Cyril Ramaphosa was confirmed last week as South Africa’s new President hours after scandal-plagued leader Jacob Zuma resigned.
During a visit to Uganda in 2004, Ramaphosa became interested in the Ankole Cattle breed.
Because of inadequate disease control measures in Uganda, the South African government denied him permission to import any of the breed. Instead, Ramaphosa purchased 43 cows from Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and shipped them to Kenya.
There, the cows were artificially inseminated, the embryos removed and shipped to South Africa, they were transferred to cows and then quarantined for two months. As of August 2017 Ramaphosa had 100 Ankole breeding cows at his Ntaba Nyoni farm in Mpumalanga
In 2017 Ramaphosa co-wrote a book on the breed, Cattle of the Ages, Stories and Portraits of the Ankole Cattle of Southern Africa
Keeping wealth in the family
Ramaphosa is a very private person and not much is known about his personal life.
Ramaphosa had previously been married to businesswoman Nomazizi Mtshotshisa, but the couple divorced. He later married Tshepo Motsepe, the sister of South African mining billionaire Patrice Motsepe.
Ramaphosa has four children. He owns a R30,000,000 luxury mansion at the foot of Lion’s Head in Cape Town.
Ramaphosa is known to be one of the richest people in South Africa, with an estimated net worth of more than $450,000,000 and has appeared in financial magazines such as Forbes Africa and Bloomberg
Ramaphosa is also the founder of the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation.
