From Westminster to Phala Phala: Two leaders, one fight for survival

Two leaders, two continents, one embattled defiance – Keir Starmer and Cyril Ramaphosa are clinging to power, but while Britain’s crisis is political, South Africa’s cuts far deeper, writes Tony Leon.

“When the herd moves, it moves,” Boris Johnson ruefully remarked when his Conservative Party forced his exit as UK prime minister in July 2022, just two and a half years after he had won a landslide election.

Labour’s Westminster herd is now massing against current UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, another recent landslide election winner, who’s also unwilling to depart.

When, not if, Starmer goes, he will be the fourth British leader ejected in just seven years to depart at the hands of their own party, not the electorate.

Italy was once the political byword for revolving door prime ministers. But it’s PM, Giorgia Meloni, has held power there since Liz Truss briefly and disastrously governed Britain, three prime ministers back.

On Monday morning, Starmer announced that he would not resign – despite last Thursday’s disastrous local and national election results in England, Wales and Scotland.

He said:

I take responsibility for not walking away, not plunging our country into chaos.

Just a few hours later and 10 000km away, another leader, under pressure to resign, sounded an equally defiant note.

President Cyril Ramaphosa told South Africa: “To resign now would be to give in to those who seek to reverse the renewal of our society, the rebuilding of our institutions and the prosecution of corruption.“

Boris Johnson conjured up the vivid metaphor of a political herd moving against a wounded leader – the same animal instinct now kicking in against Starmer.

Ramaphosa’s position is at risk not due to any vivid metaphor. It is a real herd of buffalo grazing on his Phala Phala farm estate on Christmas Day 2019 that put him in the frame.

The cash sale of 20 buffalo allegedly to a mystery Sudanese businessman for $580 000, and never delivered to him, the theft of those monies stuffed in the famous sofa, the allegations of money laundering, the subversion of police procedures and foreign currency regulations and even the inveigling of a neighbouring head of state in a cover-up are simply some of the headline features. This is a scandal, far worse than any that forced three British PMs from office, and likely to claim a fourth soon enough.

Of course, none of this was addressed Monday night by Ramaphosa, bar his correct disclaimer that the Constitutional Court judgment on Friday that led to his defiant statement “made no finding on whether there was prima facie evidence of misconduct” on his part.

He also, again correctly, noted that the same court made no finding against him on whether such misconduct, if found, “justifies impeachment and removal of the president”.

Friday’s Constitutional Court judgment was a ruling against Parliament, not the president. The court invalidated Parliament’s previous attempt back in 2022, now rescinded, to shield Ramaphosa from precisely an impeachment inquiry by a parliamentary committee. The previous Parliament blocked and short-circuited this by majority vote.

And of course, such evidence began with the report of an independent panel whose conclusion was that there was “prima facie evidence” that Ramaphosa may have a case to answer that required ventilation and consideration by Parliament by an impeachment committee in the first instance.

This report is now back in play before a Parliament where Ramaphosa’s party has no majority, and it is the same report that Ramaphosa is now seeking to set aside on grounds of its alleged flaws.

Quite what happens after Ramaphosa’s court bid is launched in the high court is an open question. Will the impeachment committee that the speaker has been mandated to establish continue its work while the president’s court actions proceed? Will it stall, and who will decide? And any such decision could itself lead to a legal challenge by a dissatisfied party.

Impeachment – though shrouded in legal armour – is inherently a political exercise. It requires determining whether a president has in terms of Section 89, “committed a serious violation of the Constitution or the law”. Or that he has engaged in “serious misconduct”. These so-called legal tests are as wide as the grace of God, and the determination of their presence or absence is made by politicians, not lawyers.

Of course, the prospects of Ramaphosa being eventually impeached are vanishingly remote. Short of an improbable rebellion in his own party, no combination of parliamentary numbers will reach the two-thirds majority required for impeachment.

And since he explicitly stated that he won’t resign, his presidency continues for a while yet. But in what condition and how effectively is another matter.

And in the current phase, a lot is going to happen. Even if Parliament suspends its own process to allow the courts to review the apparent flaws in the independent panel’s report, bet your bottom Phala Phala dollar that the EFF (unlikely champions of constitutional democracy, but here we are) will use the court process to stuff as many facts and allegations on what went down at Phala Phala and alleged breaches of serial laws and processes, into their replying affidavits.

And if Parliament does in fact trundle ahead with its own impeachment panel, expect political theatre on a grand if not an illuminating scale. As much mud as possible will be thrown about, and the ANC will be in defensive crouch to again attempt to shield the president from damage and their party from collateral fallout.

Legal and parliamentary processes are of little interest to most voters. But passing the smell test of whether something is rotten in the state of Denmark or with the King is a matter that does stir interest.

And it is not simply about processes and procedures, which on Monday, Ramaphosa committed himself to respect and uphold.

It is the truth about those buffalos, their sale, the theft of the proceeds, what happened to the thieves and what really lay behind this implausible transaction and the thin explanation for its occurrence that places Ramaphosa in the dock of public, not legal, opinion.

And with local elections in just five months’ time, expect more political damage for the ANC and its frontman, Ramaphosa, as it will be more difficult now to parade as a paragon of clean government.

The crowning irony in all this is that Ramaphosa, like his beleaguered colleague across the seas, Sir Keir Starmer, often gets a bad press for being too cautious, too rules-bound, too incrementalist.

Yet on its face, Phala Phala, coupled with his recent mystery “unofficial” visit to Zimbabwe and breaking bread with an individual under investigation by the Hawks here for an alleged R800-million money laundering scheme, suggests the opposite: an incaution bordering on reckless. Interesting days ahead.