The National Assembly is set to debate the independent panel report on the Phala Phala saga on December 6, just 10 days before the ANC’s 55th elective conference leaving analysts divided as to how much its contents will cost president Cyril Ramaphosa in the ANC’s leadership race.
“If he comes off as not having committed any crime or anything untoward as a result of the panel’s recommendation then it gives him the upper hand. Even then he has to deal with branches that are not on his side,” said political analyst Sanusha Naidu, based at the Global Institute for Dialogue.
When the ANC gathers at Nasrec in Johannesburg from December 16 to 20 there will be 4,250 delegates.
The head of the School of Public Leadership at Stellenbosch University professor Zweli Ndevu said: “Negative outcomes of the panel review will affect the president’s ambition to get a second term.”
Professor of public law at the University of Cape Town Richard Calland said, “Is it enough to bring him down? My instinct is not [...] I think he will prevail again on this issue.”
Senior lecturer in the history and political studies department at Nelson Mandela University Ntsikelelo Breakfast said: “I think at the moment he stands a chance of winning the upcoming conference of the ANC.”
Parliament will hold a special hybrid sitting after it was due to close for 2022, when the speaker granted the panel’s chair an extension until November 30. MPs will decide on the next step in an impeachment vote against the president. They will receive the report in the first week of December.
The matter relates to the alleged theft of millions of US dollars from Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm in Limpopo in 2020.
The ANC, DA, IFP and EFF welcomed that MPs will have the opportunity to debate the report before the National Assembly rises. Already, seniors in the ANC — among them presidential contender Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma — have urged Ramaphosa to step aside over the scandal.
“There are people who have a strategic interest in those findings and want to use them to beef up the arguments he must step down,” said Breakfast.
The National Assembly’s programme committee chose the December 6 date on Thursday, after speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula granted panel chair retired chief justice Sandile Ngcobo’s request for an extension a day earlier. Parliament’s spokesperson said Ngcobo asked for more time due to “ground still to be covered and the available resources”.
Breakfast said: “This is a serious matter with implications. You cannot be hasty. You cannot rush into releasing the report of this nature.”
While the National Assembly will debate the report from Ngcobo and fellow panellists retired judge Thokozile Masipa and senior advocate Mahlape Sello early next month, parliament will rise and the ANC will choose its next leader. Any recommendation for an impeachment process to proceed would only progress next year, due to the timing.
Naidu said what is next hinges on whether the panel “gives Ramaphosa’s enemies the traction to deepen their push against him”.
Should it “extinguish” the Phala Phala scandal his detractors would be on the back foot ahead of the ANC conference, she continued, unless “they have an ace up their sleeve to disrupt and stick to their call for his demise further ahead and at Nasrec”.
Ndevu said ANC branches “will have a difficult task of deciding whether to re-elect a person” who has been the subject of a possible impeachment vote. “It will make the task to get a second term a huge mountain to climb,” he said.
Calland, who was nominated to sit on Ngcobo’s panel but withdrew in September insistent he was capable of impartiality but did not want to put the process into question, slated Ramaphosa’s answer on Phala Phala in parliament on August 30.
Calland thought despite the fallout over Phala Phala the president was “covered and clear” ahead of Nasrec next month. “It’s dented his integrity and his credibility. But it doesn’t really harm his prospects,” he said.
While there were divisions within the ANC, Breakfast did not expect the party — which holds a majority 230 seats in the National Assembly — to “expose” the president. “Opposition parties by themselves will not be in a position to vote against him and impeach him, because they don’t have the numbers,” he said.
Phala Phala, he said, was eroding Ramaphosa’s standing in the court of public opinion: “He has given his political enemies or detractors and ammunition to take a swipe at him. There are gaps in his explanation.”
Naidu noted the ANC’s debate about Phala Phala was far more heated than that over Bosasa and the R500,000 donation Ramaphosa’s CR17 leadership campaign accepted from the disgraced company. “This is the final roll of the dice for some of the seniors in the party,” she said.
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