Africa-Press – South-Africa. The president is making good ground in the preliminary regional and provincial ANC conferences and seems set for a resounding second term, but instead we are now focused on a supposed crime Cyril Ramaphosa may have committed or not, writes Oscar van Heerden.
High drama unfolded this week when one of our former super-spies took the time to drive to the Rosebank police station and lay a criminal charge against none other but the President of the Republic, Cyril Ramaphosa.
In the charge sheet, Mr Arthur Fraser alleges all sorts of criminal transgressions on the part of Ramaphosa.
It seems that, on or about 20 February 2020, while Ramaphosa was out of the country, robbers broke into his home on his Limpopo farm and stole an undisclosed amount of foreign currency. An amount of $4 million was branded about in Fraser’s affidavit.
The Presidency soon afterwards responded officially and indicated that indeed a crime did occur, and the proceeds of a game auction were stolen. No details of the amount were given.
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Fraser alleges the president never notified the police and hence attempted to cover up a crime and defeat the ends of justice. The Presidency responded to this and indicated that, upon learning of the crime, Ramaphosa notified the head of the Presidential Protection Service (a unit of the SAPS) and requested that they deal with the matter. That is supposedly where the president’s involvement ends.
The Presidency’s statement is carefully crafted to make that point very obvious. Anything afterwards, as Fraser alleges, such as pursuing the robbers, capturing them and subsequently torturing them, plus finally paying them off to guarantee their silence about the matter, are all unbeknown to the president.
Plausible deniability
We must all remember in these matters involving the highest office in the land; there exists a concept frequently used and that is ‘plausible deniability’. This is what I’m referring to when I say consider the president’s carefully crafted statement.
According to Wikipedia, “plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to deny knowledge of or responsibility for any damnable actions committed by members of their organisational hierarchy”. Is this what we are seeing playing out here?
We should really be keeping our eye on the ANC and the various provincial and regional elective conferences in order to gauge the success for Ramaphosa’s second term. Why, you might ask? So that we can have some modicum of stability in the country and the ANC and also, more importantly, we can continue to put an end to state capture, massive corruption and general malfeasance.
You can debate Ramaphosa’s success or failures in clamping down on corruption all you like, but the reality, from where I sit, is that a lot has been done to curb corruption, with many arrests in the last few years – notwithstanding some big fishes, who will stand trial and will eventually go to jail.
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But yet our attention is now elsewhere, a robbery at the presidential farm in the Waterberg area. Classic, wag the dog tactics. In the movie with the same name, the president was alleged to have inappropriately touched a 16-year-old girl just days before a presidential election, where he was running for a second term. The machinery quickly kicks in and all manner of spin is required to deflect the attention away from the girl and all on the elections.
The roles are slightly different in our current soap opera in South Africa, but the principle still holds. The president is making good ground in the preliminary regional and provincial ANC conferences and seems set for a resounding second term. Now we must entertain spin that deflects our attention away from that and onto a supposed crime the president may have committed or not. In other words, the crack team of the president has their work cut out for them. There’s a crack in the dam wall, which must be held for six months, then it is plain sailing. The president will be re-elected at the December elective conference of the ANC.
Onus of proof lies with Fraser
After all, the onus of proof is not, contrary to popular opinion, on the president, but on the accuser -Fraser – to prove all these allegations are true. Yes, the president does owe us, the public, a reasonable explanation as to his version of events, and indeed he has attempted to do so. As the investigations uncover more, his team will be asked to clarify even more over the coming weeks.
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Here’s what I think will pan out (excuse the pun): The Reserve Bank and South African Revenue Service (SARS) are not in the business of imprisoning prospective clients – no, they are in the business of wanting to recoup lost and/or stolen money, and hence they will strike a deal with the president as they’ve done with many other high-profile persons over the years. Naughty boy, don’t do it again and, voila, press statements from both entities stating that they have met with the president, accepted his explanation of events and have come to an agreement with regards to the declaration of the said forex and the payment of the outstanding tax amount on such said amount.
That will then take care of the money aspect of this sordid affair. As for the rest of the allegations of criminality, the president is going to maintain plausible deniability as to anything that occurred after he reported the matter to his Presidential Protection Unit members.
This is ultimately where this case is going to get sticky.
The question is whether this will have any bearing on Ramaphosa’s chances for re-election in the ANC?
I don’t think this will have a negative outcome for Ramaphosa at all.
The faction within the ANC, whose members were told to step aside, will want to make a field day of this, but ultimately it will depend on whether the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) says there is a case to be answered and whether a sitting president is indeed charged.
If ANC types are electing murderers and crooked people, do you really think this will have an impact on the December conference? Don’t be daft.
At the end of Wag the Dog, the president did survive the storm and was re-elected, but will the same hold true for our guy? I wonder.
– Dr Oscar van Heerden is a scholar of International Relations (IR), where he focuses on International Political Economy, with an emphasis on Africa, and SADC in particular. He is currently the Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Fort Hare.
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