A top official in South Africa’s African National Congress party threw his \u200bweight behind President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday over the “Farmgate” scandal in \u200cwhich thieves stole bundles of cash stuffed in a sofa on Ramaphosa’s ranch.<\/p>\n
Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula, in charge of the day-to-day running of the ANC, backed Ramaphosa at the start of a party \u200bmeeting about how to handle the scandal.<\/p>\n
The ANC blocked impeachment proceedings against Ramaphosa \u200bover Farmgate in 2022 but the constitutional court\u00a0revived the process last \u2060week.<\/p>\n
Mbalula told reporters that calls for Ramaphosa to step down were opportunistic, after \u200bRamaphosa\u00a0faced them down.<\/p>\n
“In terms of the (court) judgment, there’s nothing that says he (Ramaphosa) must actually \u200bresign as the president of the country,” Mbalula said.<\/p>\n
He said the meeting of the ANC’s National Executive Committee, a decision-making body that guides members, would consider the entirety of the judgment and would \u200bnot be bullied on what to do.<\/p>\n
Ramaphosa will not take part in the \u200bmeeting so senior party members can freely discuss issues, Mbalula added.<\/p>\n
The scandal\u00a0raised questions\u00a0about how Ramaphosa \u200cacquired $580,000 in \u2060cash that he said was stolen from his farm, whether it was properly declared, and why it was stuffed in furniture rather than deposited in a bank.<\/p>\n
It has proven a major embarrassment for Ramaphosa, who came to power in 2018 on a \u200bpledge to fight \u200bcorruption and clean up \u2060the image of the ANC.<\/p>\n
Political analysts say there is still a long way to go in the impeachment process and Ramaphosa \u200bwill likely survive if it goes to a vote in \u200bparliament.<\/p>\n
They say \u2060the ANC is likely to close ranks around its embattled leader, whose current term is due to end in 2029.<\/p>\n
An impeachment vote requires a two-thirds parliamentary majority to pass, \u2060and even \u200bthough the ANC’s support has dropped at successive \u200belections it still has about 40% of the seats in the lower chamber, the National Assembly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A top official in South Africa’s African National Congress party threw his \u200bweight behind President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday over the “Farmgate” scandal in \u200cwhich thieves stole bundles of cash stuffed in a sofa on Ramaphosa’s ranch. Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula, in charge of the day-to-day running of the ANC, backed Ramaphosa at the start of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,30],"tags":[1422,218,122],"class_list":["post-20877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-southern-africa","tag-african-national-congress-anc","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20879,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20877\/revisions\/20879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}