The bizarre Phala Phala saga, where allegations of corruption intertwine with the whimsicality of buffaloes, sofas and dollars enters a new stage this week. As the Constitutional Court prepares to deliver its judgment on Friday, what does this mean for South Africa's democracy?
Image: Ron AI/Independent Media
Fellow South Africans, fasten your seatbelts. Our constitutional democracy is about to be plunged deeper into the rabbit hole of buffaloes and dollars in sofas.
I’m not making this up, but merely revisiting the story – or should I say stories, since the various versions don’t quite align? But these stories of buffalo wheeling and dealing allegedly concluded while most of us were enjoying the Christmas holidays of 2019 do sound like those of "Alice in Wonderland".
Why would a stranger from the Middle East leave the comfort of Sun City to go buy some animals and pay R8 million rands’ worth of US dollars to a strange farm worker holding the fort while the real manager and the owner are on holiday? And why would Mr Sylvester Ndlovu move the dollars from the safe and hide the money in the furniture? Worst of all, why would a whole president who should know all about such things as the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act simply leave it to his chief protector to report a theft of so much money and not follow up on the investigations?
And what about that alleged buffalo dealer, Hazim Mustafa – or Mustafa Mohamed Ibrahim Hazim – who appeared on TV dripping in designer clothing like those fake reality celebs? He didn’t seem like a buffalo trader to me.
Anyway, I can’t wait for the next season of “Mustafa’s Christmas Adventures in Phala Phala Land”. Or should I call it “Sylvester and the Incredible Buffalo Dollar Deal”?
But we shouldn’t be laughing about this as we as taxpayers and citizens are the butt of these buffalo jokes. It’s our constitutional democracy that the buffaloes are trampling. Therefore, I cannot but look forward to the Constitutional Court’s judgment on the matter on Friday. But I’m not holding my breath. Just curious to learn new terminology, such as “perfected” transactions. It’s good to know that unless the dodgy deal you’re involved in is perfected, you can’t be accused of small crimes like exchange control contraventions.
Whether Cyril Ramaphosa escapes again down the next rung of the rabbit hole, he still owes us citizens a proper explanation. We thought during that period he was busy getting into the groove of rescuing the country from the economic and political mess it had descended into, not dealing in buffaloes.