Section 89 impeachment inquiry on hold as Gana weighs next steps after court order

Before political parties weighed in on Friday’sWestern Cape High Court judgmenthalting parliament’s impeachment inquiry intoPresident Cyril Ramaphosa, the chairperson of the section 89 committee,Makashule Gana, said MPs would study the ruling to determine what work could continue. The court granted an interim interdict preventing the committee from proceeding with its planned public hearings while Ramaphosa’s application to review the section 89 independent panel report is before the courts. Gana said the committee had taken note of the judgment and understood the interdict applied specifically to the public hearings.

“We note the interdict is against the public hearings pending the review application. The committee will study the full judgment to see which aspects of the work can proceed,” Gana said in a statement issued through parliament. His comments came as political parties offered sharply different interpretations of the ruling.

The ANC welcomed the judgment, saying it reaffirmed the constitutional right of every citizen, including the president, to seek legal protection when they believed a public process was unlawful or procedurally unfair. The judgment temporarily pauses one of parliament’s most politically sensitive inquiries The party said the ruling would allow Ramaphosa’s review application to proceed without parallel parliamentary processes complicating the matter. It rejected suggestions president was attempting to evade accountability, arguing that exercising legal rights should not be portrayed as avoiding scrutiny.

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The ANC urged political parties to respect the judgment and allow the remaining legal processes to unfold without interference, while maintaining parliament’s oversight role remained intact once the courts had concluded the review. The DA, however, said the judgment did not amount to an endorsement of Ramaphosa’s conduct or clear him of any wrongdoing linked to the Phala Phala scandal. DA leaderGeordin Hill-Lewissaid the ruling merely determined the sequence in which judicial and parliamentary processes should take place. He called for the review application to be heard urgently, arguing South Africans were entitled to answers on the allegations surrounding the theft of foreign currency from the president’s Limpopo farm.

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