NATIONAL NEWS - The Constitutional Court (ConCourt) on Thursday found President Cyril Ramaphosa did not mislead Parliament about donations made during his 2017 ANC presidential election campaign.
Delivering the judgement, Justice Chris Jafta indicated that Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, who investigated the matter, got the facts and the law wrong.
“The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria was right to set the Public Protector’s finding that the President deliberately misled Parliament. The Public Protector was wrong on the facts and the law,” the judge said.
Jafta also ruled that there was no evidence that Ramaphosa personally benefitted from the donations made to the CR17 campaign, adding that Mkhwebane did not have the authority to investigate the campaign, as it was not part of the complaints she was investigating.
“Both Constitution and Public Protector Act does not permit the Public Protector to investigate private affairs of political parties,” he said.
Background
The campaign’s financial records were sealed in August 2019 by Deputy Judge President Aubrey Ledwaba, after Ramaphosa argued they were illegally obtained by Mkhwebane during her investigations.
In July 2019, Mkhwebane released her controversial report on the CR17 campaign.
In it she found Ramaphosa had breached the executive ethics code by not disclosing a R500,000 donation to the campaign made by Gavin Watson, the late former chief executive of Bosasa, and misled Parliament, as well as that there was “merit” to the suspicion of money laundering.
The report was reviewed and set aside by a full bench of the court last March. Mkhwebane has since approached the ConCourt with an application for leave to appeal.
The high court in Pretoria heard an application by the EFF in March to unseal the financial records of the CR17 campaign.
This is after Ramaphosa said in November last year that the publication of the bank accounts belonging to donors who funded the CR17 campaign was out of his hands.
