#RamaphosaDontResign
Ramaphosa must not resign. He is not without legal recourse.
The first order of business is obvious: approach the courts to determine the precise implications of the invalidation of the relevant parliamentary provision.
Put differently:
Can the impeachment committee lawfully commence immediately despite the defect?
Or must Parliament first debate, amend and regularise the rule before any committee can validly proceed?
That question alone is worth months of litigation, argument and appeals. Anyone pretending otherwise is selling political theatre disguised as constitutional certainty.
Then comes the procedural question. Ramaphosa is not an ordinary litigant attending a municipal disciplinary hearing. He is a sitting President.
He would be entirely within his rights to request either:
• a proxy representative to sit on procedural matters; or
• special leave for his legal team to participate on his behalf through an expanded power of attorney arrangement.
Why? Because this process is unprecedented. South Africa has never impeached a sitting President under these circumstances. Constitutional novelty is precisely where courts are expected to speak.
And should the committee chair refuse such an application, that refusal itself becomes reviewable.
If the chair appears politically compromised or procedurally unreasonable, a recusal application follows. If that fails, another court challenge follows.
This is not “delaying tactics.” It is called exercising rights within a constitutional democracy — something many of Ramaphosa’s loudest critics suddenly develop allergies to when the rights belong to someone they dislike.
Ironically, the same people who defended every imaginable procedural manoeuvre during Jacob Zuma’s legal marathon now develop spiritual urgency when it is Ramaphosa insisting on judicial clarity. Apparently “I want my day in court” was a sacred constitutional principle until the wrong ANC faction discovered it.
And because these issues are constitutional in nature, they travel the full judicial ladder: High Court, Supreme Court of Appeal, then Constitutional Court.
Meaning?
The impeachment body likely does not meaningfully sit for a very long time.
By then Ramaphosa could very well exit office conventionally, politically intact enough to frame the process as factional warfare masquerading as constitutional accountability.
And by that stage, knowing South African politics, half the people screaming “constitutional crisis” today will have moved on to the next outrage cycle — perhaps even visiting Julius Malema at Kgosi Mampuru with revolutionary songs and legal invoices.
Please retweet with
#RamaphosaDontResign.
And tag
@CyrilRamaphosa @SpokespersonRSA and
@MbalulaFikile
Dear
@CyrilRamaphosa DO MOT RESIGN!