Columnist
President Cyril Ramaphosa is blessed with good lawyers but cursed with bad political advisers.
On Friday the Constitutional Court could only unanimously agree that it had jurisdiction to hear the matter brought by Julius Malema’s EFF. All the other decisions were split. Net effect? Parliament needs to set up an impeachment committee over an independent panel’s report on the Phala Phala robbery of dollars at the president’s farm.
In 2022 the ANC used its parliamentary majority to, in effect, discontinue hearings concerning the report by the panel, led by former chief justice Sandile Ngcobo, which concluded the president had a prima facie case to answer.
Ramaphosa’s lawyers, who had sought to challenge the report, abandoned that bid after the ANC stymied it through the vote. On Monday night, Ramaphosa told the country that he would revive the legal challenge. That is his right and a decision probably taken on the advice of his legal advisers.
