The ANC’s top seven officials defused former president Thabo Mbeki’s political onslaught on President Cyril Ramaphosa when they produced findings of the investigations that acquitted him on the Phala Phala farmgate.
The officials met Mbeki at Luthuli House on Tuesday after Mbeki’s latest letter, in which he launched a ferocious attack on Ramaphosa, went viral.
Sunday World understands that since 2018 Mbeki has written multiple letters to Luthuli House and most were ignored until the recent one got leaked.
The national officials, in the absence of Ramaphosa, pushed back against the elder statesman’s blistering letter.
In their war chest, the officials had the South African Revenue Service report that found that Ramaphosa’s Limpopo game farm was tax compliant. They also produced the acting public protector’s provisional findings, which state that Ramaphosa had not committed any wrongdoing.
Mbeki had, in a letter dated March 29, launched an onslaught against Luthuli House, condemning the party’s use of its majority in parliament to block investigations into Phala Phala and Eskom corruption allegations.
His exchange with ANC officials will be on the national working committee’s agenda of the meeting tomorrow in Limpopo.
Sunday World has learnt that Luthuli House also took umbrage that in the leaked letter, Mbeki used capital letters, highlighted certain paragraphs in bright colours, and used exclamation marks “in a manner suggesting that he was shouting at the leadership”.
The national working committee will hear that the chief reason for voting against a parliamentary inquiry into Phala Phala – which Mbeki condemned as revealing the party’s aversion to accountability over corruption allegations – was that it would be preferable to wait for all of the state’s investigating authorities to make findings before the party could form an opinion.
“The two available reports from state institutions have cleared the president, which means he told the truth about Phala Phala,” said an ANC leader close to Ramaphosa who was also privy to the details of the Tuesday meeting.
“You can’t say that the parliamentary panel report on Phala Phala – which found that Ramaphosa had a case to answer – superseded the public protector’s report,” added the leader.
The leader also said it would have been a big mistake for Ramaphosa to try to take the ANC on board when investigations were ongoing, especially because of the possibility of legal challenges, the leader said.
The Phala Phala investigations refer to allegations that stacks of foreign currency were stolen from Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala game farm in Limpopo.
At the time of the alleged crime in February 2020, the money was hidden inside a sofa.
The funds had also not been declared to the authorities within 30 days as prescribed by law.
Deputy public protector Kholeka Gcaleka’s final report was pending, while a report by the South African Reserve Bank was due to be released next month, the leader said.
Regarding Eskom, Mbeki had also questioned why the ANC blocked another proposed parliamentary probe into alleged corruption involving the party if there was nothing to hide.
But the “historical bad blood” between Mbeki and Ramaphosa, said the leader, also formed part of the common refrain within ANC circles in response to Mbeki’s stinging criticism.
“There is a history between the two. It is about who should have led the Codesa negotiations before democracy.
“It is about who Madiba preferred as his successor,” said a national executive committee member.
Another ANC leader sympathetic to Mbeki said: “He feels there is one thing the incumbent lacks, which is the element of being out of touch with the ANC and not following the ANC’s traditions.
“If he wants to bring up issues, he should handle them delicately … otherwise it will appear that he is being personal.”
“It is true that CR (Ramaphosa) joined the ANC very late,” said the leader, adding that Mbeki would have, at one point, offered to take Ramaphosa through what the ANC was doing but he never took his offer.
Another party member at Luthuli House said Mbeki was never going to win the Phala Phala offensive as long as the state agencies probing the matter have not concluded their investigations.
He was jumping the gun when he insisted on the ANC to push for a parliamentary process against its own president.
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