The Phala Phala incident became public in 2022 after a former intelligence chief accused Ramaphosa of trying to cover it up.

In response, parliament set up a panel led by a retired chief justice, which found that Ramaphosa had a case to answer: It said that Ramaphosa’s farming business exposed him to a conflict of interest, that he may have broken anti-graft laws by failing to report the crime, and that he abused state resources with off-the-books investigations to track down suspects. But the legislature, then dominated by the governing African National Congress, voted to stop the process.

Last week, the Constitutional Court ruled that vote was unlawful and ordered parliament to restart the inquiry, setting off the latest political confrontation.

Ramaphosa’s fiercest opponents, the EFF and MK Party, accused him of using so-called Stalingrad tactics, a phrase South Africans use to describe long, grinding court battles meant to delay accountability.