CAPE TOWN, July 24 — A South African high court on Friday ruled in favor of President Cyril Ramaphosa in his bid to halt impeachment proceedings against him over the Phala Phala case.
In a majority judgment, the Western Cape High Court granted Ramaphosa an interim interdict preventing the Parliament’s impeachment committee from proceeding with its work until his challenge to the independent panel report is decided. Ramaphosa filed an urgent application on June 12, seeking to suspend the impeachment committee’s work while challenging the findings of an independent panel report into the Phala Phala case. In court papers, he argued that the proceedings should be paused pending a judicial review of the report.
On May 26, the president launched a separate challenge, asking the Western Cape High Court to review and set aside the panel’s findings. The Friday ruling does not determine the merits of Ramaphosa’s review application, which will be heard separately from Sept. 2-4. The Phala Phala case arose from the alleged theft of about 580,000 U.S. dollars in cash from Ramaphosa’s private game farm in Limpopo Province in 2020, triggering questions about whether the money had been properly declared to the authorities. The independent panel, chaired by former Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, said in its 2022 report that there was prima facie evidence that Ramaphosa may have committed serious misconduct in connection with the matter. However, the National Assembly later voted against adopting the report and pursuing impeachment proceedings.
The impeachment process was revived after South Africa’s Constitutional Court ruled in May that the Parliament acted unlawfully when it voted against adopting the panel’s report in 2022.
Xinhua
