Need to justify cabinet reshuffles
President Cyril Ramaphosa and future presidents might have to justify decisions to reshuffle their cabinets.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and future presidents might have to justify their decisions on cabinet reshuffles in future.
This follows a decision by the Supreme Court of Appeal not to weigh in on a precedent-setting high court judgment that records of decisions should be made available when executive decisions are taken on review.
In 2017, the High Court in Pretoria ordered then president Jacob Zuma to provide the record of decision making on the axing of Pravin Gordhan as finance minister and Mcebisi Jonas as his deputy.
This was after the DA approached the court for the record, which would have formed part of its main application to have Zuma’s decision reviewed. This matter was, however, dropped after Zuma resigned and Gordhan was reappointed to the Cabinet.
In a late-night reshuffle in March 2017, Zuma removed Gordhan and Jonas, worsening disarray in the economy.
Zuma had initially brought the application for leave to appeal against the high court judgment, and Ramaphosa continued the fight against it.
This does not seem to be the end of the road for Ramaphosa, who is considering approaching the Constitutional Court.
“We are considering our options, including an appeal to the Constitutional Court, and that is because it’s a precedentsetting judgment and it can’t be correct that the executive decisions that are taken by the president will be brought for review in the manner the DA sought to do,” Presidency spokeswoman Khusela Diko said on Monday.
The court found that defining the ambit or scope of the applicability of rule 53 of the uniform rules of court to include executive decisions fell within the terrain of the rules board .
Rule 53 deals with reviews of decisions or proceedings by any tribunal, board or officer performing judicial, quasijudicial and administrative actions.
Attorney and legal analyst Ulrich Roux said despite the DA dropping the matter, the record of decision on the axing of Gordhan and Jonas still needed to be handed over, because the high court judgment stood and there was a ruling. This was unless the Presidency approached the court and said it was not going to hand over the record because the DA is no longer interested.
Roux said that he would be surprised if Ramaphosa approached the Constitutional Court. “If you’re making proper, sound, rational decisions, you shouldn’t have any reason to hide your decision making,” he said.
The judgment “creates a very good and strong precedent going forward for the future presidents of our country because they must know that if they do make a decision they must always be in the best interest of the country and that they must be transparent about that decision”, he said.