South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says he will legally challenge a report that has paved the way for parliament to consider impeachment proceedings against him over the theft of large sums of cash from his private farm.<\/p>\n
A Constitution Court ruling last week found that parliament acted unconstitutionally when it voted against establishing an impeachment inquiry against Ramaphosa regarding the Phala Phala report in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remain here and am not resigning,\u201d Ramaphosa said on Monday, ending days of speculation over whether he would step down.<\/p>\n
The controversy stems from the so-called Phala Phala scandal, in which thousands of dollars were stolen from furniture at his game farm.<\/p>\n
An independent panel found there was prima facie evidence Ramaphosa may have committed serious misconduct in the way he handled the matter.<\/p>\n
He has denied wrongdoing, and said the money came from the legitimate sale of buffalo from his farming business.<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s Constitutional Court last week ruled the matter should be examined further through an impeachment process in parliament, rather than be dismissed.<\/p>\n
Ramaphosa said he will now ask the courts to review and set aside the report, which he argues relied on hearsay evidence.<\/p>\n
If the process goes ahead, the report would form the basis of opposition efforts to remove him from office.<\/p>\n
Political analyst Professor Richard Calland said the president would likely survive a parliamentary vote, but added the legal challenge may be aimed at avoiding a damaging impeachment hearing altogether \u2013 which would hurt his reputation and legacy.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says he will legally challenge a report that has paved the way for parliament to consider impeachment proceedings against him over the theft of large sums of cash from his private farm. A Constitution Court ruling last week found that parliament acted unconstitutionally when it voted against establishing an impeachment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}