The Section 89 report decoded: the charges against Ramaphosa that could end his presidency

This article was first published by The Common Sense.Key topics:Section 89 report alleges constitutional violations by RamaphosaPhala Phala cash theft raises corruption and legal concernsImpeachment process and court rulings may impact presidency.From The Common Sense.The president of South Africa was robbed. He did not call the police. He called his bodyguard..That sentence, which the president himself does not dispute, is the spine of the most consequential report into Cyril Ramaphosa's conduct in office. The Section 89 independent panel, chaired by retired Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, one of the most respected jurists South Africa has produced, found in November 2022 that the president had a prima facie case to answer on four charges, supported by eleven grounds, and is unequivocal in its conclusion: The president, in its words, has "a case to answer".The intention of this special report is to spell out the story the Section 89 report tells of what happened at Phala Phala, based on the evidence available to it, and how it reached its conclusion that there is a prima facie case for the President to answer to. It is a complicated story to follow, and so to make it as clear as possible, this special report lays out the decisions the President took that the panel deemed unlawful, and the proposed charges the Section 89 report outlines, resulting from these decisions, that would form the basis of the impeachment process..Section 1.The President's First Decision: Running a Business in Office.According to the Constitution, members of the Cabinet may not take on any paid work outside the responsibilities of their public office. The first unlawful decision the President took was to remain involved in his farming business. At face value it seems innocent enough, the buying and selling of animals. But the larger question is this: why did he divest from every one of his other business interests, except this one?Cyril Ramaphosa is, by his own description, a farmer. He buys and sells cattle and game from Phala Phala Wildlife, a Limpopo farm near Bela-Bela operated by Ntaba Nyoni Estates, a close corporation of which he is the sole member. He told delegates at an African National Congress (ANC) conference in Limpopo in 2022: "I'm a farmer, I am in the cattle business and the game business. I buy and I sell animals."The panel found that this is exactly what the Constitution forbids. Below is the Section 89 report's first proposed charge..Charge 1: Serious Violation of the Constitution Violation of section 96 (2)(a), read with section 83 (b) of the Constitution.This means the President is guilty of a serious violation of section 96(2)(a) of the Constitution, which provides that members of the Cabinet and Deputy Ministers may not undertake any other paid work. It is also a violation of section 83(b), which obliges the President to "uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic."The Section 89 report uses the following three grounds to support the charge:The president admitted, in his own words at the Limpopo ANC conference in 2022, that he is actively in the cattle and game business and personally buys and sells animals;This contradicts his 2014 undertaking, on assuming office as deputy president, that all his business interests would be managed by a blind trust; andBy violating section 96(2)(a), he failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as required by section 83(b)..The president's defence, according to the Section 89 report, is that the farm runs at a loss, that he draws no salary from it, and that he is more like a shareholder than an operator. The panel was not persuaded. Paid work, it held, means work for financial gain or reward, whether through employment or business ownership..Section 2.The President's Second Decision: The Cash in the Sofa.According to the president, on Christmas Day 2019 a Sudanese businessman named Mustafa Mohamed Ibrahim Hazim arrived at Phala Phala without an appointment, carrying more than half a million US dollars in cash. He was shown buffaloes by Sylvester Ndlovu, the lodge manager. He selected twenty animals to purchase. He paid $580 000, around R8.7 million at the time, in cash. He left.What happened to the money next, according the President's account, is stated in the Section 89 report as follows:"Mr Ndlovu was due to go home on leave on 30 December 2019. He felt uncomfortable about leaving the money in the safe at the Bayeto Centre because he was concerned that several staff members had access to the safe. He decided that the safest place to store the money was inside my private residence on the farm. He stored the money below cushions of a sofa in a spare bedroom that is hardly ever used, inside my private residence, because he thought it was the safest place, as he believed nobody would break into the president's house."On 9 February 2020, intruders broke into the president's private residence and stole the cash from the couch.The panel found multiple problems with the President's account..The Section 89 report suggests strongly that the Reserve Bank had no record of the foreign currency: When the scandal broke, the South African Reserve Bank's financial surveillance department, which administers exchange control, opened an investigation. It had to write to the president's legal team asking where the foreign currency came from and what transaction it related to. The implication is obvious: if the cash had been lawfully declared, the Reserve Bank would already have the record.The transaction has no proper paperwork: The only document to note the receipt of the transaction is a handwritten note. No VAT invoice was produced, despite the president's spokesman claiming the farm issues them.The buffaloes never left: Two and a half years after the alleged sale, the animals remained on the farm. The explanations offered were that export costs were too high and that the burglary itself disrupted the shipment. Neither holds up. A buyer who pays $580 000 in cash can presumably afford shipping.The money was not "stored". It was concealed: The president's account places the cash beneath cushions. The panel found, on probability, that it was hidden inside the sofa frame. To get money inside the frame, you have to flip the sofa, open the underside fabric, place the cash inside, and resecure the cover. That is not how anyone treats cash they intend to bank on Monday.Who is the buyer, Mr Hazim?: The question of who this Sudanese businessman is is a concerning one. How was he able to bring such a large amount of cash into the country undetected? Why process the buffalo sale in cash, and not via bank transfer, and on Christmas Day, no less. And then perhaps most concerningly, what is the original source of this money?Ndlovu would not have made this decision alone: As the report puts it: "On a probability, we do not think that Mr Ndlovu, a lodge manager, would have defied the president's instruction to keep the money on the farm and in the safe, as is normal business practice, and decide on his own to store the money inside the president's private residence and in the sofa without the knowledge of the president. Mr Ndlovu was too junior to have made such a decision and carried it out without the president's permission. In all probability, the money was stored in the sofa with the full knowledge and approval of the president."Three witnesses could clear it all up: Ndlovu, who allegedly took the money. Hendrik von Wielligh, the general manager who was meant to process and bank it but was on leave at the time of the sale, and Hazim, who allegedly paid it. Not one of them has provided a statement. The report notes that Von Wielligh was back at the farm by 10 February 2020, the day after the burglary, and reported the break-in to the president. He said nothing about a sale or money. "There is nothing to suggest that Mr von Wielligh had been told about the sale and the money as of 10 February 2020," the report concludes. "This raises substantial doubt about the existence of the alleged sale.".Fraser's Competing Version.None of this would be public if not for Arthur Fraser, the former Director-General of the State Security Agency and later National Commissioner of Correctional Services, who laid criminal charges against the president on 1 June 2022. Fraser is not a neutral figure. He is broadly thought of as a Zuma-era loyalist with a long-running feud against Ramaphosa and his allies, and the panel was careful with his evidence. But careful is not the same as dismissive:"While Mr Fraser's statements provide information that may help to verify the truthfulness or otherwise of his allegations, the present process does not permit the panel to investigate these matters. This of course does not mean that we must blindly accept the information contained in Mr Fraser's statements in the hope that it may, and probably will, be verified. Nor does it mean these allegations must be ignored. Fairness dictates otherwise."Fraser's version of where the cash came from is entirely different from the president's. According to the Section 89 report, he alleged that the money was illicit foreign currency, illegally brought into South Africa by the president's close adviser Bejani Chauke on trips to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, and Equatorial Guinea, undertaken on behalf of the president. He alleged the cash was first concealed in a sofa at Chauke's Hyde Park residence, then transported to Phala Phala, also concealed in a sofa, with the assistance of Major-General Wally Rhoode, the head of the Presidential Protection Unit (PPU), and with the president's full knowledge. He put the amount stolen at between $4 million and $8 million. He alleged that suspects were illegally interrogated during the subsequent investigation and that some were paid R150 000 each to buy their silence.The panel could not verify Fraser's account. But it found enough holes in the president's own version that Fraser's alternative could not simply be waved away.It is important to grasp the above information about how the funds came to be on the farm, including Fraser's account, because the President has not denied that the cash existed or that it was in the sofa. That admission, as well as the questionable nature of the sale itself, is what makes the next two proposed charges possible. They follow from the decisions the President took once he discovered he had been robbed of that money..Section 3.The President's Third Decision: Who to Call When Robbed.The Section 89 report explains how the president was attending an African Union summit in Addis Ababa when Phala Phala staff informed him of the burglary. He did not contact the South African Police Service. He did not contact the Hawks, the unit the law specifically requires for thefts of this scale. He contacted Rhoode and instructed him to investigate.Asked in parliament why he had not gone to the police, the president answered that telling Rhoode was in fact telling a police official. The panel rejected this. Rhoode is a police officer, but he runs the unit that protects the president. He does not investigate crimes. The Hawks do.Below is the Section 89 report's second proposed charge, supported by three grounds, spelling out how the president violated the law by not appropriately reporting the money.Charge 2: Serious Violation of the Law Section 34(1) of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, 2004, read with the South African Police Service Amendment Act, 2012Section 34(1) broadly states that any person who holds a position of authority, and who knows or ought reasonably to have known or suspected that another person has committed theft, fraud, or extortion involving R100,000 or more, must report the offence to the Hawks. The amount stolen at Phala Phala reportedly exceeded R8 million.Below are the three supporting counts which the report outlines to support the second charge.The president failed to report the theft on his farm to any police official as required by the Act;Reporting the matter to Rhoode of the PPU does not satisfy the law, which requires reporting to the Hawks; andThe fact that no case number was ever issued is proof that the reporting was irregular and unlawful..The president's decision to use Rhoode created an additional legal problem. The PPU is a state security resource paid for by taxpayers. Its mandate is to keep the president physically safe. It is not equipped or authorised to investigate theft from his private business. Which brings us to the third charge..Charge 3: Serious Misconduct Section 96(2)(b), read with section 83(b)Section 96(2)(b) states that members of the Cabinet may not act in any way that is inconsistent with their office, or expose themselves to any situation involving the risk of a conflict between their official responsibilities and private interests. This charge focuses on the second of those prohibitions: that the President, by directing Rhoode to investigate the theft from his private farm, used state resources to handle a private matter and exposed himself to a conflict between his official responsibilities and his private interests.Section 83(b), as seen in charge one, obliges the President to "uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic."Below are the three supporting counts which the Section 89 report outlines to support the third charge.Rhoode, a member of the PPU, was directed to deal with security issues on the president's private farm, in violation of section 96(2)(b);The president's safety was not threatened by the burglary, so Rhoode had no business investigating anything at Phala Phala; andBy violating section 96(2)(b), he failed to uphold, defend, and respect the Constitution as required by section 83(b)..Section 4.The President's Fourth Decision: A Parallel Investigation.What followed after the president requested Rhoode to look into the matter was, as outlined in the Section 89 report, not an investigation in any conventional sense. He assembled a team that, among others, included a sergeant from the PPU and a former police officer working as a social worker. They operated without a case number and without a docket.They interrogated farm workers at Phala Phala. They followed leads to Cape Town where, according to Fraser, they tricked local detectives into helping them by pretending the suspects were drug traffickers. Fraser submitted photographs of four men handcuffed on the floor of a house in Milnerton to the panel.The Section 89 report outlines how an audio recording captured one of the suspects describing the cash hidden in a leather sofa and admitting to taking around $800 000, substantially more than the president had acknowledged. The same suspect alleged they did not take everything that was in the couch.Whichever figure is correct, it would seem that more than $580 000 was in that sofa. Where did the additional money come from? The panel could not answer this. But the inconsistency adds to the doubt about the president's account of how much was actually in the couch.According to the Section 89 report, the trail led Rhoode across the border, where the alleged mastermind of the theft, Imanuwela David, had fled to Namibia.According to Fraser's account as outlined in the Section 89 report, Ramaphosa discreetly requested Namibian President Hage Geingob's assistance in apprehending David. The Namibian Presidency later issued a statement denying any wrongdoing by Geingob, but as the panel noted, the statement "does not deny that President Ramaphosa sought assistance in apprehending the concerned suspect. Nor does it deny that the request was acceded to."Drawing on a confidential Namibian Police Crime Intelligence Report submitted to the panel by Fraser, the Section 89 report records how, on 19 June 2020, South African officials met the Namibian Special Branch Commissioner in "no man's land" at the Ariamsvlei border post. The South African side handed over names and photographs of David's accomplices and asked the Namibians to handle the matter "with discretion." They also confirmed to their Namibian counterparts that no case had been registered in South Africa.Fraser's statement alleges that Rhoode was “travelling to Namibia where the suspect was interviewed, and stolen money seized".The panel was unequivocal about who was at that meeting:"We are satisfied, as a matter of probability, that the South African authorities that met the Namibian police authorities at the 'no man's land' was the team that was investigating the burglary and theft at Phala Phala. On the information presented to us this was General Rhoode's team. They went to Namibia as part of their investigation of the crime committed at Phala Phala."Six days later after the first meeting between Rhoode and Namibian officials, Rhoode and Bejani Chauke crossed into Namibia. They were collected from no man's land by a Namibian police helicopter and flown to Windhoek, where Chauke met President Geingob privately.Below is the Section 89 report's fourth proposed charge, supported by two grounds. It alleges serious misconduct that speaks directly to the President's integrity in office.Charge 4: Serious Misconduct Section 96(2)(b), read with section 83(b)Section 96(2)(b) states that members of the Cabinet may not act in any way that is inconsistent with their office, or expose themselves to any situation involving the risk of a conflict between their official responsibilities and private interests. This charge focuses on the first of those prohibitions: that the President, in directing Rhoode to investigate the theft rather than reporting it to the Hawks, gave an unlawful instruction and acted in a manner inconsistent with the office of President.Section 83(b), as seen in charge one, obliges the President to "uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic.Below are the two supporting counts which the Section 89 report outlines to support the fourth charge.The president gave an unlawful instruction to Rhoode to investigate the burglary at his private farm. Instructing him to investigate, rather than reporting the matter in terms of the law, shows dishonesty and constitutes misconduct and unlawfulness; andBy violating section 96(2)(b), he failed to uphold, defend, and respect the Constitution as required by section 83(b)..The Section 89 report neatly summarises: “It remains a disturbing feature of the investigation conducted by General Rhoode and his team that the president’s private residence was broken into and an undisclosed sum of money in US$, probably more than $580 000 was stolen; suspects or at least one of them, the mastermind behind the housebreaking and theft, was detained, interviewed, and confessed to the crime, including stealing about $800 000; yet no one was either convicted of this crime pertaining the housebreaking and theft at the farm. And the investigation was carried out without a case being registered and without opening a docket.”.Where It Stands Now.Following an 8 May 2026 Constitutional Court ruling, President Ramaphosa is initiating a judicial review to set aside the Section 89 report. The Court ruled that Parliament acted unlawfully in 2022 when it voted to halt the impeachment process, and ordered the National Assembly to establish an impeachment committee. Ramaphosa has called the report gravely flawed and refuses to resign.The Common Sense has sketched out three potential scenarios of what the President might do next. The most likely scenario is that he publicly accepts the process while doing everything possible to stall it, which, as we can see from Ramaphosa’s actions above, is already playing out.However, what is important to internalise, more than what he intends on doing next, is how this scandal is slowly eroding the idea of Ramaphosa. He mattered to the ANC as an idea more than a man, the figure who would clean up corruption and restore the state. That idea is now dead. The man who promised to rid the ANC of corruption now embodies its most sensational scandal. A besieged Ramaphosa cannot credibly drive reform, and investors will quietly keep their distance. A majority of South Africans want him removed, including roughly a third of ANC voters themselves.His legal tactics may delay accountability. He may even survive an impeachment vote. But it was never the man that mattered. It was the idea of Ramaphosa. All that remains now is the man himself, and for the ANC, that is not just a dead-end asset but one that may harm the party further the more it tries to protect him..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

The Section 89 report decoded: the charges against Ramaphosa that could end his presidency

Related Stories

Viv Vermaak: Phala Phala, games of steal and plunder

Ramaphosa accuses panel of relying on hearsay in latest Phala Phala fightback

Ramaphosa braces for legal showdown over impeachment push

Don't save Cyril on basis of avoiding "something worse": Chris Hattingh