Former president Jacob Zuma’s residence in Nkandla. The Phala Phala judgment may become one of the defining constitutional decisions of South Africa’s coalition era. Unlike in 2016, the ANC no longer governs with overwhelming parliamentary dominance, says the writer The arc from the Nkandla scandal in 2016 to thePhala Phalascandal in 2026 feels less like coincidence and more like constitutional déjà vu.
Different facts, different presidents, same institutional question: what happens when political power collides with constitutional accountability? The recent judgment of the Constitutional Court of South Africa ordering Parliament to revive the impeachment process againstPresident Cyril Ramaphosa over the Phala Phala affairis therefore not merely a procedural development. It is a constitutional intervention into the culture of political impunity that has increasingly threatened the credibility of South Africa’s democratic institutions.
At the centre of the judgment lies Section 89 of the Constitution — the impeachment mechanism designed not as a political weapon, but as a constitutional safeguard against executive abuse. The Court’s essential finding was devastating in its simplicity: Parliament cannot use its majority power to evade its constitutional obligation to hold the President accountable. This is precisely the principle that emerged from the Nkandla era.
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In the landmark 2016 judgment ofEconomic Freedom Fighters v Speaker of the National Assembly, the Constitutional Court held that Parliament had failed in its constitutional duty by shielding then-President Jacob Zuma from accountability regarding the misuse of public funds for upgrades to his Nkandla residence. Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng famously declared that the Constitution is the “supreme law” and that no public office bearer is above it. A decade later, the same institutional pathology has resurfaced.
The facts of Phala Phala differ from Nkandla in important respects. Nkandla concerned the unlawful expenditure of state resources on private luxury upgrades. Phala Phala concerns allegations surrounding the concealment of foreign currency, the reporting of a burglary at the president’s private farm, and the alleged use of state security resources in response to a private criminal matter.
Ramaphosa has consistently denied wrongdoing and maintains that the money originated from legitimate game sales. Yet constitutionally, the issue before the Court was never ultimately about buffalo sales, couches stuffed with dollars, or internal ANC factionalism. The deeper question was whetherParliament exercised independent constitutional judgment or merely reproduced executive protectionism through partisan voting discipline.
The Court has now answered that question with unmistakable clarity. The significance of this ruling extends beyond Ramaphosa himself. It reasserts an often-neglected constitutional doctrine: Parliament is not merely a political chamber; it is an accountability institution.
Members of Parliament are not constitutionally employed to defend party presidents. They are entrusted to defend constitutional governance. This distinction matters profoundly in a dominant-party democracy such as South Africa’s, where the line between party loyalty and constitutional duty has historically become dangerously blurred.
The African National Congress, like many liberation movements that transitioned into governing parties, has often struggled to distinguish criticism of the president from attacks on the movement itself. The result has been an erosion of institutional independence across multiple spheres of governance.
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