SEVEN years after the lid was blown on president Cyril Ramaphosa’s CR17 ANC election campaign, it seems to have returned to haunt him ahead of the May 29 elections.
This as accusations of bribing of voting members by the CR17 camp at the ANC’s 2017 elective resurfaced.
This time South African controversial billionaire, Rob Hersov has accused Ramaphosa of bribing the former Deputy President to do a U-turn on voting for Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma at the last minute, resulting in a win for Ramaphosa.
In a video that recently went viral on social media, the political funder asserted that Ramaphosa had initially lost the ANC’s 54th conference held at Nasrec in 2017, but was bailed out by another businessman, former Investec CEO, Stephen Kosseff.
He said the money donated to Ramaphosa was given to David Mabuza as a bribe for him to change sides.
Ramaphosa, who was deputy president at the time, emerged victorious in December 2017 after narrowly defeating former president Jacob Zuma’s wife, Dlamini-Zuma for position of ANC president.
Mabuza, who had the Mpumalanga constituency who was expected to vote for Dlamini-Zuma, voted at the last minute for Ramaphosa to secure victory.
Mabuza became deputy president of both the ANC and the country after that conference.
Now Hersov has accused Mabuza of receiving a bribe to make the impromptu decision of joining Ramaphosa’s slate.
He was speaking in a video, dated 20 April 2024, making the rounds, which is believed to be a BizNews event.
“When Cyril (Ramaphosa) got elected on CR17. He lost the election but at the very last minute with funding organised by Stephen Kosseff and a lot of good South Africans allowed Cyril to bribe David Mabuza to cross the floor and win,” Hersov said.
Mabuza, Kosseff and Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, did not respond to questions sent by ‘The Star’.
This was not the first time that Hersov had gone on a full-on attack on Ramaphosa.
Less than two years ago, when he was a keynote speaker at another BizNewsTV conference in Hermanus, Hersov had launched a scathing attack on the ANC President.
He reportedly said at the time: “For those of you who still believe that Cyril Ramaphosa is a reformer, those of you who still believe that, the greater fool you. For those of you who believe he is not pushing forward with the National Democratic Revolution, those of you who believe he is not part of the Rapid Economic Transition, the greater fool you.
“He is just a smoother, silkier, more evil way of pushing the socialist agenda forward. At best he should be reading the news on SABC….that’s all that man is good for. He has never done anything in his life that he has truly deserved. He was given his money as a BEE ‘tenderpreneur’. He has not earned his stripes. He is a sneaky, spineless and useless human being, pushing a socialist agenda on all of us. Wake up South Africa….and stop kissing Cyril’s #%S.”
During the scandal, leaked emails containing statements of the CR17 campaign emerged purporting that Ramaphosa had won the conference because of that money.
Among those who allegedly funded Ramaphosa’s leaked CR17 list, were former trade unionist turned businessman, Johnny Copelyn who later, according to SA Jewish Report, said he wasn’t ashamed of donating to his campaign.
The then public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane investigated the CR17 campaign and found that there was also a donation by Bosasa, an ANC-linked company.
In her report after the probe, she accused Ramaphosa of deliberately misleading parliament about the Bosasa donation and ruling that he violated the Executive Ethics Code by failing to disclose the benefit which accrued to him by way of donations to the CR17 campaign.
However, Ramaphosa successfully interdicted Mkhwebane’s report. The Constitutional Court at the time set aside Mkhwebane’s findings that Ramaphosa had acted unlawfully.
The Concourt found Mkhwebane had made errors in fact and law in making the findings that the president had acted unlawfully, and that she had acted outside the scope of her powers by investigating the funding of the CR17 campaign.
The Star