Wednesday. The Western Cape High Court. Veteran advocate Wim Trengove is on his feet to open the president’s application to set aside the section 89 panel report. He takes the court through the scheme designed by parliament to handle impeachment cases. The first stage is the parliamentary motion, tabled in this case by a small party called ATM in mid-2022, a couple of months after it came to light that Cyril Ramaphosa had fallen victim to a burglary at his farm, Phala Phala, in February 2020, in which more than $500,000 in cash, that had curiously been hidden in his sofa, was stolen. The speaker of the National Assembly must assess whether there is “a clearly formulated and substantiated charge … which prima facie [on the face of it] shows” that there is a case to answer. At this point there is no assessment of the veracity or otherwise of the evidence but merely whether, if the facts asserted were true, there is a case to answer. For example, if the motion asserted that the president should be impeached because of his choice of tie when meeting with the head of state of another country, then the motion would be rejected because it lays no basis for a case of “serious violation of the law or constitution” or “serious misconduct” ― the two relevant grounds for removal under section 89 of the constitution. If, however, the charge was that the president had sold prior information about the detail of the budget, then it would clearly indicate a case to answer ― on the face of it ― and the process would move to the second stage. But suppose the claim was based on information provided by a political enemy of the president, without any corroboration, merely to throw mud to undermine his reputation. Would it be fair for a sitting president to have to face the third stage of the impeachment process ― a full impeachment committee in parliament, which must “proceed to establish the veracity and, where required, the seriousness of the charges and report to the assembly thereon”? The rules interpose the panel as a buffer between a baseless complaint and the public humiliation of the president. Having sat in court and listened carefully to the arguments and then juxtaposed them with the media coverage, I believe Ramaphosa may have won on the legal front while losing the public relations battle. Mainly this is because the non-legal soundbites offered by advocate Dali Mpofu on behalf of the MK party ― essentially that Ramaphosa is using the law to avoid political accountability ― are easier to grasp and report than Trengove’s forensic dissection of the panel 89 report. I well remember late on the night of November 30 2022, as I read the panel report an hour or two after it had been published, thinking the panel had made a mess of it and “sufficient evidence” is a qualitatively different, and higher, test than prima facie. This is the kernel of the case. Thabani Masuku on behalf of the United Africans Transformation party sought to persuade the court that because it cannot act like a court, the mandate of the panel was to assess whether there was sufficient evidence to proceed to the next phase ― a clever argument, but one that elides the fundamental distinction between sufficient evidence and prima facie. Nor does it rebut the second key point made on behalf of the president, that the panel overlooked the need to consider whether there was bad faith and intentionality in his conduct. If, as Trengove argued last week, the panel asked itself the wrong question, the answer it reached is worthless and should be set aside, meaning the case should not go to the full impeachment committee hearing in parliament. Now in his mid-70s, Trengove’s voice may be softer but his presence in court is no less commanding. If his arguments prevail, as they should, the president will be off the impeachment hook and Mpofu’s loud protestations will amount to naught. • Calland is emeritus associate professor of public law at the University of Cape Town.