AMABHUNGANE said on Thursday that they were vindicated by the Constitutional Court’s judgment in the Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane and Others versus President Cyril Ramaphosa case.
This after the constitutional court ruled that the Pretoria High Court was wrong not to consider amaBhunganes argument on the need for internal campaign financing disclosure and transparency.
The issue will now go back to the Pretoria High Court.
AmaBhungane was awarded its legal costs to be paid by the President Ramaphosa.
Delivering his judgment, Justice Chris Jafta decreed that Ramaphosa did not wilfully mislead Parliament or personally benefit from the money.
However, the matter has been remitted to the High Court for the amaBhugane Centre for Investigative Journalism claim for constitutional invalidity of the Executive Ethics Code.
The Concourt found that the High Court had erred in declining amaBhungane’s complaint.
Mkhwebane, the EFF and the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism took their fight for access to the financial records of Ramaphosa’s CR17 campaign to the Constitutional Court.
In March last year, a full bench of the high court – which included Judge President Dunstan Mlambo, judges Keoagile Matojane and Raylene Keightley – reviewed, declared invalid and set aside Mkhwebane’s decision to investigate and report on the CR17 election campaign.
The high court found that Mkhwebane had no jurisdiction to investigate the complaints lodged by former DA leader Mmusi Maimane and EFF deputy president Floyd Shivambu as well as the CR17 campaign and its donations.
In an affidavit dated July 27, 2020 and filed by Ramaphosa’s lawyer, Peter Harris of Harris Nupen Molebatsi Attorneys, the president stated that the issues amaBhungane seek to ventilate in the apex court were not decided at the high court because the centre elected not to enter into the debate regarding the proper interpretation of the Executive Ethics Code.
According to Harris, amaBhungane’s reasons for asking the ConCourt to entertain its application are without merit and mutually destructive.
He told the court amaBhungane were wrong to claim that the high court found that the Ethics Code did not require the disclosure of donations made to intra-party campaigns such as the CR17 campaign.
AmaBhungane asked the High Court to construe the Executive Ethics Code as requiring disclosure of monetary donations made to campaigns for the leadership of political parties, and alternatively it mounted a constitutional challenge against the Code.
In its judgment previously, the High Court addressed AmaBhungane’s case and acknowledged that a compelling case was made out with regard to the constitutional challenge.
However, the High Court concluded that the challenge was not properly raised and as a result that court was of the view that the challenge against the validity of the Code should be dismissed.
Although the High Court had found AmaBhungane’s case to have been compelling, it held for a number of reasons that the constitutional challenge mounted against the Code was not properly before it.
- Inside Politics
