Parliament Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula has declined African Transformation Movement (ATM) president Vuyolwethu Zungula’s request to have the voting on the Section 89 Independent Panel’s report held by secret ballot.
 
Zungula wrote to the Speaker and requested that she consider allowing MPs to vote through a secret ballot following the debate on the Section 89 panel report on Tuesday.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is trying to garner support for a second term as African National Congress (ANC) president, as the party prepares for its fifty-fifth Electoral Conference.

The ANC’s National Working Committee has instructed its MPs to oppose the adoption of the report which found that Ramaphosa may have violated the Constitution.

Opposition parties, as well as those within the ANC implicated in the State Capture report, have called for Ramaphosa to step down.

The Speaker believes that a closed voting procedure will deprive citizens of identifying the positions of their representatives across party lines and in her letter to the ATM president she said that a secret ballot may facilitate the possibility of corruption where members could be influenced to vote in a manner that shields them from accountability.

She also said she had to balance Zungula’s reasons for a secret ballot procedure against other imperatives, including the foundational Constitutional principle of ‘openness’, as set out in Section 1(d) of the Constitution.

Furthermore, the Speaker said the Constitutional requirement that the National Assembly must conduct its proceedings in an open manner was also an important consideration in this case.

“An open and transparent procedure followed by the Assembly to exercise this important decision on the Section 89 Independent Panel Report, can only bring about public trust and confidence in the Assembly and our democratic dispensation,” said Mapisa-Nqakula.

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba also urged his support for a secret ballot.

Mashaba says the Speaker has a duty to South Africans to exercise independence and not allow the process to be politically captured by the ANC’s undue processes.

“This is not how accountability works and the Speaker is duty bound to give effect to Section 55 [2] of Constitution which demands that Parliament exercise oversight over the Executive and hold it accountable,” he said.

He said Ramaphosa must be subjected to due process so that South Africans can satisfy themselves that justice is being served in the Phala Phala matter.