South African President tripped by the "Farmgate Saga",- with his back against the ropes , fighting for political survival

SOUTH AFRICA - In Brief 12 May 2026 by Iraj Abedian

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on May 8th the Constitutional Court, the highest court in the land, isssued a rare verdict instructing the Parliament to commence an inquiry into the conduct of the President by establishing an Impeachment Committee based on the findings of the 2022 Phala Phala Report produced by Parliament's Independent Judicial Panel established in 2020.The background in brief: at Ramaphosa's private game park, called Phala Phala, in Limpopo during February 2020 a theft of an alleged US$580,000-00 occured, the money was hidden in a sofa and when robbery took place it was not reported to the police. Instead the President's official security was used to track the robbers, and even kidnap one of the suspects from the nieghbouring country Namibia back to South Africa. The saga rapidly escalated to a political crisis for the President necessitating a Parliamentary inquiry. An Independent Judicial Panel was esatablished to investigate the incidence and in November 2022 it submitted its report to the Parliament. Upon the tabling of the Report, President Ramaphosa argued that the Report was defectdive and he would take it on legal review if the Parliament decided to consider an impeachment process. He never did. Instead, the ANC used its parliamentary majority to ignore the Report. The issue never went away and remained a useful point of political stabbing at Ramaphosa. In the process a number of investigations by various institutions such as the SA Reserve Bank, the Office of Public Protector, and the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) were conducted looking into the various aspects of the saga. By and large, these reports found no material breaches and evidences of wrong d...