Public Protector Requested to Reopen Phala Phala Investigation

ActionSA has written to the Public Protector, urging her to reopen the Phala Phala investigation and to focus on the potential culpability of those serving in the Presidency in abusing state resources to unlawfully cover up the robbery on the President’s farm. 

The original Public Protector report into the Phala Phala farm robbery placed emphasis on investigating the conduct of the President and members of the Presidential Protection Unit. What is now evidenced by the recently unsealed IPID report is that the scope of the investigation must be significantly broadened to examine the role of all officials with proximity to the President.

One such official is Dr Bejani Chauke, the President’s Envoy for Africa, who served as a special adviser to President Ramaphosa. IPID’s report reveals that Chauke travelled with members of the Presidential Protection Unit to Namibia using SAPS VIP resources, which he was not authorised to utilise.

This visit, officially framed under the guise of a national security matter, rather suspiciously coincided with the arrest of the chief suspect involved in the robbery on the President’s farm in Namibia at the same time. Chauke’s questionable official reason for the visit could only have been sanctioned by the President in his case, and by the National Police Commissioner or the President in the case of Rhoode, and would likely have required coordination with the Department of International Relations and Cooperation.

The revelations from IPID, particularly regarding Chauke, have opened a new key avenue in the investigation into the President’s involvement in a potential cover-up. Until this point, questions of misconduct had been exclusively focused on members of the Presidential Protection Unit, but the findings relating to Chauke now open the door to the President’s own office being called into question.

Unlike members of the Presidential Protection Unit, who have dual reporting lines to SAPS leadership and the Presidency, Chauke and other officials in the President’s office have clear reporting lines. His involvement in an evidently unlawful cross-border mission points to authorisations within the Presidency and constitutes evidence of a coordinated effort to conceal the Phala Phala robbery.

ActionSA’s call to the Public Protector follows a landmark outcome for South Africans, which saw IPID’s Phala Phala report released to the public. Over the course of a year, ActionSA fought for IPID to unseal its report into the conduct of the Presidential Protection Unit. After multiple PAIA applications, delays, legal processes, appeals, technical challenges, and a letter to the Acting Minister of Police, IPID finally released its explosive report.

ActionSA’s team in Parliament has already announced a raft of action steps including, inter alia, a call for an inquiry by the parliamentary portfolio committees on the Presidency and Police to investigate the implications of a political cover-up and the failure of both the Presidency and the Police to act on the October 2023 IPID investigation recommendations. Parliamentary questions will also be submitted to the Minister of Police and the President to demand answers as to why the calls for accountability contained in the IPID report have been ignored for nearly three years.

ActionSA will not relent on this matter, particularly as 70% of Parliament now resides within the GNU and has effectively abandoned its responsibility to hold the President to account. An expanded investigation by the Public Protector is essential in light of this new evidence and its implications of a coordinated effort to conceal the robbery.

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