President Cyril Ramaphosa has dismissed remarks made by former Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng on his CR17 campaign.
- President Cyril Ramaphosa is unfazed by the remarks made by former Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng on his CR17 campaign.
- At the inaugural SAfm Public Lecture, Mogoeng made scathing remarks on Ramaphosa for failing to disclose his CR17 campaign donors.
- Ramaphosa, who is in Dubai for the COP28 climate conference, said the comments were a non-issue.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has described former Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng’s opinion about him and his administration as a non-issue.
Ramaphosa spoke on the sidelines of the UN Conference of Parties (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Saturday.
Mogoeng had told a gathering at the inaugural SAfm Public Lecture that Ramaphosa should have disclosed his donors during his presidential campaign to avoid, among other things, conflict of interest.
Ramaphosa responded saying: “I am not fully alive to what he said. He is a former chief justice and I made it a point never to get into a wrestling match with the judiciary, whether acting or no longer acting. That [Mogoeng’s statement], to me, is no longer an issue.”
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Mogoeng made scathing remarks on Ramaphosa for failing to disclose his CR17 campaign donors.
That campaign got Ramaphosa elected ANC president in December 2017.
Mogoeng said:
The possibility of an unhealthy relationship with donors and the risk of conflict between the deputy president’s official responsibilities, as he then was, and his private interests, as the enabled most senior political party functionary, could then be closely watched to check whether the financial support had induced him or repositioned his disposition or heart to the point where his commitment to his constitutional obligations was in any way compromised or his government’s treatment of funders was more favourable than of those who did not fund him or gave less. This is … what [the] foundational values of openness and accountability, as well as the regulatory framework, properly understood, seek to address.
In July 2021, the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria dismissed, with costs, the EFF’s application to have the CR17 campaign bank statements made public.
The EFF had approached the court to force the disclosure of the statements in an application linked to Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s invalidated report on the CR17 campaign finances.
Mkhwebane had investigated Ramaphosa’s campaign finances and found that he failed in his ethical duty to disclose donations made to his drive to claim the ANC presidency. She also found that some of the payments made to the CR17 campaign raised a reasonable suspicion of money laundering and ordered that Ramaphosa disclose all his CR17 donations to Parliament.
All those findings and directives were roundly rejected by the Constitutional Court’s majority.
