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South Africa has remanded two defendants in custody over the 2020 theft of more than half a million US dollars stuffed into a sofa on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s game farm, a scandal that almost led him to resign.
Imanuwela David and Froliana Joseph appeared in court on Tuesday on charges of theft and housebreaking with intent to steal from the president’s Phala Phala ranch, following their recent arrest. Further proceedings were postponed until later in the week.
They are the first arrests over the $580,000 theft, which blew up as a scandal last year when a spy chief allied with Jacob Zuma, the former president, accused Ramaphosa of a cover-up.
On Tuesday, South Africa’s national prosecuting authority accused David and Joseph of plotting to rob Phala Phala and said they initially broke into the wrong property. “The following night they located the Phala Phala farm where they broke [in], entered and stole $580,000,” the prosecuting authority alleged.
Last year’s allegations exploded in the midst of Ramaphosa’s bid to win re-election as leader of the governing African National Congress, plunging him into his worst crisis since he replaced Zuma in 2018 with a pledge to reverse the stagnation of Africa’s most industrial economy.
Colourful details of the affair tarnished his image as a reformist and were used by his detractors to portray him as an aloof tycoon. They included the apparent source of so much foreign currency — the president said the funds were payment by a Sudanese businessman for a herd of cattle — and concealment of the cash in a couch.
Ramaphosa has maintained he did nothing wrong in accepting the money and in subsequent investigations of the theft. But he came close to resigning last December after a report to South Africa’s parliament said he had questions to answer.
He recovered after the ANC blocked an investigation by parliament and re-elected him to a second term as its leader. In June, a state ombudsman cleared him of any wrongdoing in connection with the affair, despite questioning how police had handled the investigation.
South Africa’s central bank has also ruled that Ramaphosa did not breach exchange controls on the handling of foreign currency.
These did not apply because the cattle payment was a deposit and not a “perfected” transaction, it said.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance is challenging the bank’s assessment in court. Speaking in parliament last week, John Steenhuisen, the DA’s leader, questioned whether Ramaphosa’s “exoneration on the Phala Phala matter has not now opened up a loophole for money launderers who can stuff billions of dollars and pounds into couches, as long as they never ‘complete’ their transaction”.
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