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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged to challenge a decision by the country’s top court reviving an impeachment inquiry against him, shifting the fight from a hostile parliament to the courts and easing pressure on the country’s fragile coalition government.
His late-night televised announcement came days after South Africa’s Constitutional Court ordered lawmakers to restart scrutiny they halted when they binned a report that found evidence of wrongdoing in Ramaphosa’s handling of the 2020 theft of foreign currency from his Phala Phala game farm.
Ramaphosa repeated his stance that he disagreed with the report’s reasoning, saying its findings were based on “hearsay allegations” and that “no evidence, let alone sufficient evidence, has been presented” to show he violated the constitution or the law. He said would challenge the report in court, rejecting calls from opposition parties such as the Economic Freedom Front (EFF) to resign, arguing that “to do so would be to give credence to a panel report that unfortunately has grave flaws.”
Parliament had already outlined steps to set up an impeachment committee to probe Ramaphosa further. His lawyers are expected to argue that lawmakers cannot move ahead with that process if the report they are meant to rely on is under legal challenge. They may also ask the courts to temporarily block the legislature from acting until the review is complete — a process that could stretch for months.
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The Phala Phala incident became public in 2022 after a former intelligence chief accused Ramaphosa of trying to cover it up.
In response, parliament set up a panel led by a retired chief justice, which found that Ramaphosa had a case to answer: It said that Ramaphosa’s farming business exposed him to a conflict of interest, that he may have broken anti-graft laws by failing to report the crime, and that he abused state resources with off-the-books investigations to track down suspects. But the legislature, then dominated by the governing African National Congress, voted to stop the process.
Last week, the Constitutional Court ruled that vote was unlawful and ordered parliament to restart the inquiry, setting off the latest political confrontation.
Ramaphosa’s fiercest opponents, the EFF and MK Party, accused him of using so-called Stalingrad tactics, a phrase South Africans use to describe long, grinding court battles meant to delay accountability.
Tiisetso’s view
Ramaphosa’s move is a rational defensive play: ask a judge to look at the paperwork, and parliament’s impeachment push grinds to a boring halt. It buys him weeks, maybe months — enough time for his wavering coalition partners to hold their nerve.
For one thing, courts move slowly, a review can blunt an immediate impeachment push and give the president breathing room to marshal his argument that his presidency is the only thing standing between South Africa’s redemption and the political forces that once ran amok on key institutions: He makes the reasonable case that he inherited a state ravaged by immense corruption called “state capture” under former President Jacob Zuma, and launched an institutional clean up that disrupted patronage networks and legal shields.
Still, legal delay is not a cure. Parliament can still mobilize a vote of no confidence if opposition parties build momentum and coalition discipline cracks.
Notable
• In Kenya, the High Court is reviewing a landmark case challenging the 2024 impeachment of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, which petitioners claim was a politically motivated “purge” orchestrated by President William Ruto.