Editor-at-large & columnist
While his opponents crow over a Constitutional Court judgment that could force President Cyril Ramaphosa to face a parliamentary impeachment committee over the $580,000 stolen from a sofa at his Phala Phala game ranch in Limpopo in 2020, little attention is being paid to Ramaphosa’s defence.
He has decided now to reignite the review application he made to the Constitutional Court after the report of a three-person judicial panel into the affair in 2022. The court denied him direct access, but after the ANC majority in parliament at the time voted against taking up the panel report, he dropped the application anyway, reserving the right to make it should the impeachment process ever be threatened again.
Now that it has, he will again take the panel report on review, but this time to a lower court, and no doubt whatever it finds will be appealed. As commentators and opposition parties such as the EFF and MK try to make the case for impeachment to begin quickly, Ramaphosa actually does have a credible case for a review, which could delay any impeachment hearing in parliament.
While the panel’s report accurately describes the quite reasonable general public incredulity and scepticism at the time over so much foreign currency being hidden in a sofa, then stolen, then not officially investigated, and Ramaphosa’s all-too-typical reluctance to take the public into his confidence, the fact is the report is weak.
