Economic Freedom Fighters supporters demonstrating outside the Constitutional Court demanding judgment be delivered without further delays on the Phala Phala scandal involving President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Image: Timothy Bernard / Independent Newspapers.
ActionSA has welcomed the Constitutional Court's ruling handed down on Friday morning as a "victory for the South African people".
The much-anticipated judgment declared the National Assembly's decision to reject the investigation report into the Phala Phala farm scandal out of hand as invalid.
ActionSA, one of few opposition parties in Parliament, said in a statement: "The fact that this report must now return to a Parliament where the ANC no longer enjoys a majority that can protect the President over the Constitution is a victory for accountability.
"ActionSA's Parliamentary Team is ready to participate in the processes that unfold and to provide leadership from the opposition benches as we have on the Phala Phala matter for some time.
"ActionSA celebrates the work of political parties that have not given up as one government institution after another freed the President of accountability."
The party said the time had come for parties in the GNU (Government of National Unity), "who have gone silent on Phala Phala since they have entered government, to demonstrate whether they will act for South Africans for themselves".
Ahead of the judgment, leader of Al Jama-ah and Deputy Minister of Social Development Ganief Hendricks revealed on Thursday that parties in the GNU would stand by President Cyril Ramaphosa, regardless of the Constitutional Court ruling in the Phala Phala matter.
The apex court ruled that Parliament acted unlawfully when it rejected the Section 89 panel report recommending an impeachment inquiry against Ramaphosa.
The incident dates back to February 2020, when approximately $580,000 - about R8 million at the time - was allegedly stolen from a sofa during a break-in at the president’s Limpopo farm.
The legal challenge was brought by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the African Transformation Movement (ATM), which argued that Parliament acted irrationally and unconstitutionally in rejecting the panel’s findings.