Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen, says President Cyril Ramaphosa is facing a serious credibility crisis as a result of the alleged cover-up of a robbery at his farm.
Ramaphosa is currently struggling to ward off the fallout from criminal charges filed against him by former spy boss Arthur Fraser.
Steenhuisen says the President must come clean and stop hiding behind procedural smokescreens. He claims that no aspect of any police or other investigation prevents him from giving the country a full and honest account of events.
Steenhuisen says that too many questions about the alleged robbery and the President’s failure to report it to SAPS remain unanswered.
“How much money was kept on the farm and in what currency? How much of it was stolen? How did this foreign currency get into the country? How long was it stored on the President’s property? Were the correct exchange controls observed? And does the President still hold foreign currency at his farm or any of his other properties? Similarly, there are many unanswered questions around the handling of the robbery itself, and particularly around the failure to report it to the South African Police Service (SAPS),” adds Steenhuisen.
“South Africans need to know whether the President has no faith in SAPS, or whether there were other reasons for withholding this crime from the police. South Africans also need to know whether the President paid suspects and/or witnesses for their silence. Whether he had them kidnapped and interrogated and whether he used his position as head of state, as well as state resources, for his own private business and his private investigation,” explains the Democratic Alliance leader.
The video below is reporting more on the story:
‘Smear campaign’
Political analyst Professor Pieter Duvenage says the claims against President Ramaphosa could be a smear campaign ahead of the final instalment of the State Capture report, which includes investigations into the State Security Agency.
Duvenage says the timing and motive of the criminal charges laid by the former director-general of the State Security against the President must be questioned.
Duvenage believes this could be politically motivated. “Why now? It seems like he and people in the intelligence service had this information for a while since 2020. The question is why now right in the middle of what one can call the election season of the ANC. We have had already the Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, the Northern Cape and now Limpopo as provinces electing their people to go to the national election of the ANC, so the timing is interesting and the timing is a context.”
