Africa Business

Troops and rebels traded heavy fire in eastern DR Congo on Monday, a military source and local inhabitants said, as an envoy from the East African bloc pursued efforts to hold a “peace dialogue” on the region’s troubles.

Government forces and the M23 militia were fighting in Kibumba, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the strategic city of Goma in North Kivu province, they said, speaking by phone.

M23 fighters were also seen about 40 kms to the northwest of the city in the Virunga National Park, a wildlife haven famed for its mountain gorillas but which is also a bolthole for armed groups, the sources said.

A mostly Congolese Tutsi group, the M23 — the March 23 Movement — leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured Goma before being driven out. 

After lying dormant for years, the rebels took up arms again in late 2021, claiming the DRC had failed to honour a pledge to integrate them into the army, among other grievances.

They have since won a string of victories against the army and captured swathes of territory, prompting thousands of people to flee their homes.

The resurgence has ratcheted up diplomatic tensions, with the Democratic Republic of Congo accusing its smaller neighbour Rwanda of backing the group.

Kinshasa expelled Rwanda’s ambassador at the end of last month as the M23 advanced, and recalled its envoy from Kigali.

Rwanda denies providing any support for the M23 and accuses the Congolese army of colluding with the Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) — a notorious Hutu rebel movement involved in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda. 

Eastern DR Congo was the theatre of two bloody regional wars in the 1990s.

That conflict, along with the Rwandan genocide, bequeathed a legacy of scores of armed groups which are active across the region but especially in North Kivu.

The heads of the seven-nation East African Community (EAC) on Sunday announced they would hold a “peace dialogue” on the region’s problems.

EAC’s mediator, former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta arrived in Kinshasa on Sunday for talks aimed at paving the way for the meeting, set to take place on November 21.

The bloc has not spelt out who will take part in the talks or how long they are scheduled to run.

Another diplomatic path is being explored by Angolan President Joao Lourenco.

He met on Friday with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and on Saturday with Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi.

Jailed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel Fattah has written he is “doing well” and is taking liquids after fears rose for his health amid a months-long hunger strike, his family said Monday.

Abdel Fattah, who consumed “only 100 calories a day” for seven months, escalated his strike, first to all food, then water as the COP27 climate summit opened on November 6 in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

His sister Sanaa Seif on Monday welcomed a letter he addressed to his family as “proof of life, at last”.

The activist’s lawyer Khaled Ali, a former presidential candidate, was denied access when he attempted to visit Abdel Fattah at the Wadi al-Natroun prison on Thursday and again on Sunday, despite saying he had been issued with the necessary permits.

He and Abdel Fattah’s mother Laila Soueif were handed the letter on Monday when they returned to the prison a third time, before the lawyer was again denied the right to visit.

In Abdel Fattah’s letter, “dated November 12, he writes he is doing well, under medical supervision, and has begun drinking water,” Ali wrote on Facebook.

The activist’s sister meanwhile confirmed in a statement that “it is his handwriting”, but asked “why did they hold this letter back from us for two days? Is it just cruelty to punish the family for speaking up?”

Echoing demands she made during COP27, Seif said her brother “needs to be on a plane to London and only then will we allow ourselves to feel true relief”.

“Alaa is still on hunger strike, the UK embassy has still failed to achieve consular access, he’s still arbitrarily detained with no end in sight.”

– ‘Watched’ at COP27 –

Abdel Fattah, a key figure in the 2011 uprising that toppled longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, is serving a five-year prison sentence for “spreading false news” by sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.

He has been leading headlines since the UN climate talks began last week in Egypt, which sought to burnish its image by hosting COP27 but has come under fire over its human rights record.

Attending the summit to campaign for her brother’s release, Seif was last week heckled by pro-government attendees, who called her brother a “criminal”, not a “political prisoner”.

A German diplomatic source said a complaint was lodged with Egypt as their delegation — which hosted Seif and other human rights defenders — “felt we were being watched”.

Since the beginning of the UN climate summit, activists have complained about “being questioned” and feared they would “be followed”, as rights groups warned against draconian surveillance measures.

Liane Schalatek, associate director of the Heinrich Boll Stiftung foundation in Washington, said on German television that she felt “more uncomfortable than at any other COP before”.

A climate finance expert who has attended COP conferences since 2008, she said this time cameras in meeting rooms were directed at the faces of speakers.

“This is both unnecessary and unusual for such internal coordination meetings,” she said. “The possibility that everything is being recorded cannot be ruled out.”

– Presidential pardons –

International pressure has mounted since world leaders began arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh last week. Several raised the case in bilateral meetings with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, most recently US President Joe Biden on Friday.

Biden welcomed Sisi’s reactivation of a dormant presidential pardon committee, which has facilitated the release of several high-profile political prisoners this year.

On Friday, Abdel Fattah’s other sister Mona Seif announced the family had submitted a new request for presidential pardon.

The plea was picked up by one of Egypt’s most watched talk show hosts, the ardently pro-Sisi Amr Adib.

On prime time television Friday, Adib said the pardon would be in “the interest of Egypt first and foremost”.

Prolific African scorers Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting and Victor Osimhen netted again at the weekend in the final European league matches before the World Cup break.

Choupo-Moting, set to lead the Cameroon attack in Qatar, bagged his 10th goal in nine games in all competitions with the second for leaders Bayern Munich in a 2-0 Bundesliga win at Schalke. 

Osimhen, who will miss the World Cup as Nigeria surprisingly lost a play-off against Ghana, put Serie A pacesetters Napoli ahead in a 3-2 victory over Udinese.

Here, AFP Sport highlights African headline-makers:

ENGLAND

WILFRIED ZAHA (Crystal Palace) 

The Ivory Coast winger failed to add to his six Premier League goals this season when he dragged a penalty wide after being fouled as mid-table Palace lost 1-0 at lowly Nottingham Forest.

ITALY

VICTOR OSIMHEN (Napoli)

He is making headlines almost every week in Italy and was again on target as Napoli maintained their eight-point lead. He tops the scoring charts with nine strikes after heading Napoli into the lead.

M’BALA NZOLA (Spezia)

Angolan Nzola paid the perfect tribute to injured Spezia teammate Bartlomiej Dragowski with his first goals away from home this season, which gave his team a 2-1 win at rock-bottom Verona. Nzola struck his winning brace after Poland goalkeeper Dragowski suffered an ankle injury which will keep him out of the World Cup.

GERMANY

ERIC MAXIM CHOUPO-MOTING (Bayern Munich)

Choupo-Moting scored his side’s second at rock-bottom Schalke after being set up by teenager Jamal Musiala. Defending champions Bayern are six points clear of RB Leipzig. 

RAMY BENSEBAINI (Borussia Moenchengladbach)

Off-contract Algeria defender Bensebaini showed why he has clubs lining up to secure his services with a strong performance against potential suitors Borussia Dortmund. Bensebaini rose to head in a free kick, triggering a momentum shift which saw Moenchengladbach win 4-2 at home.  

WILFRIED KANGA (Hertha Berlin)

Ivorian striker Kanga scored his second goal of the season as Hertha won 2-0 at home against Cologne to climb out of the relegation zone. Kanga scored after just nine minutes to put Hertha on course for just a third win this season. 

FRANCE

ACHRAF HAKIMI (Paris Saint-Germain)

World Cup-bound Morocco defender Hakimi had a role in Kylian Mbappe’s opener and then scored the third as rampant PSG brushed past Auxerre 5-0 to keep their five-point cushion on top of Ligue 1. Carlos Soler teed up Hakimi for the third goal after 57 minutes for the former Real Madrid and Inter Milan player.

AMINE HARIT (Marseille)

It was a bad night for another Moroccan, however, with striker Harit stretchered off with a knee injury in the 58th minute of Marseille’s 3-2 win at Monaco. He has since withdrawn from the Atlas Lions’ squad for Qatar.

SEKO FOFANA/ABDUL SAMED (Lens)

Ivorian midfielder Fofana scored the winner as Lens kept the pressure on leaders PSG with a 2-1 home victory against Clermont consolidating second spot. Ghanaian ex-Clermont player Samed turned the goal into his own net to give the visitors the advantage but Wesley Said pulled Lens level after an hour with captain Fofana bagging the winner.

STEVE MOUNIE (Brest)

Benin forward Mounie scored the winner from a penalty with quarter of an hour to go as Brest earned a valuable three points in the battle against relegation with a 2-1 win over fellow strugglers Troyes.

A scheme to give speedy financial support to communities battered by climate disasters was launched Monday by a group of rich and developing nations at the UN COP27 summit in Egypt.

The “Global Shield against Climate Risks” comes as many of the most vulnerable nations are also demanding wider compensation for the “loss and damage” they have already suffered from a heating planet.

The initiative, backed by the G7 and launched with initial funding of more than $200 million, aims to provide “pre-arranged financial support designed to be quickly deployed in times of climate disasters”. 

The Global Shield project “is long overdue”, said Ken Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s finance minister and chair of the V20 group of nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.   

“It has never been a question of who pays for loss and damage, because we are paying for it,” he said in recorded remarks at the summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. 

“Our economies pay for it in lost growth prospects, our enterprises pay for it in business disruption, and our communities pay for it in lives and livelihoods lost.”

He said he hoped the project would help the most vulnerable communities but also aid wider understanding of the challenges emerging economies face as they are being hammered by climate-induced floods, heatwaves or droughts. 

A first group of nations that will benefit from the scheme includes Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Fiji, Ghana, Pakistan, the Philippines and Senegal.

– ‘Need protection now’ –

Nations at the COP27 agreed this year for the first time to include the thorny topic of loss and damage on the formal agenda, after years of reluctance from richer polluters wary of creating open-ended liability.

Germany said the Global Shield scheme, largely in the form of insurance that pays out immediately after — or even before — a climate disaster, would be part of a broader effort to respond to loss and damage.  

Svenja Schulze, Germany’s minister of economic cooperation and development, stressed that the scheme was not “a tactic” to sidestep calls for a specific loss and damage funding mechanism.

“The Global Shield isn’t the one and only solution for loss and damage, certainly not,” she said, adding that more funding will be needed to cover more countries. 

“Those most affected by climate impacts need practical action now.” 

The Global Shield is designed to provide a range of financial, social and credit protection and insurance for loss of crops, livestock, property and other goods. 

It also promises to support the swift delivery of funds for humanitarian agencies responding to disasters.  

– ‘Life and death’ –

A formal loss and damage funding stream would likely go further, also covering longer-onset climate impacts such as sea level rise and threats to cultural heritage.  

Besides $170 million from Germany, funding includes $20 million from France, $10 million from Ireland, $7 million from Canada and $4.7 million from Denmark.

France later said its total commitment would be $60 million over three years. 

The V20 bloc, made up of 58 developing nations, released research this year that estimated countries had lost some $525 billion to climate impacts since 2000. 

Ninety-eight percent of the nearly 1.5 billion people in V20 countries do not have financial protection, it said.

“We’re talking about people living under the poverty line, they’re not going to be buying insurance,” said Rachel Cleetus, lead economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate programme. 

“Insurance can help you up to a point but climate change is now creating conditions in many parts of the world that are beyond the bounds of what’s insurable,” she told AFP, referring to sea level rise, desertification and the mass displacement of populations. 

Teresa Anderson of ActionAid International said the scheme showed that the global community recognised the need to act on loss and damage, but said it was a “distraction” from negotiations on a dedicated funding mechanism for climate damages.   

“Everyone knows that insurance companies, by their very nature, are either reluctant to provide coverage, or reluctant to pay out,” she said. “But when it comes to loss and damage, this is a matter of life and death.”

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo on Monday fired his junior finance minister over corruption allegations made in an upcoming documentary on illegal gold mining.

The president has “terminated the appointment of the Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance, Mr Charles Adu Boahen, with immediate effect,” he said in a statement.

The fallout from the expose by a well-known investigative journalist comes as the government is under pressure over a faltering economy and lawmakers push Akufo-Addo to fire Finance Minister Kenneth Ofori-Atta.   

The presidency’s statement said Akufo-Addo’s decision came after “being made aware of the allegations” against Boahen in the documentary “Galamsey Economy,” which is scheduled to be released on Monday.

Akufo-Addo also referred the case to prosecutors for further investigation.

Teasers from the expose show Boahen in what the documentary claims are images of him trying to demand $200,000 from potential investors to give to the vice president to allow them to do business. 

Galamsey is a local Ghanaian phrase referring to the illegal or unregulated, small-scale gold mining operations.

Boahen has not commented on the allegations made in the teasers.

But before the sacking was announced, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia on Monday said he was not aware of any meeting in which Boahen had used his name to “peddle influence and collect money from supposed investors.”

“If what the minister is alleged to have said is accurately captured in the video, then his position as a minister of state is untenable,” he wrote on Twitter.

“I will not allow anyone to use my name to engage in corrupt activities.”

The documentary was made by Anas Aremeyaw Anas, whose previous exposes led to a ban on the former Ghana FA president by FIFA and sanctioning of over 50 referees across Africa. 

He has also investigated the country’s judiciary leading to the dismissal of over 30 superior and lower court judges in Ghana over bribes to drop cases.

The documentary will have a public screening at the Accra International Conference Centre for two days.

Akufo-Addo has been under increasing pressure after recently opening negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a potential $3 billion loan to help shore up the country’s economy.

Last month he appealed to Ghanaians to support his efforts to manage the “crisis” as inflation has hit 40 percent and the national currency, the cedi, has dropped sharply.

Lawmakers are investigating Finance Minister Ofori-Atta over economic mismanagement and other allegations though he is leading the talks with the IMF team over the loan deal.

COP27 entered its final week Monday with rich carbon polluters and developing nations at loggerheads over how to speed up and fund reductions in emissions.

The stand-off comes as advanced economies are pressed into acknowledging the need to compensate their developing peers for accelerating climate damage, and as total funding needs appear poised to run into trillions, rather than billions, of dollars.  

Somewhere in the middle, China — accounting for 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, by far the largest share — is feeling pressure from both sides, not only to enhance its carbon cutting goals but to step up as a donor nation, negotiators and analysts say.

At last year’s UN climate summit in Glasgow, nearly 200 countries vowed to “keep alive” the Paris Agreement’s aspirational goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Nearly 1.2C of warming so far has seen a cascade of increasingly severe climate disasters, such as the flooding that left a third of Pakistan under water this summer, claiming at least 1,700 lives and inflicting $30 to $40 billion in damage.

The Glasgow Pact urged nations to ramp up their emissions reduction commitments ahead of this year’s summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, but with little immediate uptake by nations.

This leaves the world on track to hot up by about 2.5C — enough, scientists say, to trigger dangerous climate tipping points. 

– ‘Make our lives easier’ –

Meanwhile, China and India have called the 1.5C goal into question, with Beijing pointing out that the binding target agreed in Paris was “well below” 2C. The 1.5C is a non-binding ambition, but has since been confirmed by science as a far safer global threshold. 

“Egypt doesn’t intend to be the country that hosts a retreat from what was achieved in Glasgow,” US special climate envoy John Kerry said at the weekend, adding that “most countries here have no intention of going backwards”.

At COP27’s midpoint, countries are at an impasse, awaiting the arrival of ministers to cut through political knots above the pay grade of negotiators. 

“All the big political crunch issues are unresolved,” said Alden Meyer, a senior analyst at climate think tank E3G. 

A reality-check report released at COP27 last week showed CO2 emissions from coal, gas and oil are on track to hit record levels in 2022.

To accelerate decarbonisation, many developing nations — including small island states whose very existence is threatened by rising seas — favour a deepened commitment to the 1.5C target. 

Negotiators in Sharm el-Sheikh will look to a bilateral meeting Monday in Bali between China’s Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, along with the communique from a G20 meeting both will subsequently attend, for signals that could break the deadlock in Egypt.

“Confirming the 1.5C goal in Bali would make our lives easier,” a senior negotiator at the climate talks said. 

– ‘Polluters must pay’ –

When it comes to money, the spotlight in Egypt is on so-called loss and damage, UN-speak for the life, property and cultural heritage lost in natural disasters.

Rich nations fearful of creating an open-ended liability regime agreed only this year to include this thorny topic on the formal agenda. 

Developing nations are calling for the creation of a separate facility, but the US and the European Union — while not precluding such an outcome — have said they favour using existing financial channels.

“This is the highest profile, most political issue at the COP,” said Meyer.

On Monday, G7 countries and nearly 60 nations most vulnerable to climate change formally launched a scheme aimed at providing financial support for communities battered by climate disasters, with around $211 million of initial funding.

Kenneth Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s finance minister and chair of the ‘V20’ group of nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, said the scheme “is long overdue”.

Another track of the talks, meanwhile, has opened on how much money the Global South will get — after current pledges of $100 billion a year expire in 2024 — to help green their economies and prepare for future warming.

Options range from expanding access to IMF and World Bank funds, to a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies, to broadening the base of donor nations to include China, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other nations. 

“China and India are major polluters, and the polluter must pay,” Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said last week, speaking for the AOSIS coalition of small island states.

“I don’t think there are free passes for any country.”

The main opposition parties in the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland say they will no longer recognise the territory’s president after elections were postponed and his term extended.

President Muse Bihi Abdi’s term of office has been extended to 2024 by the Guurti, a non-elected gathering of elders drawn from traditional tribes that is also the upper house of parliament.

Elections should have taken place on Sunday, a month before Bihi was due to leave office, but were postponed by Somaliland’s electoral commission in September.

“The mandate of the current president Bihi has ended today after he had failed to hold an election,” the two biggest opposition parties said in a statement issued late Sunday.

“Starting from today, we don’t recognize the legitimacy of the president and his government,” it said.

The two parties, Waddani and the Justice and Welfare Party (UCID), said they stood by unity and democracy and urged supporters to show “restraint and calm.”

Somaliland is a former British protectorate that declared independence from Somalia in 1991.

The move has not been recognised by the international community, and the Horn of Africa region of some 4.5 million people is poor and isolated.

On September 24, Somaliland’s electoral body said the November 13 presidential ballot could not take place on schedule for “technical and financial reasons”.

It did not indicate a potential new date, saying only that there would be “a nine-month delay from October 1, 2022.”

The Guurti announced on October 1 that Bihi’s tenure would be extended by two years, despite opposition parties warning that they were against the move, and fears of bloodshed have risen.

In August, several people were killed and dozens were wounded after police opened fire on protesters angered at suspicions that the elections would be postponed.

Bihi was elected to a five-year term in November 2017, which itself had been delayed by around two years because of drought and technical problems. 

Despite its problems, Somaliland has remained relatively stable compared with Somalia, which has been wracked by decades of civil war, political violence and an Islamist insurgency.

On Thursday, the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank urged Somaliland’s international partners to play a more active role to resolve the political crisis.

They should “push its political elites to chart a consensus path forward, offer to mediate if they fail and volunteer to serve as guarantors for whatever resolution emerges,” the ICG said.

Wealthy Western nations facing an energy crunch are eyeing natural gas in Africa at the expense of supporting green transition in poorer countries, climate activists at COP27 charge.

European countries have been scrambling for alternative sources of gas after the continent’s former top supplier, Russia, slashed exports in apparent retaliation for Western sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

Gas-rich Norway has since overtaken Russia as a leading supplier, but Europe sees great potential in African fossil fuel reserves, including promising oil and gas discoveries in Senegal and Democratic Republic of Congo.

Europe wants “to turn Africa into its gas station,” Mohamed Adow, director of the Power Shift Africa think tank, said at the UN climate summit in Egypt.

“We don’t have to follow the footsteps of the rich world that actually caused climate change in the first place.”

Exporting natural gas may bring short-term profits but exacerbate the climate crisis and leave African nations worse off in the long run, activists, researchers and advocacy groups said.

Research group Climate Action Tracker called the global dash for gas a “serious threat” to the Paris Agreement goals — of keeping global warming well below two degrees Celsius, and preferably at 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels.

– ‘Stranded assets’ –

Some African leaders argued the potential benefits for people on the world’s poorest continent outweighed the harm from the production and export of fossil fuels.

“We are in favour of a just and fair green transition, instead of decisions that harm our development process,” Senegalese President Macky Sall told some 100 world leaders last week at COP27.

Germany — the European country most dependent on Russian supplies before the war — has been keen to tap Senegal’s gas deposits.

Omar Farouk Ibrahim, secretary general of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization, argued the slight increase in the continent’s marginal contribution to greenhouse gas emissions “would make a fundamental difference in whether people live or die”.

“We have 600 million people in Africa who don’t have access to electricity at all. We have over 900 million people in Africa who do not have access to modern form of energy for cooking or domestic heating,” he said.

“No progress can be made in any society without energy.”

But advocacy groups were not convinced Africa’s poor would reap any benefits.

“History shows us that… extraction in African countries has not resulted in development,” said Thuli Makama, African programme director at Oil Change International.

Makama, a lawyer from Eswatini, said the Ukraine war would only trigger “short-term” demand from Western nations, leaving African countries with “stranded assets” — infrastructure that becomes obsolete as the world turns to renewables.

Governments and companies would have invested in infrastructure only to be “left with stranded assets, clean-up expenses and all the devastation that comes with the industry for local people”, Makama warned.

– ‘Incredible’ potential –

A report released Monday by the Carbon Tracker Initiative think tank said Western investment in fossil fuels will eventually evaporate, encouraging African countries instead to seize on the potential offered by solar power.

“The way to help us actually address our energy poverty challenge is for us to tap the incredible renewable energy potential that exists on the continent of Africa,” Adow said.

African nations could refuse any further extraction of fossil fuels and make the continent a “green leader”, he added.

But investment in renewable energy across the continent last year fell to its lowest level in 11 years, the research group BloombergNEF said on Wednesday.

Out of the $434 billion invested worldwide in renewables in 2021, a meagre 0.6 percent went to projects in Africa, the report said.

The Carbon Tracker Initiative report said the solar industry across Africa provided 14 gigawatts of power in 2021.

It noted however that with production costs falling, solar power in Africa “has the potential to grow… to over 400 gigawatts by 2050” — half of the continent’s energy needs.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday brushed aside calls for him to resign over an alleged criminal cover-up, as he set the stage for a key party conference next month.

The decision-making body of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) convened in a Johannesburg suburb at the weekend to discuss preparations for the party’s upcoming national elective conference.

The meeting was overshadowed by the controversy surrounding accusations Ramaphosa attempted to cover up a multi-million-dollar cash theft at his luxury cattle farmhouse.

The scandal risks derailing Ramaphosa’s bid for a second term at the helm of the ANC, which in December is to pick a new leader in hotly contested internal polls. 

The winner is to become the party’s candidate for the next presidential election in 2024.

The president, who denies any wrongdoing, reportedly faced questioning from party rivals and calls to step down at the closed-door gathering. 

On Sunday, Carl Niehaus, an outspoken former member of the ANC’s National Executive Committee (NEC), posted on social media photos of himself staging a small protest outside the meeting.

In a statement Niehaus, an ANC veteran, said the president had “brought the party into disrepute”. 

But in televised closing remarks at the end of the NEC gathering, a tired-looking Ramaphosa did not address the issue, focusing instead on social and welfare policies. 

Ramaphosa said the conference would focus on rebuilding the ANC, and did not take questions.

– ‘Gladly step aside’ –

In a separate press briefing earlier during the day, presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya said Ramaphosa “will gladly step aside” if he were to be charged but stressed this was not the case.

Under ANC party rules members charged with serious crimes have 30 days to leave their post or face suspension.

The scandal erupted in June after South Africa’s former spy chief filed a complaint with the police alleging robbers broke into the president’s Phala Phala farm in the northeast of the country.

There, they stole $4 million in cash stashed in furniture.

The complaint alleged that Ramaphosa hid the robbery from the authorities and instead organised for the robbers to be kidnapped and bribed into silence.

The president has acknowledged a burglary but denies kidnapping and bribery, saying he reported the break-in to the police. 

He has also disputed the amount of money involved, explaining it came from legitimate sales of game from his animal-breeding farm.

Earlier this month, he denied any wrongdoing in testimony to a parliamentary panel examining whether he should face impeachment. 

Yet the issue has tarnished Ramaphosa who came to power on a promise of tackling corruption after the graft-tainted era of Jacob Zuma.

Tommy Fleetwood from England successfully defended the Nedbank Golf Challenge title on Sunday, three years after winning the competition for the first time in the South African resort of Sun City. 

“I am going to get stuck in,” he promised on Saturday after finishing the third round three shots behind the leaders, Belgian Thomas Detry and Dane Rasmus Hojgaard in the European Tour event.

While the co-leaders faded in the final round at the Gary Player Country Club 175 kilometres (110 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, Fleetwood carded a five-under 67 for a one-stroke win.

The 31-year-old was level with Ryan Fox on the 18th tee in the final round, and a brilliant long putt and a tap-in helped Fleetwood to a par while the New Zealander carded a bogey five.    

Fox had to play a ‘blind’ second shot after a wayward drive, was short of the green in two, went through it with his chip and two putted.  

Finishing second was particularly disappointing for the son of New Zealand rugby legend Grant Fox as he would have replaced Rory McIlroy at the top of the European rankings had he triumphed.

McIlroy, Fox and Fleetwood will compete in the season-closing event on the European circuit in Dubai from Thursday.  

Fleetwood birdied four holes on the front nine of a final round that was  interrupted for three hours by the threat of lightning.

His only blip was a bogey at the par-three 12th, but he recovered his momentum quickly with an eagle two holes later.

The 2020 and 2021 editions of the Nedbank Challenge were cancelled due ot the coronavirus pandemic.