CONSTITUTION STRIKES BACK: CONCOURT ORDERS PARLIAMENT TO PROSECUTE RAMAPHOSA OVER PHALA PHALA
- Mpho Dube
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
After 17 months of legal trench warfare, top court demolishes ANC’s shield. Impeachment inquiry now unavoidable. The president’s political survival is on the line.
By Mpho Dube, Editor-in-Chief
The Azanian | _Truth. Fearless. Unfiltered
JOHANNESBURG – The dam has broken.
On 8 May 2026, the Constitutional Court delivered a judgment that reshapes South Africa’s politics. In a ruling that strips away parliamentary cover, Chief Justice Mandisa Maya declared the National Assembly’s December 2022 vote to block an impeachment inquiry into President Cyril Ramaphosa unconstitutional, irrational, and invalid.
The order is direct: Parliament must refer the Section 89 report to an impeachment committee immediately.
For the first time since $580,000 in cash was found hidden in a couch at Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm, the president faces the formal process he has avoided for more than two years.
On 13 December 2022, the ANC used its parliamentary majority to vote down the independent panel’s report. That report found Ramaphosa may have violated his oath of office and the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.
The ruling party called it a victory. The Constitutional Court called it a violation.
“The vote of the National Assembly taken on 13 December 2022, declining to refer the report to an impeachment committee as envisaged in the NA rules, is inconsistent with the Constitution, invalid and it is set aside,” Maya ruled.
Translation: You cannot use numbers to erase accountability.
The case dragged since oral arguments were heard in November 2024. The Economic Freedom Fighters and African Transformation Movement argued Parliament had failed its constitutional duty to hold the president to account.
Today, the court agreed.
The Section 89 report now returns to the impeachment committee established under National Assembly rules. That committee will determine whether there are grounds to proceed with formal impeachment proceedings against the president.
Outside the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, EFF supporters erupted into song and chants as the judgment was read. A jumbo screen and stage had been erected hours earlier. For them, this is vindication. For Ramaphosa, it’s a new front in a war he thought was closed.
This is not a conviction. It is worse in some ways: it is process.
The impeachment committee will now examine the evidence, hear arguments, and decide whether the case against the president meets the threshold for impeachment. The political damage is immediate. The legal risk is real. And the ANC’s ability to bury it with a majority vote is gone.
The ruling also sets a precedent that will outlast this case: Parliament cannot shield the executive from constitutional scrutiny, no matter how large its majority.
Parliament must now act. The Speaker is under order to convene the impeachment committee without delay. The committee’s composition, hearings, and timeline will determine how fast this moves.
Ramaphosa answered questions in the National Assembly as recently as 12 March 2026. But questions are different from an inquiry. An inquiry is a process with teeth.
The Phala Phala scandal has been a slow burn since December 2022. Today, it became a fire.
AZANIAFROCOMEDIA – The Catalyst of Impact
Developing. We are tracking the Speaker’s response, committee appointments, and the president’s legal strategy.
Comments