Constitutional Court rules Parliament failed to hold Zuma to account over Nkandla

Click to edit the intro

Parliament's failure to determine whether President Jacob Zuma breached the Constitution in the way he dealt with the public protector's Nkandla report, violated the Constitutional duty resting on the National Assembly to scrutinise and oversee the the actions of the executive, the Constitutional Court has found.

In a majority judgment the justices of the Constitutional Court ordered Parliament to create rules regulating the removal of the president in terms of section 89 of the Constitution.

The court ordered that the national assembly's failure to make rules regulating the removal of the president in terms of section 89 of the Constitution, which deals with impeachment, was a violation of this section, and that parliament now has to make rules for this section without delay.

The court ordered that the National Assembly must comply with the Constitution and fulfill its obligation to determine if the president has breached the Constitution.*

The application was made by the EFF, United Democratic Movement (UDM) and the Congress of the People (COPE).

They argued the National Assembly and speaker Baleka Mbete did nothing after the Constitutional Court ruled in the so-called Nkandla judgment that the president had not protected, defended and upheld the Constitution in dealing with the public protector's report on Nkandla.

Parliament's failure to make rules for regulating the removal of the president in terms of section 89 was declared in violation of the section and declared invalid by the court.

The National Assembly's failure to determine whether the president had breached section 89 of the Constitution was declared inconsistent with this section as well as section 42 of the Constitution.

Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng wrote a scathing dissenting judgment, however, saying the order was in breach of the separation of powers doctrine.

The ANC said it noted the judgment.

"The ANC will study the judgment and discuss its full implications when the national executive committee meets on January 10," deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte said.

Read this for more information on what this case is about:

* This story has been corrected and the deadline for the National Assembly to make the rules regulating section 89 and to initiate the process under section 89 removed due to incorrect information provided.