Constitution prohibits Ramaphosa from involvement in private business

This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed an auction will be held at his private Phala Phala farm in Limpopo on Saturday.

The president will put some of his prized Ankole cows up for sale. 

It comes amid the political storm over the theft of foreign currency from the Phala Phala farm in 2020 – money which was also the proceeds of game sold by the Ramaphosa.

Earlier this month, former spy boss Arthur Fraser laid a criminal complaint against the president, claiming the suspects were kidnapped and assaulted as part of efforts to cover up the robbery.

Hoffman says Ramaphosa vowed to step away from his businesses when he ascended to the presidency.

“The idea, when he became the president, was that his businesses will be placed in a trust that would be operated for his benefit without his input. Whether this is being done with the farm or not is hard to tell.

“But the wording of the Constitution is that members of the Cabinet are not allowed to undertake other paid work, they must give their full-time attention to the task of running a country because it is a big task. He is not allowed to undertake other paid work and that is where the fine line appears."

READ: 'I will be selling my cows on Saturday' - Ramaphosa

“If selling animals is regarded as paid work, then the public protector would report on it and would make a finding that he is in the bridge of the Constitution for undertaking paid work and he would have to stop undertaking paid work,” says Hoffman.

He adds that Ramaphosa might have implicated himself with remarks he made at the ANC’s Limpopo conference some weeks ago.

“It is a possibility that the Phala Phala farm might be under the care of other people, but it doesn’t seem to time very nicely with what he said at the ANC’s Limpopo conference where he said everybody knows that he sells livestock.

“That isn’t the words of a person who has reserved it all in the blind trust and doesn’t know what is happening.

The other part of the story that makes it kind of tricky is that if it is true that the dollar bills had been stitched into the sofas at Phala Phala. Then surely he must have known about that, he sits on a couch that creeks with money.”