President Cyril Ramaphosa is off the hook in acting public protector advocate Kholeka Gcaleka’s Phala Phala investigation, but his head bodyguard Major-General Wally Rhoode was not so lucky.
After more than a year of investigations, Gcaleka on Friday dismissed all allegations of wrongdoing against Ramaphosa but found that Rhoode abused state resources by embarking on an illegal investigation to recover the alleged stolen game farm dollars.
After former intelligence chief Arthur Fraser opened a criminal case against Ramaphosa and Rhoode in June 2022, the African Transformation Movement (ATM), followed by the DA, requested the office of the public protector to investigate.
Members of the public also lodged two additional complaints.
Gcaleka said her office did not have jurisdiction to investigate the origin or amount of the allegedly stolen dollars that were stashed inside a couch in February 2020 following an alleged cash sale of buffaloes on Christmas Day in 2019.
Figures in the public domain include Ramaphosa’s $580 000 (about R11-million) claim and Fraser’s claim of an amount between $4-million and $8-million.
Gcaleka said her investigation also excluded the question of whether the sum that Ramaphosa had kept was in line with regulations to declare the money.
She also avoided dealing with the question of whether or not the crime had to be reported to the police, only noting that a police case was opened two years later.
In terms of the complaints from MPs, both the ATM and DA, Gcaleka found that there was no conflict of interest between Ramaphosa’s involvement with the Phala Phala game farm and his role as the head of state.
She found that for Ramaphosa to be found guilty of earning “paid work” from the game farm, he would have to be actively involved in the day-to-day operations of the business.
“There is no evidence that the farm does business with the state,” she said.
Gcaleka accepted Ramaphosa’s version that he was not at the farm full-time, but found that even in that case, it could not be denied that he had some financial interest in the business.
She also found that the deployment of presidential protection services at the game farm post the alleged theft was lawful since Ramaphosa was entitled to its services, although he had previously refused the offer.
Regarding Rhoode, she found that he actively investigated the missing dollars using state resources. However, there was no evidence that Ramaphosa gave the instructions for the investigation.
Gcaleka said the operation Rhoode conducted had all the elements of an investigation and not a threat analysis, as he had claimed in his defence.
She recommended that the police take necessary steps against Rhoode in line with its operating standards.
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