South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, had been robbed two years ago. About $4 million dollars were stolen from his farm near Limpopo. This was called the Phala Phala scandal. But later Ramaphosa was then accused of Tax evasion, money laundering, and breaching foreign currency laws with the U.S. He was then accused of organizing a kidnapping to obtain the robbers and make sure they keep their mouths shut. President Ramaphosa denies all of these accusations, saying that he did report this burglary to the police. On October 11, it was found out that President Ramaphosa will not be charged with any of these crimes. But the robbery that took place in his farm is said to continue into next month. The robbers are to appear in court for house-breaking and money laundering.
I love crimes and mysteries, so obviously this appealed to me. Arthur Fraser had even come to investigate and even accused the president of organizing a kidnapping of his robbers. So this truly leaves me wondering, a man so powerful and obviously he has money, is he using this money to shut many people up? If that was the case then this probably wouldn’t have taken two years to decide, so I am sure that he is innocent seeing as I am just getting the brief summery of what he was accused of rather than the nitty gritties but still. I love to keep wondering
The people of South Africa had to have been scared, even if it isn’t true you put the idea that the man representing your country is quite the criminal. There had to have been the idea of shame and embarrassment among the country. Not to mention, think about how the president may look to other countries. Lucky he isn’t being charged with those crimes so that means he wasn’t convicted of those crimes to say the least. But that also means there was probably sides been taken place as one side fought for their president while the other fought about how much of a convicted criminal he could be.
This doesn’t relate much to what we talk about in class but I did find this quite interesting. I mean IF president Ramaphosa WAS breaching foreign currency laws with the U.S. then that would definitely affect their relations with each other. This case could have lead to a lot of consequences to South Africa, again if this was proven right then this could have changed the U.S.’s relations with them. This could have made South Africa look really bad and could have affected other realtons with countries. Or it could have also blown over and no one may have noticed as well.