South Africa’s parliament has postponed a vote on impeachment proceedings against President Cyril Ramaphosa by one week.

The vote had been scheduled for Tuesday.

A few hours earlier, the 70-year-old leader filed an application with the country’s Constitutional Court to have serious corruption allegations against him investigated.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) party backed Mr Ramaphosa on Monday and announced it would vote against impeachment proceedings.

The ANC has ruled South Africa for over a quarter of a century.

It has an absolute majority in parliament.

Mr Ramaphosa was heavily incriminated last week by a parliamentary commission of enquiry report. According to the report, the head of state, who has been in office since 2018, allegedly violated both an anti-corruption law and the constitution.

His spokesman Vincent Magwenya described the report as flawed.

The background to the accusations is a robbery in which half a million U.S. dollars were allegedly stolen from Mr Ramaphosa’s private cattle farm in 2020.

The president, a successful businessman and multimillionaire, had reported the robbery but not the disappearance of the money. 

(Reuters/NAN)