For years, Cyril Ramaphosa cultivated the image of the sober reformer: the calm businessman-politician who would rescue South Africa from the kleptocratic decay of the Jacob Zuma era.
That reputation is now hanging by a thread as South Africa’s Constitutional Court has breathed fresh life into impeachment proceedings linked to the notorious “Farmgate” scandal — a tawdry affair involving bundles of dollars hidden inside a sofa at the president’s luxury game farm.
The timing could scarcely be worse for the ruling African National Congress. Once the mighty liberation movement of Nelson Mandela, the ANC now resembles an exhausted political machine desperately patching leaks while the hull steadily sinks beneath the waterline. An emergency meeting of senior party officials this week underlined the growing sense of panic inside the movement.
At the centre of the storm lies the now infamous Phala Phala farm in Limpopo province, where thieves allegedly stole around $580,000 concealed inside furniture in 2020. Ramaphosa insists the money came from the legitimate sale of buffalo to a Sudanese businessman and that he committed no crime. His critics are unconvinced. The very image of a head of state apparently storing mountains of foreign currency inside a couch has become a gift to political opponents and a source of enduring public ridicule.
Yet what makes the scandal so politically toxic is not merely its absurdity, but the historical context surrounding it.
South Africans have endured decades of ANC scandals, each one accompanied by solemn promises of renewal and accountability. From the catastrophic multibillion-rand Arms Deal scandal of the late 1990s, which tainted the presidency of Thabo Mbeki, through to Jacob Zuma’s infamous Nkandla affair — where public funds were used to upgrade his private homestead with luxuries euphemistically described as “security features” — voters have repeatedly been told that lessons had been learned.
Then came the years of outright “state capture”. Under Zuma, politically connected businessmen from the Gupta family were alleged to have exercised extraordinary influence over cabinet appointments, state contracts and public enterprises. The rot spread through Eskom, Transnet and South African Airways, hollowing out institutions that once symbolised the country’s post-apartheid ambitions. Billions disappeared while rolling blackouts, collapsing rail infrastructure and endemic corruption became facts of daily life. The Zondo Commission’s findings painted a picture less of isolated misconduct than of systematic pillaging carried out under ANC supervision.
Ramaphosa rose precisely because many South Africans hoped he represented a clean break from that era. He spoke the language of reform, investment and constitutional respect. International investors embraced him enthusiastically, relieved to see a leader who wore business suits rather than liberation fatigues and who seemed capable of restoring stability.
Now he finds himself trapped by the same culture of opacity and entitlement that consumed so many of his predecessors.
The Constitutional Court’s ruling last week was therefore devastating, not necessarily because it guarantees impeachment, but because it reopens a wound Ramaphosa desperately hoped had healed. The judges ruled that parliament acted unlawfully when it blocked impeachment proceedings in 2022. That decision effectively revives the process and places the scandal squarely back into the national spotlight.
Technically speaking, the president is unlikely to be removed from office. South Africa’s constitution requires a two-thirds parliamentary majority for impeachment, and despite the ANC’s weakened electoral position, Ramaphosa still appears to retain enough institutional backing to survive. Analysts widely expect coalition arithmetic and party loyalty to shield him from ultimate political destruction.
But survival is not the same as authority.
Ramaphosa now governs a country exhausted by stagnation, rolling blackouts, rampant violent crime and collapsing infrastructure. The ANC itself no longer commands an outright parliamentary majority after the 2024 election, forcing it into an awkward coalition arrangement with rival parties, including the opposition Democratic Alliance.
That coalition may keep the government alive, yet it also exposes the ANC’s historic decline. The liberation movement that once dominated every corner of South African politics now spends much of its energy negotiating internal factions, legal scandals and political survival strategies.
There are uncomfortable echoes of the Zuma years everywhere. The same evasive press conferences. The same insistence that critics are politically motivated. The same weary public cynicism that assumes powerful figures will ultimately escape accountability. South Africans have heard this tune before.
The real danger for Ramaphosa is not immediate removal from office but the slow erosion of legitimacy. Zuma also survived repeated scandals, court cases and parliamentary battles long after his credibility had evaporated. The machinery of power protected him until the political cost became intolerable.
Meanwhile, opposition parties smell blood. The radical Economic Freedom Fighters have aggressively pursued the impeachment route, while allies of Zuma continue portraying Ramaphosa as a hypocrite who preached anti-corruption while allegedly practising concealment.
International investors will watch nervously. Ramaphosa was long regarded abroad as the safest pair of hands available within the ANC: market-friendly, pragmatic and reassuringly moderate. Political paralysis in Pretoria risks further damaging confidence in Africa’s most industrialised economy at a moment when growth remains anaemic and unemployment catastrophically high.
For now, Ramaphosa remains in office and publicly defiant. Yet the symbolism of the Phala Phala affair may ultimately prove impossible to escape. South Africans struggling with power cuts and poverty are unlikely to forget images of foreign currency stuffed into furniture on a millionaire politician’s private estate.
The ANC once embodied moral authority. Today it looks increasingly like a party trapped between its heroic past and a grubby, exhausted present. From Nkandla to state capture, from the Arms Deal to Phala Phala, the pattern has become painfully familiar: scandal, denial, inquiry, survival — and decline. Ramaphosa was supposed to be the man who broke that cycle. Instead, he risks becoming merely its latest custodian.
Main Image: By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=133297909
