Manyi points Rules Committee to Constitutional Court judgment

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Right, let's head to the Western Cape because Parliament will today host a seminar to mark 30 years of the country's constitution. The engagement will include representatives from academic institutions, governance experts, and public policy institutions, among others. Iman Rapetti joining us live from Cape Town ahead of that gathering, and a very important gathering here. Uh Iman, to really just uh look back at that moment, but really also to look forward into how best we can continue to serve that constitution, which has laid the ground for where we even stand today.

[00:00:35]And even though it's 30 years old, uh Arabile, it was adopted on the 8th of May in 1996. It was signed into law by former President uh Nelson Mandela in December of that same year. And uh and then legally uh enacted by Parliament uh on the 4th of February in 1997.

[00:00:54]And boy, how the years have impacted that constitution. It's not lost on us that the theme today is our constitution in a changing world. We at that moment where South Africa is stress testing our constitution in this impeachment moment as it applies to our President Cyril Ramaphosa. Of course, former President Thabo Mbeki of the Thabo Mbeki Foundation is also expected to be part of that colloquium. It's happening in our temporary Parliament here at the dome um in Cape Town. But what was also happening last night was very, very important and connected to section 89 of our constitution. All the rules affecting how a president is impeached.

[00:01:32]This is a novel moment for us as South Africans. We've never been quite in this position before. Parliament's uh subcommittee on the review of National Assembly Rules met last night. And one of the people in the room was my next guest, MKP's uh one of the MKP's whips.

[00:01:48]Um Mzwanele Manye, Mzwanele, good morning to you. Thanks for joining me here in the rain. I appreciate it.

[00:01:54]So, just talk to us about last night and share with South Africans your impression of how those debates went down. It was quite heated and there were a lot of concerns about the modality and setting a framework for how this impeachment would do it impeachment committee would do its work. Yeah, no, thank you very much for the opportunity.

[00:02:09]But let's quickly say something on the colloquia.

[00:02:13]For us as the MK party, I think we view this celebration by everyone with the mixed feelings. We're not entirely happy with the constitution. We think there are quite a few things to be done. In fact, we think the constitution requires a complete overhaul as it were. If we have enough time, we can talk about the few issues that we think needs to change. But getting back to your question about what >> Well, let's just stay on that very quickly. Let let's round that up. I mean, I know that you'll be busy with continuing the work because Arabella for our audience, the deadline is today for the finalization of the names of those political well, those MPs who will be on the 31-member committee. Close of business today is that deadline. So, that work will be continuing. You'll have some of your members there and some of your members here.

[00:03:02]Will you disrupt the colloquium?

[00:03:05]No, no, we won't disrupt. We'll use the opportunity to articulate the position that in fact it's good that President Mbeki is going to be here because under his leadership we missed an opportunity in 2004 when we had 2/3 majority as the ANC at the time. Some of us were members of the ANC at the time. We missed that opportunity. That opportunity would have changed the constitution and made sure that some of the unnecessary concessions that were made in Codesa were corrected as it were. I mean, right now we're sitting with a section 25 that has actually codified the the land theft. If you go to section 25 subsection 7 of the constitution, that section talks about the land restitution and redistribution from 19 June 1913 onwards. In other words, the constitution as we speak says land dispossessed from whenever up until uh 19 June 1913, we must forget about it. So, that is why for us as MK party, we now have a land bill to try and correct uh all of that. We also have things like a section 235 uh self-determination that the people are abusing uh to establish enclaves like Orania, Kleinfontein, Eureka, and all of that.

[00:04:25]MK party has also got a bill to make sure that that confusion is clear. So, there's a lot uh to be undone, uh but on the greater scheme of things, for us as MK party, we're actually saying in order to achieve the will of the people, what we should actually have is parliament sovereignty.

[00:04:43]When people that have been delegated to come and lead South Africa in parliament have decided, have spoken on something, that must be final uh as it were. But, obviously, we need to clean up modalities there so that we have people that uh can also vote with their conscience, and we don't have this block voting. So, I mean, that's a foundational principle, right, of the MKP. That is uh your election doctrine, essentially, as we return to uh local government elections this year. Take us back to last night and the rules uh committee and some of the concerns that you have as a party around the constitution of that framework for how this committee will do its work. I think the first thing to be done here is to really uh you know, thank the constitutional court for bringing crystal clarity on issues uh as it were.

[00:05:30]For the constitutional court to uh bring rationality and objectivity in the process.

[00:05:37]They did even further, they went a step further. They did a read in. The The constitutional court said uh Uh in order to fix to make sure that life goes on. Here is a read in so that you can the work can go on. So, yesterday we now get uh get called in to listen to Parliament legal services to come and explain to us uh what the what what what what what the ruling says. Yet, all of us were quite clear. The ruling was not complicated uh that it was a simple thing that the Parliament vote was wrong. The Parliament vote was unlawful. The Parliament vote was inconsistent with the Constitution. To fix this, it's a simple thing. That report by a former Chief Justice Ngcobo had to go directly to the impeachment committee. That's all that uh needed to to be done. Now, we get here in this Rules Committee. Uh then we they come in to explain this to us. Now, they come and with they they just come and just complicate the matter. They say, "You know, before you do this, uh you must do this, you must do this, you must What problem do you have specifically with that? No, the problem we have with that we actually for us as the MK Party we see this as a a structured delaying tactic because these Parliament services now is saying uh before you start anything, let's get this in all they get to the minute detail of what even the evidence leader should do. They get into public processing about uh approving the the rules and all of that. All the kinds of things that are novel uh uh uh as it were and yet what should happen is a very simple thing.

[00:07:20]For now, we can do the rules and use whatever processes are required, but what should happen right now is to get on with the process and use the Constitutional Court as a guideline to say, "Here are the rules." The Constitutional Court has did done a reading to clean up the rules. So, we've got the rules. So, we should hand over to the impeachment committee and I think the The committee can easily take the Madlanga template and use it to do its work.

[00:07:46]Are you distrustful of the process right now where it stands?

[00:07:49]You know, what makes me distrustful of the process right now is one of the issues raised by honorable Mkhalaudzi.

[00:07:57]He raised it from the DA. He raised a very a very worrying issue.

[00:08:01]He says that the speaker the speaker of parliament was having a meeting with the lawyers of the president. We don't know what happened in that discussion. And the lawyers and he asked the legal question to say legally what does this mean? And the legal team ran away from the question. They didn't want to answer the question. And the issue here is that if and the point he was making without speaking for him was that if that is the case, it therefore means Toko Didiza can't be is actually tainted for her to to oversee the process. It gives grounds for review once the decision is made.

[00:08:45]But they didn't want to commit to anything, these people. So so so these are some of the issues that are worrying us. Mr. Ndlozi, thank you so much.

[00:08:54]What's the latest on the suspension of Ntombovuyo Ndlela?

[00:08:57]No, before that in the impeachment committee we are led by no less than our party leader Dr. Shloppe leading us and also have our chief whip and also have Dr. Lishfield Shabala. So we've got the A team that is leading us there.

[00:09:15]About the suspension of Ntombovuyo Ndlela, I don't know. I just saw the statement and all of that. I haven't got the details. All right. Well, we'll leave it there for now with Mr. Ndlozi money from the MKP. It brings us to a touch after 8:30. Arabella, over to you and a recap of our top stories at this hour.