Remember the cash in the sofa story? Bundles of dollars stuffed inside furniture on a presidential ranch? It is back, but this time President Cyril Ramaphosa has just pulled off a big legal win.

Here is what is going on.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has won a court challenge that for now stops parliament from impeaching him over the Farmgate saga, cbinews.tv reports.

On Friday, the Western Cape High Court granted him an interim interdict. In simple terms, it puts a temporary stop to the whole parliamentary impeachment process.

This is a huge boost for Ramaphosa because he is still waiting on the outcome of a separate court case, the one where he is challenging an independent panel finding that said he may have a case to answer.

Quick refresher if you missed it. Farmgate goes back to 2020 when 580,000 dollars was stolen from a sofa on his Phala Phala ranch. The question everyone was asking, why was that much money tucked away in furniture in the first place?

Ramaphosa has always denied wrongdoing and insists it was legitimate proceeds from the sale of buffaloes. Still, it was a very embarrassing episode and it left a lot of questions hanging.

So what next? Political analysts think Ramaphosa will stay put, even if impeachment does eventually go ahead and ends in a vote, cbinews.tv reports.

Why? He still has the backing of his party, the African National Congress, the ANC, which remains the biggest party in the country and leads the coalition government.

It is not clear how all the coalition partners would vote in an impeachment vote, but some would probably back him and the ANC has enough members on its own to block any move to remove him from office.

So impeachment on pause. Farmgate far from over.

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