Parliament chucks out ATM's motion of no confidence against Ramaphosa

The National Assembly's programming committee has decided to throw out the motion of no confidence against President Cyril Ramaphosa.

This comes a day after a meeting of the assembly failed to discuss the matter after the ATM, which brought the motion last year, refused to table it citing its court battle with speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.

After a meeting of the committee on Thursday morning, Mapisa-Nqakula ruled that the ATM motion be removed from the parliamentary programme. However, she told the committee the ATM could resubmit the motion should it want to.

ANC MP Hope Papo was the first to motivate for the removal of the motion to give other parties a chance to also move motions against Ramaphosa.

Deputy speaker Lechesa Tsenoli supported Papo, saying the ATM would not want its motion blocking other parties from moving a motion of no confidence against the president.

ANC MP Cedric Frolick supported the proposal to have the motion removed.

“In the fifth parliament we had a similar situation where we had a motion brought by former member [Andries] Tlouamma of Agang and at the occasion of the sitting he refused to move the motion. The ruling on that occasion was, which I believe should be consistently applied, that a motion falls away.

“The party who brought the motion or the member who brought the motion is at liberty to reintroduce the motion at any given time, but we cannot deprive other political parties to bring a motion on a similar matter and allow this motion just to occupy the space on our parliamentary programme,” said Frolick.

ATM leader Vuyo Zungula on Wednesday told the sitting of the National Assembly that he did not want to go ahead with the motion because his party had gone to court to force Mapisa-Nqakula to allow a secret ballot on voting for the motion. 

But he lost his application in the high court in Cape Town on Monday due to a lack of urgency.

Addressing the committee on Thursday, Zungula maintained there was an ongoing court process because the court only struck the case off the urgent roll and the case and its merits were not discussed.

“That the judge deemed it not to be urgent, that does not mean there is no existing case or there is no existing court process. Second, speaker, I have got papers here coming from the state attorney representing you as the speaker. The letter from the state attorney clearly states that there is ongoing litigation,” said Zungula.

He said the committee should not pre-empt that there would be a motion of no confidence coming from another party against Ramaphosa and the ATM should not be pressured on the matter.

IFP chief whip Narend Singh advised that the ATM should be given seven days to bring alternative legal advice on the matter.

EFF MP Hlengiwe Mkhaliphi asked that the ATM be given a chance to proceed with the motion and not be pressured to withdraw its motion.

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