Johannesburg – The Phala Phala scandal is not going away as political parties tore into the controversial and alleged criminal activities that occurred at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s farm in Limpopo.
The parties did not mince their words as they debated the motion for the establishment of an ad hoc committee to investigate the Phala Phala farm matter.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said that Ramaphosa’s party, the ANC, has already used its majority in Parliament to quash the Section 89 report into the Phala Phala matter because there were truths that were inconvenient for the ANC and inconvenient for Ramaphosa.
It is worth recounting the findings of a retired chief justice, a retired high court judge and a respected advocate.
He said Ramaphosa was facing extremely serious allegations as a head of state, but particularly since he came into office with a promise of ending corruption and abuse of the "nine wasted years" that had preceded him.
The rehearsed refrain parroted by all the ANC speakers on the day that the inconvenient truth of the independent panel report was swept under the carpet was that the president was going "to set aside the report in the Constitutional Court".
Steenhuisen said that acting Public Protector Kholeka Gcaleka has "cleared" Ramaphosa, even though they know that a final report was still awaited.
"But we know the truth. And that truth is that only an ad hoc committee with the powers granted in terms of the rules, as set out in Rule 167, can get to the bottom of how those dirty dollars unlawfully entered the country.
“How those dirty dollars ended up stuffed into a couch in the president’s private home. Why the theft of the dirty dollars was never properly reported, and why the publicly-funded presidential protection unit responsible for protecting Mr. Ramaphosa, the president, was unlawfully used to recover the dirty dollars of Mr Ramaphosa the businessman," he said.
The DA leader said the truth will come out on Phala Phala no matter how hard the ANC tries to hold back the tide.
"And yes, there will come a day of reckoning for each member of this House to yet again account for what you did when your name was called today," he said.
Steenhuisen closed off his address by saying that an innocent man should never be afraid of the truth, and an innocent president should never be afraid of Parliament.
Secretary-general of the GOOD Party Brett Herron said that his party has made does not commence until such time as the president has concluded his right to review the panel’s report.
"When that proposal was rejected, the choice became politically opportunistic and binary, with no room for the interests of justice to be served. We are back here because the DA received some information that Sars (SA Revenue Service) is unable to find any record that the foreign currency that was brought into the country and then allegedly stolen was declared.
"Of course the president was not the one who allegedly brought the foreign exchange into the country," he said.
Bretton said that if the Hawks, the public protector, the South African Reserve Bank or Sars conclude that the president should be charged with a crime or has acted illegally or in violation of the Executive Ethics Act, the matter may be returned to Parliament for a new decision.
"That hasn’t happened yet, and we should allow the authorities to conclude their investigations without fear, favour or this opportunistic political interference," he added.
Meanwhile, today during his press briefing, EFF leader Julius Malema said that the Phala Phala scandal would never end and that they were going to get to the bottom of the scandal.
"Phala Phala will never end; that thing he did to Zuma of taking him to prison has set a precedent, and I think the next president, in office or out of office, will go to prison.
"Let’s say he declared the dollars right, let’s say his business is above board, there is nothing wrong, he did everything right, leave him alone, that’s fine, but how do you answer that question (on foreign) currency ... how do you escape it?" he asked.
Malema said that by law, no one was allowed to trade using foreign currency, and to that the president has agreed.
"He has violated the law, and he’ll never go past that one; he ought to have accepted that he violated the law and resigned, which he did by the way, until Gwede (Mantashe) and them pressed him to stay in office against Pravin (Gordhan), who said brother, you must go," added Malema.
The Star