National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza announced that Parliament will establish an impeachment committee to investigate President Cyril Ramaphosa following the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the Phala Phala scandal. Graphic: Sharlene Rood/News24. Images: Storm Simpson/News24; Supplied by SAPS
- Parliament will establish an impeachment committee to investigate President Cyril Ramaphosa over the Phala Phala saga, following a Constitutional Court ruling.
- Speaker Thoko Didiza outlined six steps, including tabling the independent panel’s report and forming the committee.
- The Phala Phala case involves allegations of concealing a 2020 burglary of foreign currency at Ramaphosa’s farm.
Parliament will establish an impeachment committee to investigate President Cyril Ramaphosa over the Phala Phala scandal.
This is included in the steps that National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza announced she would take following the Constitutional Court’s Phala Phala ruling.
In Friday’s long-awaited ruling, the apex court found in favour of the EFF and ordered that Parliament’s rules must be effective in holding the president accountable, effectively restarting an impeachment against Ramaphosa that the ANC scuppered with the majority it held in 2022.
The Constitutional Court set aside the National Assembly’s rule that allowed it to vote on whether to proceed with an impeachment inquiry or not, following an independent panel’s report.
In her statement, Didiza noted that the court ordered that the independent panel’s report be referred to the impeachment committee established in terms of the National Assembly rules.
“Parliament reaffirms its respect for the judgment of the Constitutional Court and will act in full compliance with the order and directions of the court,” reads the statement.
The following six steps will now take place:
- Didiza will formally inform the National Assembly of the independent panel’s report on Phala Phala by tabling it through the appropriate journals of Parliament.
- Didiza will provide President Cyril Ramaphosa with a copy of the report, as directed by the Constitutional Court.
- In compliance with the court’s judgment, Didiza will initiate the process to constitute the impeachment committee to consider the Section 89 inquiry process contemplated in the Constitution and the Assembly rules.
- Didiza will formally refer the independent panel report to the impeachment committee as directed by the Constitutional Court.
- Didiza will refer the Constitutional Court judgment to the National Assembly Subcommittee on the Review of Rules to consider and process the amendments required to the National Assembly rules pursuant to the findings, reading-in, and directions of the court. The subcommittee will report on its work to the rules committee, which will submit its recommendations to the National Assembly for consideration.
- Didiza will determine the appropriate programme, procedural arrangements, timeframes and institutional support measures necessary to enable the impeachment committee to undertake and finalise its work effectively, fairly and within the framework of the Constitution and the National Assembly rules.
Didiza noted that the Constitutional Court reaffirmed the National Assembly’s obligations in terms of accountability, oversight and the constitutional mechanisms established under Section 89 of the Constitution.
“Parliament remains committed to discharging these constitutional responsibilities with due regard to constitutionalism, legality, fairness, institutional integrity and the rule of law,” said Didiza.
“The Speaker further notes that the Constitutional Court judgment concerns the constitutional and procedural obligations of the National Assembly relating to the processing of the independent panel report and the Section 89 framework, and that the processes directed by the court must now proceed in accordance with the Constitution and the Rules of the National Assembly.”
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The timelines for these steps are not yet clear, and Parliament will communicate further details regarding the Constitution, programming and operational arrangements of the impeachment committee as these details become known.
The rules require every party in the National Assembly to be represented on the impeachment committee. It will thus be a large committee, similar to the committee that handled the removal of Busisiwe Mkhwebane as Public Protector.
The Phala Phala saga started in June 2022, when Arthur Fraser, the Zuma-era director-general at the State Security Agency, opened a kidnapping and money-laundering case against Ramaphosa, Presidential Protection Unit head Major-General Wally Rhoode, and Crime Intelligence members for allegedly concealing a February 2020 burglary of foreign currency stuffed into a Phala Phala couch.
READ | Phala Phala: R15m – not R10m – was taken from Ramaphosa farm, forensic investigation shows
Ramaphosa and his staff’s version is that the stolen $580 000 was a “deposit” for “substandard” buffalo paid by Sudanese businessman Hazim Mustafa, who apparently arrived at the farm in a limousine on Christmas Day 2019. He never took receipt of the buffalo.
Hot on Fraser’s heels, ATM leader Vuyolwethu Zungula filed a number of complaints about the matter, including a motion for Ramaphosa’s removal in terms of Section 89 of the Constitution – a so-called impeachment motion.
On 13 December 2022, days before the ANC’s elective conference at which Ramaphosa was re-elected as the party’s leader, the ANC used its majoritarian muscle to shoot down an inquiry that would have had to determine whether Ramaphosa should be removed over the Phala Phala affair. This was after an independent panel, chaired by retired Chief Justice Sandile Ncgobo, found that, prima facie, Ramaphosa had a case to answer.
Altogether 14 months later, the EFF brought their application to the court, joined by the ATM. It took 521 days for the Constitutional Court to deliver its judgment.
