CAPE TOWN. Advocate Dali Mpofu walked into the Western Cape High Court this week with a blunt message: the court has no authority to stop President Cyril Ramaphosa’s impeachment process, and attempting to do so would put it in direct conflict with the Constitutional Court.
Ramaphosa has asked the High Court to suspend the Parliamentary impeachment proceedings while he seeks a review of the Section 89 Independent Panel report. That panel found he has a prima facie case to answer regarding the Phala Phala matter. His legal team argues the process should pause until the court examines the report’s validity.
Mpofu, representing the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, told the court that position is constitutionally untenable. The Constitutional Court has already ruled that the National Assembly acted irrationally when it voted against implementing the panel’s findings, and ordered that impeachment proceedings be instituted against the President. For the High Court to now suspend those proceedings, Mpofu argued, would be to override the apex court’s own instruction.
“This court, with the greatest respect, cannot say no, no, we hear what the Constitutional Court is saying, but we in the Cape High Court find that the inquiry may not proceed unless and until the report is set aside,” Mpofu said, then immediately contradicted that framing. “It may, it must be stopped now. It’s not possible.”
His central argument rested on the Constitutional Court’s own logic. That court ruled the report must be implemented until it is set aside by the same court that issued the ruling. The rule of law, Mpofu contended, requires that once an independent panel determines there is sufficient evidence for a prima facie case in an impeachment matter, the process must continue unless overturned by the appropriate judicial body.
The President’s pending review application cannot justify halting the impeachment committee’s work. Mpofu framed the distinction as one of constitutional weight. A review right belongs to many people in ordinary circumstances, he said, but when an independent panel has found sufficient evidence in an impeachment case, South Africa’s citizens cannot be denied the constitutional process simply because someone seeks to challenge the panel’s report elsewhere.
“If you have to suffer in that process until the outcomes, so be it, basically, because of the importance of the constitutional processes that we are engaged in,” Mpofu told the court.
He also rejected the notion that the Ngcobo Panel report had been sent to Parliament as a formality. It was referred to the impeachment committee, he said, to fulfill the constitutional duty to proceed with the inquiry diligently and without delay, not to sit unused.
Meanwhile, Advocate Anton Katz, representing the United Africans Transformation party, brought the separation of powers concern into sharper focus. He warned the justices that granting Ramaphosa’s interdict would constitute an encroachment into Parliament’s domain, however brief the suspension might be.
“If you grant the interdict, there is a huge harm to the separation of powers,” Katz said. “Don’t cross your lane, justices. We don’t want to do that. No, it’s not our intention to do that. We will stay in our lane. If you do grant the interdict, my lord, you are crossing the lane to Parliament.”
The High Court has not yet ruled on whether to grant the President’s request. What remains open is whether the justices will accept the argument that their own intervention, even a temporary one, would itself become the constitutional problem they are being asked to solve.