Uncertainty lingers as attempts to remove president drag on

Acloud of uncertainty hangs over the coming week’s political events. These include the removal of President Jacob Zuma and how this will be achieved, and whether the state of the nation address will be delivered on Thursday as rumoured.

There is also uncertainty over whether National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete will agree to an opposition party request that a motion of no-confidence debate in President Zuma takes place on Tuesday.

Just when a breakthrough in ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa’s talks with Zuma appeared on the cards, the president is understood to have dug in his heels.

This has required that a special meeting of the ANC’s national executive committee be held on Monday. In the meantime, the country Baleka Mbete continues to wait. Leaders of opposition parties plan to meet on Monday to work on a joint approach towards what should happen in Parliament in light of the state of the nation address being postponed indefinitely.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane will brief the media on Monday on the outcomes of the party’s federal council, which held its first meeting of the year on the weekend. Among other matters, Maimane will deal with the DA’s ongoing dispute with embattled Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille.

De Lille will face a motion of no confidence during a city council meeting on Thursday. She will approach the High Court in Cape Town on Tuesday for an order that the vote be held by secret ballot.

The Public Service Association has given Treasury and the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) until Monday to prove that the PIC board has been legally constituted, failing which it will seek a declaratory order that the board is invalid.

Parliamentary committees will start their work this week and the inquiry into state capture at Eskom will continue on Wednesday.

Exxaro executives will appear before the inquiry and will no doubt recount how the company’s coal contract with Eskom was terminated in order to make way for the Guptaowned Optimum coal mine.

The public hearings by the trade and industry committee on the National Credit Amendment Bill, which provides for debt relief for the heavily indebted, will continue on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Passenger Rail Agency SA will meet the transport committee on Tuesday under the terms of a subpoena after the board failed to show up for a meeting scheduled for last week. Its officials are expected to be questioned about the company’s failure to submit its 2016-17 annual report and other governance issues.

The telecommunications and postal services committee will be briefed on Tuesday by the South African Post Office on its future prospects and its relationship with the South African Social Security Agency.

The communications committee will be briefed by the Special Investigating Unit on its investigation into the SABC.