By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Presidency says president Cyril Ramaphosa was correct to petition petition the Constitutional Court (ConCourt) in a bid to review the adverse findings made against him in the Section 89 Phala Phala report instead of a lower court.
The ConCourt on Wednesday dismissed the president’s application for direct access in order to challenge the findings of the report, which found that Ramaphosa may have a case to answer over the theft of foreign currency at his Phala Phala game farm in Limpopo in 2020.
Briefing the media in Tshwane on the president’s public programme, Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said the president was correct to petition the ConCourt instead of a lower court.
“Our view is that he was correct in doing so because the matter concerned a report that was seized with the conduct of the president. Our view is that the ConCourt was the right court to hear the matter,” said Magwenya.
He said the ConCourt’s decision to dismiss the petition was merely a procedural matter because it did not deal with the merits of Ramaphosa’s case.
“That judgment deals with what I would call a procedural matter with respect to the president seeking direct access to the Constitutional Court. That judgment does not pronounce on the merits of the case.
“It just says there’s no case for the ConCourt to be petitioned directly.”
Magwenya said the ConCourt’s ruling on the matter could, therefore, not be considered to be a blow for Ramaphosa.
He also said Ramaphosa’s programme for the coming week will be to fill “vacancies” in his cabinet and that would be completed “in a matter of days.”
“There are vacancies in the cabinet. We also have a vacancy in the role of the deputy president. There is a sense of urgency that the president fills those vacancies as soon as possible, “Magwenya said. “In a matter of days that announcement will be made.”
Magwenya defended the president’s pace in making the appointments, in particular the electricity minister, saying that Ramaphosa had been “seized with the electricity crisis for quite some time”.
The reshuffle could not be carried out quickly because of the “laws of complexity that have to be looked at” including the stability of government and the implementation of existing state programmes.
“The management of the cabinet is not something that can be conducted in haste,” he said.
Mawenya said that the work of departments and of the administration in general was continuing “so the fact that we have vacancies in cabinet has not hindered the work of the government”.
Magwenya also defended the Ramaphosa administration’s level of seriousness in dealing with the electricity crisis and the corruption at Eskom, saying that the declaration of the state of disaster was an indication of this.
“The declaration of the state of disaster is another signal of the level of seriousness that the government has towards this crisis. On the one hand, responding to the impact of load-shedding and making sure that we can accelerate various programmes that will get us more megawatts into the grid,” he said. “A lot has been done over the past six to nine months”
Magwenya said former Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter — who was fired last week over a tell-all interview with eNCA in which he claimed cabinet-level involvement in looting the entity — should have taken the information at his disposal to law enforcement agencies so that it could be investigated.