South Africa is a constitutional democratic republic — that ought to mean something. Under our constitutional order, Parliament must serve as the locus of the people’s power to hold the government to account — especially the President.

However, the ANC’s latest action to protect President Cyril Ramaphosa from constitutional accountability at its 6 December National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting where it resolved to instruct all its MPs to vote to reject the damning report of the Section 89 Independent Panel in the National Assembly on 13 December affirms its protection principle: cadre before Constitution.

The Section 89 report found that there is prima facie evidence that Ramaphosa may have committed serious violations of the Constitution and breached corruption laws, including the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, in concealing the possession and subsequently covering up the theft of foreign currency at his Phala Phala private game farm.

Now that the report has awoken Ramaphosa and his comrades to the legal and political jeopardy he and the ANC are in, the President and his allies have thrown in the kitchen sinks of distraction.

First, an onslaught against the character and integrity of the individuals comprising the panel led by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, prompting the Johannesburg Society of Advocates to defend advocate Mahlape Sello who was made a primary target.

Second, Ramaphosa launches an attack on the Section 89 Independent Panel’s process in an application to the Constitutional Court to have the entire report set aside in a battle of legislative language and interpretation.

If all else fails, the ANC parliamentary caucus’s rejection of the Section 89 Independent Panel report will ensure the subversion of constitutional accountability in an act of brute political force.

Whatever the reasons provided to prevent South Africans from shining sunlight under the President’s cash-stuffed sofa, we cannot forget the absence of denial of the key facts. The President does not deny the presence of hundreds of thousands of US dollars which are said to later have been stolen. The source of the funds remains uncertain. Processes appear to have been skirted.

If the aforementioned foundational facts as detailed in the Section 89 Independent Panel report are not at issue, it would appear Ramaphosa does indeed have a case for which to account. Parliament’s rules of impeachment introduced in response to the 2017 Economic Freedom Fighters and Others vs Speaker of the National Assembly and Another Constitutional Court judgment set out a process that is meant to stave off political interference in the preliminary investigative process.

Specifically, the establishment of a Section 89 Independent Panel by the Speaker in response to a motion proposing an inquiry into impeachable misconduct by the President is initiated to ensure the absolute independence of the preliminary investigative process and its outcomes.

The rules require the Speaker to appoint three fit and proper South Africans with requisite legal competence, experience and esteem. It is then the task of this expert panel to make an independent determination and recommendation to Parliament on whether the allegations made warrant an impeachment inquiry. In this case, former Chief Justice Ncgobo’s panel has made such a conclusion.

If members of Parliament wish to uphold their individual oaths of office and adhere to the rules and procedures of their own construction, the National Assembly should vote unanimously to establish an impeachment committee.

Yet another smallanyana skeleton

The ANC’s resolution to quash an independent report by a panel of constitutional experts amounts to an unambiguous discarding of the rule of law in favour of stuffing yet another smallanyana skeleton in its overflowing cupboard of corruption.

While such an act of constitutional subterfuge by the ANC follows the plot of a horror movie we have been forced to watch for more than two decades, this latest instalment includes a new twist: the death of presidential accountability under Section 89 of the Constitution.

The weaponisation of a floor vote to discard the findings of a legal report — commissioned by the National Assembly itself — will render the impeachment of the President a political impossibility. We cannot sit idly by as another death knell rings for parliamentary accountability.

The National Assembly holds an indispensable responsibility to the people of South Africa owing to its singular role as a fully nationally democratically elected body. Members of Parliament are mandated and ultimately accountable to the people of this country and have a duty to advance and protect the public interest. Our current politics can often lead us to forget this basic fact.

The report of the Section 89 Independent Panel raises no less than four questions of potential serious violations of the Constitution and misconduct by the head of state, Ramaphosa. If the people’s Constitution has indeed been violated by the man who swore an oath to uphold and defend it, the people’s elected representatives in Parliament are duty-bound to shine a light for all to see.

Section 56 of the Constitution specifically empowers the National Assembly to summon any person and institution to appear before it to provide information, evidence and account pursuant to the public interest. It is for this reason that only an impeachment committee of Parliament can deliver a sufficiently transparent investigation and credible findings with public legitimacy in the Phala Phala matter.

A parliamentary impeachment inquiry investigation into the President’s conduct would not impede the necessary and continued work by the Hawks, South African Reserve Bank and SA Revenue Service. Indeed, all parts of the state with a constitutional and legislative mandate to unearth the truth and uphold the rule of law must forge ahead.

In a matter so central to the public trust, Parliament cannot again abrogate its responsibility to investigate presidential misconduct and maintain executive accountability as it did over the Zuma years. The allegations outlined in the Section 89 panel’s report require a process where evidence is presented openly and subject to public scrutiny — only Parliament can best deliver such a public good.

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The ANC’s plan to vote to reject the panel’s report and findings on 13 December confirms an ugly truth we have been forced to accept: South Africa is a one-party dictatorship where the rule of the ANC NEC, not the will of the people or their Constitution, reigns supreme. We can no longer permit a political arrangement where our collective futures are defined and imposed by a cadre of comrades who have long been uninterested in a national project that works to deliver material upliftment for all South Africans.

Political parties in Parliament must come together and find unity of purpose: not only to impeach Ramaphosa, but to find a path towards cooperation to form an interim government to ensure stability and protect the national interest until a renewed democratic mandate is delivered in 2024.

We call upon all sectors of society invested in a national project of a better South Africa to use this moment of crisis to coalesce and begin the work to craft a shared vision for the future. Now is the time for a broad coalition that includes civil society, political parties, business, labour organisations and communities to come together to build a shared purpose and engage in collective action.

The work to deliver electoral change in 2024 must begin today: we must build coalitions across differences, craft a shared agenda to serve as a mandate to govern, and deliver an umbrella multiparty government that finally works to deliver for all. DM