SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS31 JUL 2026Phala Phala loot laundered for ANC, claims ZungulaLunga Mzangwe5 min read

The ATM leader says President Cyril Ramaphosa should not oppose accountability processes if he acted lawfully, raises questions about the money found at Phala Phala and confirms he is interested in becoming Johannesburg’s next mayor The $580 000 found stashed in a couch at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala game farm could have been money meant for the ANC rather than the president, according to African Transformation Movement (ATM) parliamentary leader Vuyo Zungula. “One cannot discount the fact that perhaps the money that was in Phala Phala was supposed to go towards the ANC and its campaigns,” said Zungula during a podcast interview with the Mail & Guardian this week. “We know political parties, especially a political party like the ANC – which is the oldest liberation movement – will have relationships with other governments or other political parties, not only on the continent but elsewhere in the world.” He claimed that because legislation does not allow political parties to receive funding from organisations outside of South Africa, the only way such organisations or international actors could fund the ANC would be through illicit means.

He went further, claiming: “The manner in which they are defending it, could be that the ANC, in its operations, is laundering money for the organisation using the president as a conduit. “Because when a president travels outside the country, when they come back, they don’t get searched, so they can easily return with a bag full of dollars. There is no process to determine what they are bringing back or what it is for, unlike me and you when we travel outside the country.” Zungula’s comments come after Ramaphosa secured an interim interdict halting parliament’s Section 89 impeachment committee from holding public hearings while he challenges the legality of the independent panel’s report into the Phala Phala matter.

The review application is set to be heard from 2 to 4 September. The impeachment hearings will resume thereafter and consider the implications of the reviewed Phala Phala report. Ramaphosa argued that allowing parliament’s impeachment inquiry to proceed before the court had ruled on the validity of the report would cause him irreparable harm.

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The ATM has filed a direct access application to the Constitutional Court to challenge the Western Cape high court ruling. Parties including the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party have also joined the ATM in the application. Zungula said some ANC members in parliament had urged the ATM to continue pursuing accountability in the Phala Phala matter. He added that people across different sectors of society and political parties believed there could not be one set of laws for some while, in Ramaphosa’s case, holding him accountable appeared to be treated as a crime.

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