ConCourt Orders Ramaphosa, Phala Phala Must Be Investigated // The Corder Report

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]Settle down, brother. This is the quarter report. South Africa is a movie.

[00:00:03]Welcome to the watch party. I need to teach you a word because I think that given the news in the last year or so, South Africa has become desensitized to bombshells. So, if you don't follow football, soccer transfers of players between clubs, here is a brand new word from that world that is, I think, the appropriate level of wow for what just happened. It's bomba. Bomba, Eric. B O M B A Bomba is the reason why you're not going crazy. You are seeing us on a Friday. It's not Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. We are back for a special Friday episode cuz the constitutional court just ruled, we just watched it happen. They just ruled that the Palapala report actually has to be sent to the impeachment committee after setting aside the rule that allowed the National Assembly to vote to stop the Palipala report. the preliminary one from going to an impeachment committee back in 2022. This means that there is going to be a full facts investigation into what went down a palapala. The couch, the cows, the American dollars, the cleaners, uh the uh what security detail allegedly using SAPS uh resources, the president allegedly not reporting the crime to SAPS. It involves the Namibian president. It involves cars and properties in Cape Town. It is a blockbuster of Italian job level movie proportions. That kind of script is what is happening. And we are back on a Friday to tell you all that you need to know. This is a huge moment for the president. It's a huge moment for South Africa. It could end in him being impeached or at least a recommendation for impeachment. It could end in a vote on whether or not he stays as South Africa's president. And I will remind or is removed. And I will remind you that a number of years ago he nearly resigned from being president of the country over Pala Pala. I'm not saying that there's any likelihood or evidence right now.

[00:02:04]The judgments just happened that he would do that. But that is the scale of the severity of what has just happened.

[00:02:11]Eric, >> an absolute court and national assembly bomb bomb. And frankly, I think we do. I think we should now make the Pala Pala t-shirts.

[00:02:21]>> I think it's time.

[00:02:22]>> I think it's back. I think it's back on.

[00:02:24]I think somebody should benefit from this in some way.

[00:02:26]>> We'll get on the phone straight after this and get them produced >> besides the besides the whole country.

[00:02:30]Okay. No, hold on. Let's not make the mistake of making stuff that only we think is cool. If you would like a Pala Pala t-shirt or would be willing and buy to buy one, comment on the YouTube or text us on the WhatsApp line 0607613436 so we can gauge interest in genuinely buying this or wearing this shirt. Okay, otherwise welcome to the quarter report.

[00:02:50]Please like, subscribe and follow if you haven't already. It makes a huge difference to us. Thank you to our members who click join and are even more helpful by providing us 100 rand a month. Just two and a half coffees in big cities. Check out our merchandise at www.reebinieswork.com. three beanies.com where the Pala Pala shirt will sit if you tell us that you want it. You can also go and get these uh beanies, branded beanies if you like, as well as a bunch of other good stuff. Let's get into it. Quick refresher. Some money was stolen from a couch at President Ramapos's farm. If you're only discovering that now, wow, I've got a ton of our shows to refer you to. I don't have time to relitigate this. We need to talk about the litigation that just happened today, but go and watch all of our episodes on Pala Pala and the president. Okay. So, back in 2022, the National Assembly, that's our parliament, recom that's elected members of parliament, politicians from political parties, ANC majority at the time because it was pre the 2024 election. They uh constituted an independent panel to investigate the available evidence, a preliminary, a light investigation into the evidence available of what went down at Pala Pala and if the president might have committed wrongdoing.

[00:04:04]The panel delivered their their preliminary report to the National Assembly where they said that there was enough prima or primaasy evidence that just means the evidence that lies before them, right?

[00:04:16]to indicate that the president might have committed wrongdoing. And therefore, people thought it was appropriate that the preliminary report be handed over to the impeachment committee to conduct a deeper investigation to investigate whether or not there were grounds for the president of this country to potentially be impeached. An impeachment can lead to a vote which can lead to the president being removed. This is a crucial function of a properly built democracy that there is legal accountability and oversight of the president the most powerful person in the country. We have seen in places like the United States of America what happens when your law does not properly constrain your president there. That is a perfect example of a system of laws not preventing a president from committing wrongful acts.

[00:05:03]So in South Africa, we've got a I would argue and I think any legal scholar would reasonably would argue a far better system of laws. But there was a law until just this morning that allowed the National Assembly to vote on whether or not to send the Palapala report to the impeachment committee. And the National Assembly on the 13th of December 2022 voted and remember it's an ANC majority at the time. They voted to not send the preliminary report to the impeachment committee even though the report said that they'd found that there was prima evidence to suggest that the president may have committed serious unlawful wrongdoing.

[00:05:42]So that seemed to be a pretty clear instance of the ANC majority National Assembly going, "Nah, we don't want our president to suffer any more investigations into something that could be incredibly damning on him on the on the party." Could ultimately lead to like a vote to remove him, but that's impeachments to remove a president are often extremely uncommon, mostly extremely uncommon. Presidents usually resign or their party removes them before then. But many people saw this as the ANC recognizing incredible reputational damage to their leader, the most popular politician, most electable, most likely to be voted for politician party in South Africa by all polling. And they put a stop to it. They stopped the preliminary report, ending up in impeachment committee action. 14 months later, the EFF and the African Transformation Movement took this case to Parliament uh sorry to the constitutional court arguing that the National Assembly had acted unlawfully, irrationally, wrongly. Now, it's really important to remember that in our systems of powers, our separation of powers, the way our country is designed, the judiciary at its top, the constitutional court, is not designed to be more powerful or less powerful than the executive, which is the president and his cabinet, and parliament, which is politicians. It's a balancing act. And so this is always going to be a tricky case because the constitutional court could if the constitutional court had overruled the national assembly, it would have been seen as the constitutional court going beyond its powers to rule over the national and literally overrule the elected parliamentarians in the National Assembly. But that's not what this case was about. This case was about the rule which allowed the National Assembly to vote to stop a proper airing of the issue of Pala Pala once the in uh the uh inquiry the independent panel had provided the preliminary report because the constitution constitutional court saw that essentially the rule stops accountability for a president in this case stops a proper investigation from which to judge the full facts of whether or not impeachment is justified whether or not wrongdoing was committed. The constitutional court saw that if you can just vote down an initial inquiry, you never like that decision is made on incomplete facts. And so the constitutional court ruled that that rule listen properly that that rule is unconstitutional, unlawful, invalid and should be set aside. Which means that the vote to stop the palapala report is now set aside also because it came from the existence of an power from that rule. So the constitutional court has now ruled that parliament needs to go away and reconfigure their laws, their mechanisms to manage investigations into presidents that could lead to serious accountability and should hold presidents accountable when they commit wrongdoing. and that in the meanwhile the Palopala report must go to the impeachment committee which will mean a proper full investigation by parliament rather than just the light investigation from the independent panel. It's a proper full investigation into the facts of what actually happened at Palipala that could uncover presidential wrongdoing that could justify recommendation of impeachment that could justify an impeachment vote and could culminate in the president being removed in a government of national unity. I kind of doubt it's going to go that far.

[00:09:04]Like 70% of the elected representatives, the parties are have a vested interest in this government staying together. But I will remind you that Ramapos is in his last term. In 2027, the ANC is going to have to find him a successor. Very very often, as I'm sure you've noticed, the second the ANC finds a successor to their sitting president of the ANC and the country, they remove him and put him in put in a new one. Happened with Becki and then Mlante and then Zuma. happened with Suma and then Ramaporosa. This is an extraordinary moment which literally uncors the bottle that is Palapala the disaster that is Palapala. It is an absolutely massive moment for our entire country. I was just going to say earlier the um you know I think it's also important to remember that in 2022 when it gets decided to stop that uh finding from going to the impeachment committee commission which one is it committee >> the impeachment committee um it's a parliamentary it's not a commission just before Ramaposa also gets reelected as ANC president >> yes >> so like the the uh electoral uh uh what is it called it's not the NC it's the electoral conference Yes.

[00:10:13]>> So it happens just before the ANC's electoral conference as well. So you can imagine how much damage mitigation they were trying to do at that time.

[00:10:21]>> Totally.

[00:10:21]>> And I and I totally agree with you now as well. I mean we're so close to the end of his second term >> that it's almost like >> ah there's there's there's a little I don't know something in the back of my mind going no wonder all these things took so long to get here. You know what I mean? But at the same time that isn't necessarily the case. Yes, >> I mean as we've seen even in the 2022 report, there was primma fasier like evidence um that said there was probably some breach of anti-corruption laws >> and nothing was done to be fair, >> right?

[00:10:50]>> Until maybe now.

[00:10:51]>> Yeah.

[00:10:51]>> So, it's going to be a very very interesting thing to watch.

[00:10:54]>> So, there are more uh complexities within the ruling itself that we could talk about. We could talk about the fact that it was actually a majority decision, not a unanimous decision on uh removing the law. Four of the 11 judges actually said there was nothing wrong with the rule that they got rid of. It was a it was a problem of how power was used within a good rule in the National Assembly. But seven of the 11 judges um ruled that actually was a problem with the rule that had to be uh resolved and the rule had to be set aside. So that's interesting. can also talk about like there was a big contention about whether or not too much time had passed to uh to hear this case given that it is like 3 and a half years ago now that the National Assembly had that vote and that given that the EFF and ATM case was uh only filed 14 months after that. So it's been years since it was filed but it was years between the National Assembly's vote and the EFF and ATM filing this case. Uh but basically the line from the court was no people involved in this case have been penalized or harmed by how long it's taken. So it's h it's kind of harmless that we're still doing this.

[00:12:01]But also uh one of the arguments from the defendants was well since that ruling there's been an election that uh government has been dissolved and we have got a new government now. Many of the same faces we got a we got a Gene government now. you can't go back in time and change and provide consequences for that government or that administration given that there's a new one. But Justice Mer pointed out that if that were the case, you could just never do impeachment proceedings because if an impeachment proceeding took too long and carried over an election, when then would that impeachment proceeding just go away and there'd be no consequences for a president? It doesn't make sense.

[00:12:39]So we could get into all of that other stuff, but I want to talk quickly about consequences, optics, messaging, local government election in May, June, July, August, September, October, beginning of November, six and a bit months. Let's talk about this. It was funny that uh Madlanga joined the uh the first judgment. He agreed with Maya and two others in the first judgment that the rule should be scrapped and that it's invalid and should be set aside because it's a reminder of the fact that the Mlanga Commission is dominating the South African news cycle. The Madlanga Commission is doing untold damage to the ANC, the modern current ANC's uh reputation because it is about SAPS but it is fundamentally about the ANC uh ANC ministers ANC leadership ANC elected officials ANC ANC ANC modern ANC in this country involved with political interference and corruption involving SAPS. And so we have spoken at length on this show about how Midlunga is doing damage to the ANC by exposing the rot that the ANC is allowed. And in some cases, ANC people have created have rotted uh caused rot uh at the top of the country. It's doing untold damage to their modern reputation in the way that I would argue state capture and Zondor didn't because Rama Pa could come along and convince the country that even though he was the deputy president, it wasn't his fault and he wasn't involved in all the state capture Zuma stuff and he could say we've got rid of Zuma, we've got rid of the state capture guys, the ANC of the past is gone. The new ANC is not bad. But this is Ramapos's ANC.

[00:14:10]It's the modern ANC. It's the now ANC.

[00:14:12]And so Mlanga looks bad on the now ANC and will affect its votes in the coming election.

[00:14:18]Now we're going to get the dirty laundry of Ramaposa and Palapala even more of it. And even if we don't rapidly get new findings or new information coming out to the public, Palapala is now top of mind again. It's in the news. There's going to be people talking about it. Uh they're going to be parliamentary processes about it. It's going to be in the media. People are thinking about it again. Of course they are because it's back. And that looks so bad and is so harmful of the reputation of the person who is most likely to still convince people to vote for the ANC going into a local government election coming where national corruption plus service delivery disasters are going to even badly even worse affect the ANC in local government elections. And remember, the local government government election is about power and position and rulership and governance, but it's also about narrative creation of whether parties are going up or down, better or worse, going into the national election in 2029. This is a huge moment, bad moment for the ANC going into the next election. It's extraordinary. It's completely extraordinary. I'm tired just thinking about it. Right, much shorter than usual. We'll be back on Monday.

[00:15:24]I'll be back with the brother James uh in Johannesburg. Thank you so much for watching. Have a good weekend.

[00:15:31]Why does South Africa never chill? I was just getting happy about Orlando Pirates maybe winning the PSL. I was thinking about football. I was happy that Ipsich got promoted. I was feeling vaguely vaguely optimistic that Spurs might survive uh you know and not get relegated. That was going to be my weekend. And now look at this.

[00:15:53]Pala pala bombber.

[00:15:56]Trudy.