President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday followed through on the announcement he made earlier this month that he would take parliament’s section 89 independent panel report on review.
The president, after a month-long political and legal consultation process, filed his court papers in the Western Cape High Court, challenging the section 89 independent panel’s Phala Phala report.
The 2022 report, following a probe led by former chief justice Sandile Ngcobo along with former judge Thokozile Masipa, found that Ramaphosa had a prima facie case to answer to over the theft of more than US$580,000 at his Phala Phala game farm in Limpopo.
Ramaphosa, in the main, argues that the report is flawed and claims Ngcobo’s panel relied on hearsay evidence and illegally obtained information in some instances.
When the report first came out in 2022, Ramaphosa said he would take it on review but abandoned that idea after the ANC used its majority in the National Assembly to vote against setting up an impeachment committee, thereby stopping proceedings to oust him.
But after the highest court in the land ruled in early May that parliament acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally by voting on the report without first referring it to an impeachment committee, the president has now taken the report on review.
Like all citizens, the president is entitled to exercise his right by taking the report on review.
If the president wants to interdict impeachment proceedings he ought to go ahead, as making threats on matters so paramount smacks of political manoeuvring, if not recklessness.
The stakes are high for him as the report and how the impeachment committee deals with him, have serious ramifications on his future as a president.
However, concerning in Ramaphosa’s court papers is his threat to interdict parliament’s impeachment committee from processing the report while his review application is pending.
This threat meddles with the constitutionally enshrined principle of the separation of powers between the three arms of state ― the judiciary, legislature and executive. In its judgment the ConCourt was clear that parliament is obliged to expeditiously process the independent panel unless it is set aside by a competent court on a review application.
If the president wants to interdict impeachment proceedings he ought to go ahead, as making threats on matters so paramount smacks of political manoeuvring, if not recklessness.
In the absence of such a court outcome, there is no law that stops parliament from going ahead with the formal impeachment proceedings against the sitting head of state, which would be the first in the country’s democracy ― former president Jacob Zuma resigned in 2018 before such a process could be initiated.
We implore the speaker of the National Assembly, Thoko Didiza, to affirm constitutional accountability by forging ahead with the impeachment committee until the superior courts pronounce on the president’s review application or his threatened interdict, if indeed he carries it out.
Halting the impeachment committee without a court judgment on this matter would be a blight on the authority of parliament in holding the president accountable, amounting to the legislature kowtowing to the executive.
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