GOOD Party Secretary-General Brett Herron has said that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to take the Section 89 independent panel report on review was foreseeable, and that the current political situation is exactly where his party predicted it would be in December 2022.
Herron’s remarks come after the president’s legal move, which has the potential to delay the work of Parliament’s impeachment committee. The Constitutional Court had previously ordered Parliament to proceed with the impeachment process.
“Well, good evening. I mean, where we are today was entirely predictable in December 2022, which is why the GOOD Party proposed a motion to the National Assembly on the day that the vote took place,” Herron said.
He described the atmosphere at the time as “pathetic,” noting that some were “baying for blood” while others were “hellbent on protecting the president from the Section 89 proceedings.”
Herron explained that GOOD Party had argued to the National Assembly that the president was planning to take the independent panel’s report on review, and that it would be irrational for the assembly to reject the report. The party proposed that Section 89 proceedings should take place only if the president’s review failed.
However, once the National Assembly rejected the independent panel’s report, Herron said, “as the president said tonight, his review application effectively became legally moot.”
“We are exactly where we predicted we would be when we made that proposal in December 2022,” he added.
When asked how the GOOD Party — one of the smaller parties in Parliament that does not sit on the rules committee — would influence the design of the impeachment process, Herron said he believes the process will be designed in line with the Constitutional Court’s guidance.
The court has already indicated that rule 129L, for example, is inconsistent with the constitution. Herron noted that the clearing house committee of the Government of National Unity exists to settle disputes in the GNU, but he argued that a dispute in the parliamentary process is not something that should be elevated to the clearing house.
“We trust that the rules committee will prepare the process in line with the guidance that the constitutional court gave us and in line with fair proceedings, which is what underlines the rule of law in South Africa,” Herron said.
