Ramaphosa survives impeachment vote

South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has survived a parliamentary vote on whether he should face an impeachment inquiry, even though a handful of ruling party MPs rebelled against the African National Congress in the ballot.

The motion to adopt the controversial Phala Phala report and launch a full investigation into its findings against Mr Ramaphosa was easily defeated on Tuesday at the 400-member National Assembly, by 214 votes to 148, with two abstentions. A total of 201 MPs needed to pass the motion tabled by the African Transformation Party for parliament to adopt it.

The four ANC MPs who voted in favour of the motion were Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Mervyn Dirks, Mosebenzi Zwane and Supra Mahumapelo. Several more ANC politicians who participated in a debate in advance of the vote were absent when the ballots were cast.

After the votes were cast, the leader of South Africa’s main opposition, the Democratic Alliance Party, described the ANC’s decision to back its leader as “a pyrrhic victory” for the former liberation movement. “It has shattered the myth around the party’s so-called renewal,” John Steenhuisen said in a statement. He added: “Today South Africans were left in no doubt that the presidency of Cyril Ramaphosa is no different to the presidency of Jacob Zuma, and that both men would not hesitate to damage and weaken parliament in order to evade scrutiny and the law.”

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Chaired by former chief justice Sandile Ngcobo, the panel that produced the Phala Phala report found that Mr Ramaphosa may have violated the constitution and broken anti-corruption laws in his response to the 2020 theft of $580,000 in cash from his game farm in Limpopo province.

The crisis, which was become known as the Farmgate scandal, erupted last June when Mr Ramaphosa was accused by former director general of the state security agency, Arthur Fraser, of covering up the theft as well as of bribery, kidnapping and money laundering.

Mr Ramaphosa has denied any wrongdoing and taken the Phala Phala report, which he has called “flawed”, on judicial review at the constitutional court in a bid to get it set aside.

In early December the ANC’s top decision-making body, the national executive committee, ordered its 230 National Assembly MPs to vote against the motion to adopt the Phala Phala report and investigate its findings.

Mr Ramaphosa’s victory comes just four days before he is due to seek a second term as the ANC’s leader at the party’s five-yearly national elective conference. The conference, which begins on Friday at the Nasrec Centre in Johannesburg and runs until December 20th, is expected to be a bruising affair, as it pits Mr Ramaphosa and his supporters in the ANC against a faction aligned with his predecessor, the corruption-accused Jacob Zuma.

Now that he has survived the parliamentary vote Mr Ramaphosa is expected to win re-election as the ruling party’s leader, which would put him in pole position to be the ANC’s presidential candidate for the 2024 general election.

However, at least four other official investigations into the Farmgate scandal are under way, and the outcome of any of these could derail Mr Ramaphosa’s chances of leading the ANC into the next national poll.