lights work or crime flourishes in the dark. These are not abstract policy debates. These are the daily realities of millions of South Africans, and the ANC has failed them at every turn.
Ramaphosa may yet succeed in delaying his own accountability through the courts. The ANC may yet absorb this scandal as it has absorbed so many others. But voters hold a power that no judicial review can touch. They hold the power to change the outcome — ward by ward, municipality by municipality — until the party that has governed this country into dysfunction understands that elections have consequences.
As the president ponders his next move. It is time for the voter to make theirs.
Sibusiso Samantungwa is an ANC member at Mzala Nxumalo Region in KwaZulu-Natal.
The views expressed in this opinion piece reflect a perspective on South African democratic accountability and electoral politics. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Republic Mail and its associates.
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