Article by: Dumisane Dube
The Constitution Court has found that President Cyril Ramaphosa did not deliberately mislead Parliament about donations to his CR17 campaign.
The court said the Public Protector’s finding that President Cyril Ramaphosa sought to enrich himself and family with the donations made to his 2017 ANC Presidency campaign does not hold water because he did not know about the donations.
“The President didn’t directly benefit of the campaign funds,” said Justice Chris Jafta, while delivering the ruling.
According to the ruling the Public Protector didn’t have the powers to investigate the matter and should not have entertained the issue of money laundering in her investigation into the CR17 campaign.
“Public Protector had no scope to investigate the funding of the campaign” stated the court.
In the 2019 report, Mkhwebane found Ramaphosa had deliberately mislead MPs and recommended he be investigated by the Speaker and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). The decision to investigate the CR17 campaign was declared invalid and set aside by the Pretoria High Court.
The constitutional court said the ruling of the Pretoria High Court was correct.
According to the Apex Court the Public Protector Act does not empower the Public Protector to look into the affairs of private political parties.
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