PRETORIA — ActionSA is launching a decisive legal challenge at the North Gauteng High Court to overturn the disciplinary acquittal of Presidential Protection Unit (PPU) officials Wally Rhoode and Hlulani Rekhoto in the Phala Phala farm scandal. The political party asserts that newly uncovered evidence exposes a systematic SAPS cover-up designed to shield the officers from accountability for their alleged unlawful conduct surrounding the 2020 theft of millions of US dollars at President Cyril Ramaphosa’s game farm.
ActionSA national chairperson Michael Beaumont strongly condemned the 2024 internal SAPS investigation that cleared the two officers, drawing direct comparisons to the notorious “Nathi Nhleko firepool” defense. Beaumont revealed that the official disciplinary records were astonishingly brief—spanning a mere four pages for one officer and two pages for the other. Despite the severity of the allegations and prior scrutiny by multiple independent institutions, the SAPS panel reportedly called zero witnesses, conducted no cross-corroboration of facts, and controversially concluded that the officers bore no responsibility to report the crime, shifting that burden entirely onto the farm manager.
The impending court application highlights a stark contradiction between investigative findings. While the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) and the Public Protector determined that the officers acted outside their lawful mandates and breached eight specific SAPS regulations, the internal police disciplinary hearing only investigated two of those eight infractions. Beaumont noted that ActionSA had to legally fight an unlawful “top secret” classification to access the IPID report, ultimately winning the right to publish the document for the South African public in April of this year.
A focal point of the alleged cover-up involves an unauthorized cross-border operation. The PPU members traveled to Namibia to locate and interrogate suspects, an expedition previously flagged by the Public Protector and the parliamentary impeachment committee panel as fruitless and wasteful expenditure. This included the deployment of rented BMW X5 vehicles. Adding to the procedural irregularities, Beaumont pointed out that former presidential adviser Bejani Chauke, who allegedly accompanied Rhoode to Namibia, was never subpoenaed or asked to corroborate his account during the disciplinary proceedings.
The hearing was chaired by the North West Provincial Police Commissioner, a Lieutenant General, who reportedly accepted the accused officers’ versions of events without challenge. According to the disciplinary records obtained by ActionSA, Major General Wally Rhoode claimed he undertook the Namibia trip at the direct instruction of the president. Beaumont argued this statement not only contradicts Rhoode’s prior testimonies—raising the specter of perjury—but also conveniently shifts the blame for the questionable interrogations and wasteful spending directly onto the president.
ActionSA is not asking the High Court to dictate a specific disciplinary verdict. Instead, the party’s legal prayers will request that the court compel the national police commissioner to exercise his authority to appoint an independent, external chairperson for the disciplinary panels. Furthermore, the application will demand that the new panel be granted subpoena powers to compel witness testimony and that a strict, time-bound schedule be imposed, with the threat of contempt of court for non-compliance.
Emphasizing that the remedial actions of the Public Protector are legally binding unless explicitly overturned by a court, ActionSA remains confident the current findings will be set aside. The party intends to use the corrected disciplinary record as foundational evidence to present before the parliamentary impeachment committee, asserting that the president is central to the alleged protective cover-up.
