JOHANNESBURG, May 28 (Reuters) – South Africa’s parliament has scheduled for Monday a meeting of an impeachment committee that will further probe allegations surrounding President Cyril Ramaphosa’s “Farmgate” scandal, the Democratic Alliance party said on Thursday.
The meeting is the next stage in the impeachment process against Ramaphosa that was revived by the constitutional court earlier this month.
A parliament spokesperson declined to comment, and Ramaphosa’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ramaphosa has denied wrongdoing over the scandal, in which bundles of cash were stolen from a sofa on his farm in 2020. An independent panel found preliminary evidence he committed misconduct in 2022, but Ramaphosa’s party the African National Congress blocked the impeachment process through a parliamentary vote that year.
This month the constitutional court declared that vote invalid, effectively reviving the process.
On Tuesday, Ramaphosa filed court papers arguing the panel’s findings against him were flawed and should be set aside. He threatened to seek an urgent court order to halt impeachment proceedings if parliament moves ahead with the process while his legal challenge is pending.
(Reporting by Anathi Madubela, Nilutpal Timsina and Sfundo Parakozov;Editing by Alexander Winning)
