The Constitutional Court, the highest court in the land, found that Zuma failed to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution as the supreme law of the land by disregarding the Public Protectors’ report.
Mabine Seabe, spokesperson for DA leader, Mmusi Maimane, said, “This pivotal judgment confirms the DA’s long-held contention that President Zuma seriously violated the Constitution when he sought to undermine the Public Protector’s remedial actions by instituting parallel investigative processes, and his subsequent failure to implement her remedial action.”
Seabe said Section 89(1) of the Constitution states that, “The National Assembly, by a resolution adopted with a supporting vote of at least two-thirds of its members, may remove the President from office only on the grounds of:
(a) A serious violation of the Constitution or the law;
(b) Serious misconduct; or
(c) Inability to perform the functions of office.”
“Today’s ruling is clear in this regard – President Jacob Zuma’s action amounts to a serious violation of the Constitution, and constitutes grounds for impeachment,” he said.
Until recently, Zuma argued that he was not obliged to heed this remedial action and that such remedial action was simply advice which he could take or ignore.
“In his letter to the Public Protector dated 11 September 2014, he argued that her role was akin to that of an Ombud and she could not issue judgements to be followed under pain of a contempt order,” Seabe continued.
“Instead, he described her reports as ‘useful tools in assisting democracy in a co-operative manner, sometimes rather forcefully’. He specifically denied that they were binding on him.”
On 9 February, counsel for President Zuma, the Speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Mbete and The Minister of Police, Nathi Nhleko, all eventually conceded that, indeed, the powers of the Public Protector have legal consequences and can only be challenged by way of a judicial review.
“This is bizarre given that the DA had been arguing this from the very beginning. Indeed it has been our assertion that Parliament failed to satisfy its constitutional mandate to hold the executive to account in terms of Section 55(2) of the Constitution by adopting the police minister’s report which we contend is – in and of itself – born from fatal errors in law, because this amounts to the establishment of a parallel process as expressly prohibited by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA),” Seabe said.
He added that this was done, no doubt, to circumvent the remedial actions as ordered by the Public Protector and to thwart the discharge of her mandate.
