The President feared creating panic, so kept the robbery quiet, say sources close to him.

At lunchtime on Wednesday, former spy boss Arthur Fraser and a bodyguard stepped into the police station on Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, in Johannesburg and said he wanted to open a criminal case.

The police station is one of the best in Johannesburg, and Fraser was quickly attended to as he laid a criminal complaint against President Cyril Ramaphosa for holding and then being robbed of almost $4-million in cash at his Limpopo farm.

Fraser included a flash drive of video and other evidence and submitted his already-typed charge sheet and a detailed affidavit to desk officers.

They immediately notified the station commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Sthembiso Ngubane, who called up his provincial bosses. He knew the docket that had just been opened was explosive. He called up his superiors at the SA Police Service (SAPS) provincial headquarters in Parktown, Johannesburg, and they told him to get the docket to them as soon as possible - dockets at local police stations are easy to access for the media.

Then the national police sent a top brass team to fetch it, and within hours, it was in Wachthuis, the...