JOHANNESBURG — The South African Communist Party (SACP) has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to prioritise political accountability over legal manoeuvring, urging him to allow an expedited impeachment process following the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the Phala Phala saga.
SACP National Spokesperson Mbulelo Mandlana said the party respects the Constitutional Court’s decision but believes the president is now “kicking the can down the road” by challenging the independent panel’s report.
“The president is the head of state. The president is the head of the national liberation movement. There is a political responsibility on the shoulders of the president,” Mandlana said.
He argued that the greatest political benefit for citizens would be “the expeditiousness of the manner of handling of this case,” adding: “The sooner the matter goes before the impeachment committee in parliament the better. The sooner the impeachment committee can take the matter and place it before the national assembly the better.”
Mandlana acknowledged that the president, as a citizen, has legal rights to challenge the panel’s report. However, he stressed that Ramaphosa also carries “a larger political responsibility to take the citizens into confidence about these matters.”
The SACP spokesperson warned that the president’s current legal approach serves “only one purpose — to delay the process” and keep the nation “on permanent suspense on a matter that can be concluded through parliamentary processes.”
“These actions may be convenient for him as a person, but what they do politically for all of us in the republic is to keep us on permanent suspense,” Mandlana said. He added that parliament has “sufficient capacity to determine that which is true and that which is false,” allowing the president to “either be held to account and provide us with answers or be absolved.”
Responding to suggestions that the SACP’s position might be based on a belief that the president has a case to answer under Section 89 of the Constitution, Mandlana insisted the party’s stance is instead focused on “minimising the political ramifications for a scandal that has a permanent presence in our political discussions.”
He listed three priorities: the president’s attention must remain on national affairs; South Africa’s problems are too severe for the body politic to be “arrested” on a scandal now four or five years old; and there is an option to minimise the scandal’s effect — “the president allows this process to go forth, be expedited, have finality on it.”
Mandlana also confirmed that the ANC has not consulted the SACP on the president’s legal steps. “There has not been an engagement with the communist party. We have not had a political discussion to see whether or not there could be some agreement,” he said.
He added that the president’s approach “looks like the president approaching a legal matter driven mainly by what he considers to be interest from a legal point of view more than the overarching political considerations.”