Constitutionally Speaking<\/a>.<\/p>\nDe Vos said the court’s decision to side with the DA’s application that reasons be provided was less surprising than many “armchair legal experts” make it out to be, adding that executive decisions by sitting presidents in South Africa have been challenged in the past.<\/p>\n
However, the consequences of the ruling may also not be as far-reaching as the DA and many others would hope, the legal expert said.<\/p>\n
According to de Vos, the country’s courts would be hesitant to make any ruling that moves against the powers of the president as enshrined in the Constitution, as broad as they are.<\/p>\n
“The president has extremely broad powers to appoint and dismiss cabinet ministers and can do so for a myriad of valid reasons and courts would be extremely hesitant to interfere in such decisions,” de Vos said.<\/p>\n
“There would therefore normally be no grounds for an effective review of the presidential decision to appoint or dismiss a cabinet minster.”<\/p>\n
That does not mean that the courts can’t do it, he noted – the country’s courts are empowered to take on decisions at the highest levels – but it would all boil down to what official reasons president Zuma pens down in his submissions.<\/p>\n
What about the report?<\/strong><\/p>\nAt the core of the matter, the DA wants to try and prove that the decisions taken by the president to reshuffle his cabinet were irrational. But purely political reasons – even if they are detrimental to the country – are not in themselves irrational, de Vos noted.<\/p>\n
The more general the reasons provided by the president, the more difficult it would be for the court to intervene, de Vos said.<\/p>\n
In this case, the appointment of ministers\u00a0is already a highly charged political decision, and unless there is clear evidence – not speculation by opposition parties – that the president acted in bad faith or with an ulterior purpose, the courts are likely to not do anything.<\/p>\n
“In the absence of smoking gun evidence, it would be close to impossible to prove that the President indeed acted in bad faith or with an ulterior purpose,” de Vos said.<\/p>\n
The only bump in the road de Vos sees for Zuma in this specific case is the so-called “intelligence report” which made headlines as the reason the president fired Gordhan and Jonas.<\/p>\n
The report was said to contain information about the former finance minister and his deputy conspiring with international groups to initiate regime change in South Africa. If the president mentions the report in the official reasoning, then the case for irrationality may have some meat to it, as such claims will need to be proven.<\/p>\n
However, the report has never been publicly published or otherwise supplied to any security department in the country. The parties involved in the court case have even expressed doubts if such a report even exists.<\/p>\n
The alleged report has only been\u00a0acknowledged by others (not Zuma himself), and unless the president mentions it in his record and reasons, or his reliance on the report is confirmed by someone with direct knowledge of this –\u00a0ie, the ANC’s top six – it is unlikely to feature in the court battle.<\/p>\n
“Of course, it is not possible to predict what facts will be put before the court if a review application is launched,” de Vos said.<\/p>\n
“But as things stand, what at first might appear to be a radically invasive order handed down by the High Court, might turn out to be of little consequence and not nearly as invasive as some armchair lawyers have argued on social media.”<\/p>\n
\nRead:\u00a0Court orders President Zuma to give record and reasons why he fired Pravin Gordhan<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite a High Court ruling ordering president Jacob Zuma to put on record the reasons for his decision to reshuffle his cabinet and fire former finance minister Pravin Gordhan and his deputy, Mcebisi Jonas – in the end, the courts are unlikely to overturn the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":169251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-173661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173661"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173671,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173661\/revisions\/173671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}