Rand bucks political risk – Moneyweb

South Africa’s rand is shrugging off the threat that President Cyril Ramaphosa may be impeached, reflecting a bet that economic reforms he has championed will endure if he falls.

The veteran leader rejected calls to resign during a late-Monday address to the nation, which now waits for the next procedural steps in a saga involving a theft from his farm that surfaced in 2022 and was dramatically resurrected by a court ruling on May 8.

The currency is within 0.2 percent of its level against the dollar before the judgment. Its movements look more tied to the Iran war than local politics, where the president leads a centrist coalition known as the government of national unity that investors expected to endure.

“The GNU is making good progress, thus supporting the rand,” said Devon Pearman, head of Africa at TP ICAP Group Plc in Johannesburg. “Even if the head changes, the structure remains, providing a degree of stability.”

While Ramaphosa’s African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority in 2024 elections, he forged a coalition government that has begun to deliver on promised reforms, winning over investors who previously had shunned South Africa over chronic graft and mismanagement.

That’s a big change in the political landscape from four years ago, when the scandal burst into view after the country’s former spy chief accused Ramaphosa of trying to cover up the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden in a sofa on his Phala Phala game farm in 2020.

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The shift has lessened the sway of left-wingers in the ANC, some of whom have defected to former President Jacob Zuma’s uMkhonto weSizwe party,  or MKP, which alongside the radical Economic Freedom Fighters are now the main opposition to the president’s coalition, said Sebastian Holzbach, fixed-income analyst at Northstar Asset Management.

GNU outlook

“Parties within the GNU are aware of the risks present should President Ramaphosa be removed,” said Holzbach, citing the possibility of the left flank of the ANC merging with the MKP and EFF, which both back nationalization. “It would be in their interests and in those of the country for the GNU framework to continue toward the next general election” in 2029, he said.

Ramaphosa may not last until then, but that’s not news. His term as leader of the ANC expires in December 2027 and he is likely to relinquish the post. The party’s two previous departing heads have been forced to stepped aside as the nation’s president shortly after its internal elections.

The likelihood of Ramaphosa departing imminently has shrunk since his defiant declaration that he won’t stand down, though the drama will continue to unfold.

The May 8 ruling by the Constitutional Court, which found lawmakers erred four years ago when they failed to establish an impeachment committee to look into the Phala Phala theft, ordered parliament to resume the process.

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An advisory committee report, which examined the incident and found his handling of the burglary may have breached the constitution, is scheduled to be submitted to parliament on Tuesday.

But Ramaphosa plans to challenge the findings of the report, which he said was based on hearsay and provided no evidence of wrongdoing, which he has always denied.

It’s unclear if the process of the impeachment committee will have to wait until this challenges is resolved one way or the other.

Geordin Hill-Lewis, leader of South Africa’s second-largest party the Democratic Alliance and a GNU partner, said the speaker of parliament should seek legal advice on whether the impeachment process must now pause or proceed.

“If there was any serious evidence of wrongdoing, I think it would make his position untenable,” he told SAFM radio on Tuesday. “As we stand today, we don’t have any firm evidence of that,” he said. “This is why we need the impeachment committee to get underway and investigate this properly.”

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