Anger over Ramaphosa impeachment ruling

Only the ANC has come out in unequivocal support of the Western Cape High Court’s majority decision on Friday to grant President Cyril Ramaphosa an interim interdict halting Parliament’s impeachment inquiry. All the others have either questioned the ruling or condemned Ramaphosa for attempting to avoid facing the music on the Phala Phala saga, notes Legalbrief Africa. One went as far as to suggest the judiciary was protecting Ramaphosa. The interdict was issued pending the outcome of his review application challenging the legality of the independent panel report that triggered the process. The full Bench – comprising Acting Deputy Judge President André le Grange and Judges Matthew Francis and Diane Davis – ordered that Parliament’s Impeachment Committee may not proceed with public hearings until the review application has been determined. Business Day notes one judge would have dismissed the application, but the majority found Ramaphosa had met the requirements for interim relief. The Saturday Star quotes Le Grange as saying the court had recognised the potential for irreparable harm if the hearings proceeded before Ramaphosa’s review application was heard. Once the impeachment hearings took place, he said, ‘the genie will have been let out of the bottle’. ‘Public humiliation and reputational damage are the very substance of the harm, not merely incidental consequences. No subsequent declaration of invalidity can restore the President’s dignity or erase the public spectacle of an impeachment inquiry,’ Le Grange held.

Davis accepted that public impeachment hearings would cause lasting reputational damage that no later declaration of invalidity could undo. She held that allowing hearings to proceed on a report that may be unlawful ‘would cheapen the rule of law’. Parliament’s accountability mandate cannot be prioritised above the rule of law, as ‘accountability achieved through potentially unlawful processes is a contradiction in terms’. Le Grange concurred, notes the Saturday Star, adding that the choice is not between the President’s interests and Parliament’s accountability function. The rule of law requires that Parliament hold the President to account, but only through lawful processes. Francis delivered a dissenting ruling. ‘This court has carefully considered the weighty arguments advanced by the parties in the limited time available, given the urgency of the matter,’ Le Grange said, according to the Daily Maverick. ‘There are three judgments. The first judgment concludes, for reasons set out therein, that the President has not made out a case for an interim interdict. It proposes that the application be dismissed. The second judgment concludes that the President has made out a case for an interim interdict, for the reasons set out in that judgment. It proposes that an interdict of limited duration be granted. ‘The third judgment concurs with the second judgment. The second judgment is the majority judgment.’ Le Grange continued: ‘In the result, the following order is made… Pending the determination by this court of the applicant’s review… The first and second respondents (National Assembly Speaker Thoko Didiza and Impeachment Committee chair, Rise Mzansi MP Makashule Gana) are interdicted from proceeding with a public impeachment proceeding.’ In May, the Constitutional Court cleared the path for impeachment proceedings to begin when it ordered Parliament to refer the panel report to an Impeachment Committee.

Judgment

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The African Transformation Movement (ATM) has launched an urgent dir­ect appeal to the Con­sti­tu­tional Court seek­ing to over­turn the judgment, reports Business Day. The ATM applic­a­tion, lodged on Sat­urday, asks the top court to hear the mat­ter urgently dur­ing the week of 10-14 August and to grant leave for a dir­ect appeal. MP Vuyo Zun­gula and the ATM also want the Con­sti­tu­tional Court to replace the High Court’s order with one dis­miss­ing Ram­a­phosa’s applic­a­tion and order­ing him to pay costs. In his found­ing affi­davit, Zun­gula argues the judg­ment cre­ated legal uncer­tainty by pre­vent­ing Par­lia­ment from ful­filling its con­sti­tu­tional oblig­a­tion to hold the Pres­id­ent to account. He says the appeal raises import­ant con­sti­tu­tional issues and con­tains no dis­putes of fact. He con­tends the major­ity judg­ment is imper­miss­ibly vague because it inter­dicted a ‘pub­lic impeach­ment hear­ing’ without explain­ing what that term means. The party argues this leaves the Impeach­ment Com­mit­tee uncer­tain about whether it may con­tinue its work behind closed doors, ques­tion the Pres­id­ent privately or require writ­ten responses from him. Zun­gula argues the order is incon­sist­ent with sec­tion 59 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which requires the National Assembly and its com­mit­tees to con­duct their busi­ness in a pub­lic man­ner. He con­tends the High Court gran­ted relief Ram­a­phosa did not seek in his notice of motion and that the parties were not afforded an oppor­tun­ity to address the court on the terms of the order before it was made. Zun­gula argues the order under­mines the con­sti­tu­tional prin­ciples of par­lia­ment­ary account­ab­il­ity and the sep­ar­a­tion of powers by restrict­ing how Par­lia­ment con­ducts its impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings.

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