Ramaphosa’s Keeping Mum About The Mattress Money - The Fish Is Rotting From The Head

Usually, scenes of people stashing money under their mattress, or in a shoe box under their bed, come from low-budget comedy movies.

?But lately, we seem to be living in some kind of surreal parallel universe where life imitates art far more often than is comfortable.

?Not long ago, for example, we read about a barmaid in the UK hiding over ￡24 000 of her drug dealer’s cash in a shoebox under the bed “for safekeeping.”

?More recently, reports have surfaced about Prince Charles accepting suitcases, holdall bags and plastic shopping bags full of cash (about ￡3.1 million in total) from the former Qatari prime minister from 2011 to 2015.

?And in our own backyard last month, we read about the discovery of some $4 million in hard cash stashed “in furniture” – including, you guessed it, under a mattress – at President Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala wildlife farm in the Limpopo province.

?You just can’t make this sh*t up.

?If you’re a little late to the party, here’s a bit of background on the mattress moola:

?In June 1 this year, Arthur Fraser, the former head of the South African State Security Agency, walked into a Johannesburg police station and filed a criminal complaint against President Cyril Ramaphosa.

He accused the president of bribery, kidnapping, money laundering, and “concealing a crime” in relation to the alleged theft from his farm in 2020.

?His 12-page sworn statement was accompanied by photographs, documents and CCTV footage of the alleged theft taking place.

?“It is no small matter to lay criminal charges against a sitting President, but I am guided by the dictates of the interest of justice and our Constitution,” Fraser said at the time.

?If you only look at the surface, the President himself appears to be the victim – money was stolen from his farm, after all.

?But it doesn’t take a lot of digging, or even a particularly sensitive nose, to very quickly smell a rat.

?In his affidavit, Fraser swore that on 9 February 2020, thieves broke into the President’s wildlife farm and stole “undisclosed sums of United States Dollars, concealed in the furniture in the main farmhouse.”

But here’s where it all starts going a little pear-shaped.

?For a start, the theft was not officially reported to the South African Police Service (SAPS). Instead, President Ramaphosa claims to have reported it to the presidential protection police, and tasked his head of security, Major General Wally Rhoode, to investigate.

?There are already two red flags here:

1. Why was there so much money, in foreign currency hard cash, at the farm in the first place?
2. Why were the police not informed of the theft?

?Ramaphosa said the money was the proceeds from the sale of game and denied any wrongdoing or criminal conduct.

?But it’s against the law to not report a crime. And, according to both the Reserve Bank Act and the Financial Sector Intelligence Act, so is holding so much money in foreign currency, without disclosure.

?And it’s probably not a stretch to assume that the money was probably not disclosed to SARS as income and that there wasn’t one cent of tax paid on it.?

?Is leadership without honesty and integrity the kind of leadership we want for our country?

?Of course, the real elephant in the room is, if the money was obtained from the legitimate sale of game, why was it stashed in various hiding places in furniture?

?But back to the robbery itself for a moment…

?Fraser alleges that the president’s housekeeper discovered the stash. She then sent a message to her brother, who knew a gang of bad guys who could carry out the robbery.

?The gang, which allegedly comprised two South Africans and four Namibian citizens, cut the wire perimeter fence and entered the farmhouse through a window.

?Unbeknownst to the thieves at the time, the entire break-in was captured on CCTV, which formed part of the evidence Fraser submitted with his affidavit.

?After the incident was reported to Rhoode, he, together with an alleged team of retired police officers and serving members of the crime intelligence unit, recovered some of the stolen haul from the housekeeper.

?Fraser claims that the housekeeper and the alleged perpetrators were later paid nearly $10,000 for their silence.

?So, we have an unreported crime, a truckload of undisclosed foreign currency hidden under the mattress, significant amounts of “shut up” money paid to the alleged thieves…and yet President Ramaphosa denies any criminal activity or wrongdoing.

?There’s definitely something wrong with this picture.

?The sad thing is, this is not the first time that a head of our government has denied criminal action.

?Is innate dishonesty a pre-requisite qualification to lead our country?

?Is a compulsion to line your own pockets when the rest of the country is on its financial knees a quality we look for in a President?

?The last 15 years or so would seem to support a “yes” answer to both these questions.

?There’s an ancient proverb you may have heard: “A fish rots from the head.”

?It’s variously been attributed to China, Russia, Poland, England, Turkey and Greece. But to me, it matters less where it originally came from than how worrying and appropriate it is to the South African situation right now.

?The saying comes from the idea that after is fish is caught and killed, it first begins to spoil at the head.

?(Let’s not worry too much about those biologists who say this is not actually factual and that the first part of a fish to go bad is, in fact, its intestinal system).

?The point of the metaphor (biological accuracy notwithstanding) is to illustrate the tendency for an entire organisation (or, in our case, country) to be negatively affected by the dishonest actions of the people at the top.

?How can we ever hope for a reduction in crime and corruption in South Africa when some of the biggest perpetrators of these heinous activities are those entrusted with running our country?

?It seems the only running they’re interested in is running South Africa into the ground, running away from good governance and accountability, and running up eye-watering lifestyle bills for the taxpayer to foot.

?The fish is indeed rotting from the head, and we are all choking on the stench of its decay.