The Democratic Alliance (DA) has sought an opinion from its lawyers about applying to the Zondo Commission to cross-examine President Cyril Ramaphosa.
DA leader John Steenhuisen says the rules allow for a party implicated in wrongdoing during testimony to cross-examine the person who made the statement.
Steenhuisen said he and Ramaphosa bumped into each other at this week’s hearings.
“He said to me, ‘Oh, are you part of my fan club here?’ and I said to him, ‘No, I’ve come to get the answers that you’ve been ducking in Parliament for the past 10 years’. So I think he was a bit irritated that I was there, which is why I think he made a point of trying to drag the DA into it”.
Lawson Naidoo of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution said “…an implicated person may apply to cross-examine. I would doubt very much whether the president’s comments about the DA would constitute the DA being an implicated person. I’m not sure that it would meet that definition.”
Naidoo said most of the President’s answers were political in nature, and the DA would have other opportunities to challenge him. He said that the Deputy Chief Justice had to consider whether cross-examination would comply with the commission’s mandate. “I think it would be a stretch of the imagination to suggest that it would.”
The DA this week also asked the Commission to subpoena “… the full records of decisions made by the ANC’s cadre deployment committee”, since Ramaphosa became its chairperson in 2013.
The party has twice before unsuccessfully written to the Commission about this matter.
AfriForum has also applied to cross-examine President Cyril Ramaphosa at the State Capture Commission about the ANC’s cadre deployment policy.