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Former Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane.
Former Public Protector Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane says she feels vindicated after the Constitutional Court ruled on the Phala Phala matter yesterday.
The court ruled that the National Assembly had acted unlawfully in 2022 when it voted to reject an independent panel’s report.
The panel had found President Cyril Ramaphosa has a case to answer.
It had also recommended an impeachment inquiry into Ramaphosa regarding a theft at his Phala Phala farm in Bela-Bela, Limpopo, in February 2020.
Mkhwebane says, for a long time, she had maintained that the President should account to South Africans.
She also says he must appear before an impeachment committee.
Mkhwebane says, “The most important thing is that the president will appear at the committee. The President will have to present his side of the story, and all the evidence will be presented in the open, and the witnesses will be called. At the end of the day, this is about accountability. This is about the president being the constitutional being and who then must account to South Africans why he had to have the foreign currency in his couches. Why then did he instruct the rider to go to Namibia to trace those people with bhejane? Why did he not declare that? He needs to just account because that’s what we need. Whether he will be impeached, that’s another issue.”
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