MICHAEL BEAUMONT | Rise Mzansi impeachment committee chair unlikely to be impartial

On Monday, parliament’s much-anticipated impeachment committee elected Rise Mzansi’s Makashule Gana, one of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government of national unity (GNU) partners, as its chair.

It is worth remembering that this committee did not emerge in a vacuum. The Constitutional Court ordered that it be established, after an ANC parliamentary majority in December 2022 unlawfully shielded Ramaphosa from accountability in the Phala Phala scandal.

Fast-forward to June 2026, and much has changed in our country’s politics. The ANC majority that previously protected former president Jacob Zuma and Ramaphosa is no more, and a multiparty GNU has been formed in its place.

This situation should have been the ideal opportunity for political parties to collaborate in the interests of ensuring the impeachment committee did its work without fear or favour after so many years of parliament having been rendered toothless by ANC majorities. There should also have been no shortage of willing collaborators when one considers the highly critical statements these political parties made about Ramaphosa and Phala Phala when parliament deliberated on the section 89 report.

Accordingly, when the impeachment committee sat to elect its chair on Monday, it would not have been unreasonable to expect that these parties would support an opposition MP from outside the GNU to chair the committee.

The ANC … nominated a member of the smallest party in the GNU on the impeachment committee knowing full well that person could be controlled

Surely these parties must have seen that having the committee chaired by an opposition MP would send out a clear message that it intended to be impartial and even-handed. Having such a chair would mean that every witness would receive no protection for evasion, that free and uninhibited debate among members would be promoted, and that the committee’s schedule would not be delayed to advance the president’s legal objectives or the GNU’s electoral interests.

But this did not happen. Instead, these decisions will now be made by someone whose party leader holds high public office only because his party signed the GNU’s statement of intent with the ANC.

The importance of the symbolism in the ANC nominating Rise Mzansi’s Gana and the DA seconding it cannot be ignored. The ANC, with its dismal track record of shielding presidents from accountability, nominated a member of the smallest party in the GNU on the impeachment committee knowing full well that person could be controlled. The DA, whose numbers give the ANC a majority in the GNU, then backed Gana’s nomination. Unsurprisingly, the IFP, the Freedom Front Plus, the Patriotic Alliance and Al Jama-ah followed suit.

You may wish to argue, as some have done, that Gana and Rise Mzansi will operate without fear or favour — but this is wishful thinking. Neither he nor his party has said or done anything about Phala Phala since joining the GNU, despite both having said so much before. Moreover, the Scopa chair handed to them by the ANC is the last thread of relevance from which they dangle. The truth is that Rise Mzansi cannot afford to alienate the ANC or the rest of the GNU.

The election of the chair of the impeachment committee was merely the first of many critical votes to come. The next hurdle will be the committee’s terms of reference. The ANC will want these defined narrowly within the confines of a nearly four-year-old section 89 report, to avoid including many of the revelations that have emerged since then.

These include the Independent Police Investigative Directorate investigation report, revelations about the “not guilty” findings in respect of the president’s protectors, and the National Prosecuting Authority’s case arising from the Phala Phala burglary, which revealed that R15m in transactions had flowed through just one of the five burglars’ accounts — when just R8.7m was reported stolen.

One thing we can say for certain is that the ANC did not nominate Gana as the chair of this committee because it expected him to rule on such matters impartially. Nor did the ANC invite political parties to join the GNU with the expectation that they would be free to exercise independent judgment in matters such as impeaching the president.

What remains to be seen is whether these parties will conduct themselves on the committee without being influenced by the privileges they now enjoy, such as blue-light convoys, government residences, expanded staff complements and luxurious international travel. I would have doubted their resolve before they elected one of their own to chair the committee, but now the situation is just farcical.

ActionSA will fight tooth and nail to ensure the president is held responsible for his actions. Either South Africans will see the president face the music, or they will witness the various GNU parties closing ranks.

With only months to go before the next election, either outcome will be good for our democracy.

• Beaumont is ActionSA’s national chair.