South Africa’s highest court has revived the festering political and legal crisis around President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 2022 cash-in-a-couch scandal, ruling Friday that an independent panel report must now be referred to a full impeachment committee — reopening a process the African National Congress had used its parliamentary majority to shut down three years ago.
The Constitutional Court set aside the December 2022 vote by ANC lawmakers that had rejected the panel’s findings, which reported credible evidence of wrongdoing by Ramaphosa and recommended a complete investigation. Chief Justice Mandisa Maya, delivering the ruling, stated the panel’s referral obligation in unambiguous terms. “In the event that the panel concludes that sufficient evidence exists, the matter must be referred to the impeachment committee,” Maya said.
The political arithmetic that once protected Ramaphosa has shifted decisively. In 2022, the ANC held the parliamentary majority it had commanded since South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, and used those numbers to bury the panel’s work. The party lost that majority in the 2024 elections for the first time, leaving Ramaphosa — now serving his final term — without the legislative firewall his party once provided.
The scandal itself traces back to a theft at Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala game farm, where $580,000 in cash was stolen from furniture. The president has maintained the money was proceeds from the legitimate sale of buffalo, and his spokesperson Vincent Magwenya reiterated Friday that Ramaphosa has fully cooperated with every inquiry. “President Ramaphosa maintains that no person is above the law and that any allegations should be subjected to due process without fear, favour or prejudice,” Magwenya said.
But Ramaphosa’s account of the theft has not gone unchallenged. The parliamentary panel that examined the matter rejected his version of events, and the president has also been accused of tax evasion, money laundering, and violating currency laws — with critics asking why the proceeds of a legal agricultural sale would be hidden in a couch rather than deposited in a bank. The scandal has shadowed Ramaphosa’s presidency for years, fueled by opposition demands for his resignation.
Julius Malema, the firebrand leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, seized on the ruling as vindication of his party’s long-running campaign against the president. The EFF was among the opposition parties that took the parliamentary vote to court, arguing that ANC lawmakers had used their majority to shield Ramaphosa from accountability. Addressing a crowd of supporters after the ruling, Malema framed the outcome as a path to criminal consequences. “Ramaphosa is going to jail,” Malema said. “With the amount of shenanigans and evidence that will come out of that impeachment process, there is no way that Ramaphosa is not going to jail.”
The court’s decision does not itself trigger impeachment. It sends the report to an impeachment committee, which must conduct its own investigation before deciding whether to put an impeachment motion before the full parliament. The panel may find sufficient evidence to proceed — or it may not. What Friday’s ruling changes is the procedural landscape: the committee can no longer be bypassed by a party-line vote.
The broader legal picture around Ramaphosa is mixed. Two previous probes — one by the South African Reserve Bank, another by a public watchdog — cleared the president of wrongdoing. Those earlier clearances form a key element of his defense and complicate any narrative that the outcome of a new impeachment inquiry is foreordained.
For now, the ruling returns the cash scandal to the center of South African politics at a moment when Ramaphosa’s party is weaker in parliament than at any point since the end of apartheid, and when the opposition sees a realistic avenue to force the president from office through institutional channels rather than at the ballot box.