Parliament’s Section 89 Impeachment Committee has reversed its earlier decision to summon the authors of the independent panel report into President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala scandal, while also resolving to appeal the Western Cape High Court’s interim interdict halting its public hearings directly to the Constitutional Court.
The committee took the decisions during a meeting on Wednesday as it continues preparations for Parliament’s impeachment inquiry into whether Ramaphosa committed a serious violation of the constitution or the law.
Committee chairperson Makashule Gana said members had accepted legal advice that the authors of the 2022 independent panel report would no longer be required to appear before the committee.
“The authors of the independent panel report will not have to come to the committee to present the report or take the committee through it, as their work is done,” Gana said.
He said Parliament’s legal advisers had concluded there was no need to call the panel because the committee’s evidence leaders would guide members through the report during the inquiry.
The committee’s decision marks a reversal of a resolution taken last week to invite the panel, chaired by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, to present its findings to MPs.
The report, which forms part of the evidence before the committee, concluded that Ramaphosa had a case to answer over the handling of the 2020 theft of foreign currency from his Phala Phala farm. It is also the subject of a judicial review application brought by the President in the Western Cape High Court.
Explaining the legal advice, Parliament’s senior legal adviser Michael Prince warned that requiring the panel to appear before MPs would blur the distinction between the role of the independent panel and that of the impeachment committee itself.
He said insisting that the panel testify would amount to conflating the functions assigned to each body under Parliament’s Section 89 rules.
“The panel’s report must stand or fall on its own written record and not be supplemented by a further account from its authors,” Prince said.
Prince also cautioned that compelling the panel to appear could conflict with last week’s interim court order, which halted the committee’s public hearings pending the outcome of Ramaphosa’s review application.
Not all parties supported abandoning the earlier resolution.
The ANC opposed immediately dropping the decision, arguing that it first wanted to obtain its own legal opinion.
ANC MP Mika Mahlaule said it remained important for the committee to hear directly from the authors of the report before proceeding.
“It is important that we do have the authors of the report coming to present to us,” Mahlaule said.
However, after a lengthy and at times heated debate, committee members voted 16 to eight in favour of rescinding the earlier resolution, while ANC MP Cameron Dugmore abstained.
The committee also resolved to challenge last week’s Western Cape High Court ruling, which temporarily barred it from proceeding with public hearings until the court has delivered judgment on Ramaphosa’s review application.
Gana said the committee would instruct its legal team to prepare papers seeking direct access to the Constitutional Court to appeal the interim interdict.
“The committee needs to appeal the decision of the Western Cape High Court,” Gana said.
“We are going to file a notice asking the committee to appeal to the Constitutional Court.”
The interim interdict, granted by Judge André le Grange last week, paused the committee’s public hearings after Ramaphosa argued that allowing the impeachment inquiry to proceed before his review application had been decided would cause him irreparable harm.
Despite the court proceedings, Gana said the committee would continue with its preparatory work.
He said members had agreed to meet over two days next week, on Wednesday and Friday, to finalise outstanding matters ahead of the inquiry.
“We are going to have meetings over two days so that we move as close as possible to finalising the preparatory work of the impeachment committee,” Gana said.
