Malema: Hold Zuma to account

By failing to hold President Jacob Zuma to account, Parliament was “perpetuating a culture of impunity and unaccountability,” said Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema in court papers filed on Thursday.

The EFF, the Congress of the People and the United Democratic Movement approached the Constitutional Court, asking it to declare that after the court’s Nkandla judgment in March last year, Parliament had a duty to put mechanisms and processes in place to investigate the president’s transgressions and hold him to account.

The three opposition parties have also asked the highest court to compel Parliament to conduct an investigation — either through a committee or “any other appropriate independent mechanism” — to determine whether the president’s actions satisfied the requirements for an impeachment.

In his affidavit, Malema said the three parties collectively represented “the interests and voices of well over one million voters and citizens of South Africa”.

The Nkandla judgment found that remedial action directed by the public protector was binding unless it was set aside by a court. By failing to implement the remedial action directed by former public protector Thuli Madonsela in her Secure in Comfort report, Zuma had breached the Constitution, said the Concourt in a unanimous judgment.

Madonsela found that the president had unduly benefited financially from the nonsecurity-related upgrades to his Nkandla homestead, such as the swimming pool and visitors’ centre. She directed that Zuma should pay back a reasonable portion of the reasonable cost of these.

The Concourt also found that Parliament, by absolving the president from complying with the remedial action, had breached its duty to hold the executive to account.

“Some six months after the Constitutional Court delivered its judgment, the National Assembly remains silent. The president has not been held to account,” said Malema.

He said the court case was to ask “the fundamental question: whether it is rational and consistent with the foundational principle of the rule of law for the National Assembly to lie low and play possum in the light of the clear and unequivocal statements of the Constitutional Court that the president indeed violated the Constitution and/or breached his oath of office”.

Parliament had a duty, said Malema, to require Zuma to account.

“The president is, in the words of the Constitutional Court, the first citizen of this country. He is specifically obliged to uphold, defend and respect the Constitution — an obligation imposed on him alone. Our democracy depends on his constitutional ethic and discipline; he is the ‘personification of this nation’s constitutional project’,” said Malema.

He added that it was also clear that Zuma — when he addressed the nation after the judgment — “was not telling the truth”. Zuma had said that he had not knowingly ignored the public protector’s findings. “It is clear that he did,” said Malema.

He added that speaker Baleka Mbete had, on April 3 2016, “stated falsely” that the court had not found any breach by Parliament of the Constitution.

Numerous appeals, in letters to the speaker requesting action by Parliament, fell on deaf ears, he said.

Mbete had apparently responded that the speaker could not act on the EFF’s request because a motion of no confidence had already been tabled by the Democratic Alliance and it was defeated. Also, Zuma was not a member of Parliament so could not be subject to its disciplinary mechanisms.

But this was “a gross misunderstanding of or misinterpretation” of the law, he said.

Malema said the EFF accepted that Parliament should be afforded a “margin of appreciation” for the manner in which it holds the president to account, and was not asking the court to order any specific mechanism.

“But this court is entitled — and, with respect, constitutionally obliged — to ask whether Parliament has put in place any accountability mechanisms at all. The answer is no.”

Thereafter, the court, “after hearing all sides,” can propose making an appropriate order, he said.

The opposition parties have asked the speaker and the president to respond within 15 days.