LUCKY MATHEBULA | Yet again, the ConCourt has to impose ethics on the ANC

Post-liberation politics in Africa may be read as a recurring tension between constitutionalism and partisan consolidation. Although the constitutional order is frequently invoked as the principal safeguard of democratic rule, it is often subordinated to the imperatives of party discipline and internal political preservation. The tendency of post-liberation parties to close ranks remains a persistent feature, even as that tendency is repeatedly challenged by the demands of the law.

When a section 89 panel concludes that President Cyril Ramaphosa has a case to answer in the Phala Phala matter, only for that finding to be displaced through a parliamentary vote, attention is necessarily redirected to the quality and character of the political leadership exercising institutional control. The subsequent “no” vote on the possible impeachment of Ramaphosa, following the submission of a parliamentary report, exposed not only an enduring leadership deficit but also a broader erosion of the moral authority that ought to sustain democratic governance.

The Constitutional Court’s directive that parliament must properly apply itself to the panel’s report, with its clear impeachment implications for Ramaphosa, marks a significant moment in the jurisprudence and practice of constitutional accountability. The court judgment affirms the conclusion of the panel: that the president has a case to answer and that parliament is obliged to permit the relevant constitutional process to proceed.

At the time of the panel report, and in what was framed as an instance of Ramaphosa’s characteristic candour, it was reported that he had sought to “step aside” rather than become the “accused No 1 of the accused collective”. These reports pointed to deeper institutional pressures within the party that constrained the ANC’s willingness to subject itself to the rules, procedures and limitations imposed by the constitutional order.

The fact that the judgment required 500 days to be finalised and emerged as a majority decision underscores the importance of treating ethics not as a peripheral concern but as a constitutive principle of judicial authority

If there had been a Ramaphosa resignation, it might have contributed to the development of a political culture in which public office is understood as a fiduciary obligation rather than as an instrument of distributional reward. This would have marked an important distinction between an ANC-led liberation movement engaged in governance and one increasingly defined by the occupation of state power and the allocation of patronage.

In a constitutional order that has embedded accountability into the very design of the state, the premise underlying the caucus’s no-vote was plainly defective. Chief justice Mandisa Maya’s directive, measured though it was in identifying the gross unlawfulness of that “no” vote, further diminishes the ANC’s moral authority, an authority historically accumulated through sacrifice, imprisonment, exile and the disciplined ethos of the liberation struggle.

The regularity with which the ANC has lost cases before the Constitutional Court suggests a deeper deficit in constitutionalism in the party’s relationship to the power temporarily entrusted to it by the electorate. As the court has demonstrated across a series of consequential judgments, constitutionalism operates as the discipline through which political power is subjected to law, rights, institutions and public reason. At its core, it concerns the production of leadership that combines legitimacy, capability and restraint.

Ramaphosa’s election as ANC president in 2017 generated considerable public expectation against a backdrop of extensive allegations of criminality, corruption and state capture. The no-vote on the implementation of the section 89 report has since moderated those expectations and altered the language through which political hope is articulated. What emerges is a political culture in which mandates risk being converted into forms of ownership, public representation into possession, and the language of moral redress into a licence for the erosion of the rule of law.

The fact that the judgment required 500 days to be finalised and emerged as a majority decision underscores the importance of treating ethics not as a peripheral concern but as a constitutive principle of judicial authority. The ruling contributes to an ongoing clarification of the integrity frameworks through which governance is assessed and calls for renewed reflection on the moral foundations of public power.

With the executive now constituted by a coalition, uncertainty about where state power ultimately lies creates a complex institutional setting for the implementation of this directive. Elite bargaining has already occurred within the broader legal and political establishment, including among judges, and is likely to continue shaping the impeachment process. The ruling does not amount to an order of impeachment; rather, it directs adherence to a lawful process in addressing the report. At most, it opens the way for fuller procedural ventilation and, ultimately, a vote on impeachment in which bargaining and political stakes will remain decisive.

The legal and political questions raised by the judgment now return to parliament for institutional resolution. The burden lies with public representatives to demonstrate ethical probity and to reassure voters that the democratic voice still means something as they prepare to render their judgments in November 2026 and May 2029.