The mystery at Phala Phala lingers and has two disturbing hallmarks: the timing of the charges being levied during an ANC elective conference year and the odour of wrong doing and cover up. The short version of the story is that a robbery took place on tFebruary 2020 on the farm of President CyrilRamaphosa.  At minimum hundreds of thousands of dollars and a maximum several millions of US dollars in cash were taken.  The theftwent unreported.  The money and the thieves remain unaccounted for.  It mewhat problematic that the messenger in this story, ArthurFrazer is himself a controversial figure but nevertheless this story reads as"where there is smoke, there is fire'.  The timing of laying thecharges does reek of elective conference year "mud-slinging'.  Whendid he come into this knowledge and why has he not come out with it sooner?

THE GREAT ROBBERY

The President has confirmed that the robbery took place and in his version the cash were proceeds of a cash transaction for cattle.  The "purchaser' of the cattle was identified by the President as Mustaf Mohamed Ibrahim Hazim.  The money was allegedly given to employees on the farm and then the storage of the cash became a problem.  In current reporting, the President acknowledges that he was aware that the cash was on the farm prior to it being stolen and was aware of the unusual storage solution for such a significant amount of cash.  There remain many questions in this version of the story too.

 THE PROBE

The National Assembly Speaker, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, has decided to appoint an independent panel to determine if the President has a case to answer.  After receiving names from the opposition parties, the panel appointed is made up of retired Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo (he will chair the panel), High Court judge Thokozile Masipa and academic Associate Professor Richard Calland from the University of Cape Town ("UCT').  They will have thirty (30) days to provide a finding.  From a legal perspective the panellists appear to be qualified and competent.  The politics around the panel remain fraught with the opposition parties being unhappy that none of the names they offered made it to the panel.  Professor Calland's appointment seemed to have raised the ire of the Democratic Alliance ("DA') and the Economic Freedom Fighters ("EFF,) with them claiming as a political commentator, Calland has demonstrated bias against the opposition and favour towards Ramaphosa in particular.

 MANY QUESTIONS

The terms of reference of the panel are not clear at this stage.  Will they discover what the money was really for? Will it be possible to determine how much money was stolen? Was the stolen proceeds of an ongoing criminal enterprise or simple corruption? Was it a once-off act of attempting to circumvent the tax implications of the sale of cattle? Was it in fact, a once-off cash payment for a "proper' commercial transaction? If so, why cash and did the cash enter the country in the proper way? Why was the theft not disclosed? When did the President know about the theft and did he indeed take measures to conceal it? If so, why? Does the President know the identity of the thieves?  To an outside observer there remain many questions and most of the potential answers do not exonerate the President.

 HOW BEST TO DEAL WITH THIS?

The question of how to deal with a situation where a sitting President is allegedly involved in criminal wrong doing was never going to be easy.  As a country we have had significant experience with former President Zuma and trying to determine whether wrong doing took place and whether it rose to a criminal level and how he should account for it.  The results were not the triumph of public accountability we the public deserve. The political establishment's preference for dealing with matters such as these through sub-committees, independent panels and commissions has yielded in the main unsatisfactory results for the public (see the Seriti Commission and others).  Even where some wrong doing is uncovered there appeared to be limited accountability.  The troubled Public Protector's office has an ongoing investigation into this matter but in the wake of so many overturned reports from that quarter ?" there is little hope that they will be able to deliver a credible report.

 OBJECTIVITY REQUIRED

Like it or not the investigation of a sitting President is political in nature.  As such the political will needs to exist to provide the public with an objective process that (with the requisite speed) will determine if there was wrong doing and whether such wrong doing rise to a criminal level and if that is the case that there be a clear path to accountability.  If the process is tainted with political bias and taxpayer funds are wasted in a "white washing' exercise, we the public will be left with (as so many times before) unanswered questions and the convictio nthat there is set of rules for us ("Joe Public') and a different set of rules for the political elite.