Some people, if they found themselves embroiled in a scandal involving an allegedly illegal stash of cash at one of their game farms, might do everything they could to make said game farm disappear from public view. But President Cyril Ramaphosa is clearly not most people, as the staff at Phala Phala in Limpopo get ready for an injection of fresh cash into the lounge suites up at the main house.
According to the Facebook page of the Ankole Cattle Breeders’ Society of South Africa, Saturday June 18 will see “the 2nd National Ankole Auction at Phala Phala, Limpopo”, offering buyers such highlights as two breeding bulls, mature cows with 40-inch horns, embryos and “semen straws from top bulls”.
Being a townie who has lost contact with the soil, I had to look up what an Ankole was and discovered it is a breed of cattle that has absurdly oversized horns. I imagine these make the animals entirely unable to survive in the wild, but that’s not a problem, since their sole purpose is to stand around before being sold to the highest bidder and then stand around some more. In other words, they’re a perfect metaphor for the ANC, which is perhaps why Ramaphosa is so fond of them.
Now, it makes perfect sense that life at his farm should continue more or less as usual.
In other words, they’re a perfect metaphor for the ANC, which is perhaps why Ramaphosa is so fond of them.
First, Phala Phala is not the Union Buildings. It is a working game farm, beholden to the seasons and the reproductive cycles of its resident Ankole. The show must go on, and if there are millions of greenbacks sewn into the furniture as is being claimed by the Radical Economic Transformation wreckers — and that is a very big and very contentious “if” — then that is between Ramaphosa, his preferred upholsterer, the Reserve Bank and whichever employee he can make a very rich scapegoat.
Second, Ramaphosa has already bungled his response, with Redi Tlhabi pointing out on Twitter that the president was denying crimes he’s not accused of and answering questions he hasn’t been asked. Shutting down Phala Phala would look like panic and draw even more attention to it, so perhaps it makes sense for the farm simply to keep doing what it does.
What doesn’t make sense, however, is Ramaphosa allowing an auction of multi-million-rand cattle to be announced in the same week millions of South Africans are, for the first time, wondering what goes on during and after those auctions, and where, exactly, the money goes.
For a country starved of leadership and tormented by hustlers on the make, the optics are also awful.
I mean, is it too much to ask that Ramaphosa suspends his side hustle for a few weeks and pauses the relentless acquisition of yet more personal wealth, even if it’s just to try to pretend he’s a full-time president rather than an oligarch who’s only moonlighting in politics because “Being President” was number 34 on his bucket list?
Of course, it’s possible he’s doing business as usual because he’s either innocent of any wrongdoing or has found the aforementioned patsy who will take the fall onto a large cushion of money.
But right now we need all the reassurance we can get, and that means much, much less bull. Even if it’s got 40-inch horns on it.
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