CAPE TOWN, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa "did nothing wrong" in his 2017 campaign to become the head of the party African National Congress (ANC), said presidential spokesperson Khusela Diko in a statement Saturday.
The spokesperson refuted accusation that Ramaphosa and his campaign team received funding from Bosasa company, also known as African Global Operations, in violation of the Executive Ethics Code.
From the outset, Ramaphosa and his campaign team promised the campaign to be clean, within necessary legal prescripts and in line with values and principles of the ANC, said Diko.
The statement came after a report released in July by Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, who accuses the president of receiving 500,000 rand (about 33,000 U.S. dollars) illegal funding from Bosasa to fund his campaign.
Mkhwebane said in the report that Ramaphosa deliberately misled the parliament in November last year by saying he did not know the details of the donation his campaign office received.
The public protector insists that the president did know where the donation came from as he personally attended the fund-raising dinners.
The spokesperson said Ramaphosa had been made aware that the confidential banking information of his campaign contributors had been leaked to the media.
"The information, supposedly held only by the public protector, includes bank statements of third parties, which record private transactions and which are strictly confidential," the statement said.
The president noted "with grave concern" that the disclosure amounts to a violation of the constitutional right to privacy, Diko said, adding that the information had been obtained in an illegal manner.
