A South African court has pressed pause on the Ramaphosa impeachment inquiry, granting the president more breathing room in a saga that has trailed him since 2020.
Judge André le Grange of the Western Cape High Court ordered on Friday that the parliamentary committee driving the Ramaphosa impeachment inquiry may not proceed with public hearings until a separate case brought by the president is resolved. Two of the three judges hearing the matter ruled in Ramaphosa’s favour, granting what the court described as an interim interdict.
The order does not shut the process down entirely. Parliament’s impeachment committee can still carry out preparatory work behind the scenes, even though it cannot hold public hearings for now.
At the centre of the Ramaphosa impeachment inquiry is the so called Farmgate scandal, which dates back to a 2020 robbery at the president’s Phala Phala game farm in Limpopo. Burglars made off with a large sum of foreign currency, reported at around $580,000, which had reportedly been hidden inside a sofa. The incident raised awkward questions about why such a sum was kept on the property in the first place, whether it had been legally declared, and why the theft was not reported to police immediately.
Ramaphosa has consistently denied any wrongdoing. He has maintained that the money came from the legitimate sale of buffaloes on the farm, an explanation that has done little to quiet critics within and outside his own party, and that has hung over the Ramaphosa impeachment inquiry from the outset.
An independent panel appointed by parliament concluded in 2022 that Ramaphosa may have a case to answer over serious misconduct linked to the incident. MPs initially voted to shelve that report, effectively blocking any move toward impeachment at the time. That changed in May, when the Constitutional Court ruled that parliament had acted unlawfully in setting the findings aside, clearing the way for the impeachment process to resume.
Lawmakers moved quickly after that ruling. The impeachment committee, made up of representatives from parties across the National Assembly, began proceedings in June. It was this stage of the Ramaphosa impeachment inquiry that the Western Cape High Court has now paused.
Ramaphosa’s legal team argued in court that allowing the impeachment committee to press ahead with hearings, while his own review of the panel’s findings remained unresolved, risked causing him irreparable reputational harm. That review, in which the president is challenging the legality of the 2022 panel’s conclusions, is expected to be heard by the High Court in September.
Respondents named in the application include the Speaker of the National Assembly, the chairperson of the impeachment committee, the Economic Freedom Fighters and the African Transformation Movement, whose leader Vuyo Zungula has been among the most vocal advocates for pressing ahead with impeachment.
The political backdrop has shifted considerably since the scandal first broke. The African National Congress no longer holds a parliamentary majority, having lost it in the 2024 election, and now governs in coalition. That arithmetic matters, because any final impeachment vote would require a two thirds majority in the National Assembly. It remains unclear how all of the ANC’s coalition partners would vote if the matter ever reached that stage, though the ANC’s own numbers are large enough to block Ramaphosa’s removal on their own.
For now, parties across the political spectrum said on Friday that they would study the judgment before deciding whether to appeal it. The presidency, for its part, said Ramaphosa respects the ruling, even as the Ramaphosa impeachment inquiry remains unresolved.
The pause buys the president time. Whether it buys him vindication depends on what the High Court decides in September, when the review that triggered this latest twist in the Ramaphosa impeachment inquiry finally gets its day in court.
