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President Cyril Ramaphosa can breathe a sigh of relief after the majority of ANC MPs voted against the independent panel report into the Phala Phala saga on Tuesday.
The National Assembly sat for the final time this year to debate and vote on the independent panel report commissioned by Parliament into the 2020 robbery and theft of foreign currency at President Ramaphosa's Phala Phala game farm.
The panel, headed by retired Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, found, prima facie, that Ramaphosa had violated the Constitution in his handling of the robbery and that he may have broken anti-corruption laws.
The President has since approached the Constitutional Court to review the report and its findings as the governing party gears up for its elective conference starting on Friday.
During the vote, 214 MPs voted against Parliament adopting the panel report, while 148 opposition MPs voted in favour of adopting the report and its recommendations which would have led to possible impeachment proceedings against Ramaphosa.
Opposition MPs clapped when former Health Minister, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and four other senior ANC MPs, Mervyn Dirks, Thandi Mahambehlala, Mosebenzi Zwane, and Supra Mahumapelo voted in favour of the report, in defiance of party orders.
ANC MP, Lindiwe Sisulu, reportedly left the House, while former Health Minister, Zweli Mkhize, who will be challenging Ramaphosa at the elective conference, was absent.
The party's national chairperson, Gwede Mantashe, said afterward that "it was not significant" that some members voted against party orders.
However, Mantashe said those errant MPs will be cited and subjected to party processes.
"What is important is that we have a party political system and people are here on the party list. Nobody contests a constituency and therefore when we have discussions in the party and take decisions, they must be binding," he said.
DA leader, John Steenhuisen said the "ANC we saw in the House today is the same ANC that leaped to the defense of the corrupt former President Jacob Zuma in half a dozen Motions of No Confidence as well as an Impeachment vote."
"Despite all the solemn pledges to do better and to honour their oath of office following the scathing rebuke delivered by Justice Raymond Zondo in his final report into State Capture, the ANC fell at the very first hurdle," he said.
Action SA President, Herman Mashaba, said the ANC had copied and pasted the Nkandla playbook and South Africans once again find themselves led by a President with unanswered questions of criminality hanging over his head.
"The irrational shielding of President Ramaphosa mirrors the protection of President Zuma over the Nkandla saga that produced the Constitutional Court judgment that established the impeachment process," Mashaba said.
Build One South Africa described Tuesday's Parliamentary proceedings as "the death of accountability in South Africa."
National spokesperson, Sbu Zondi, said just "like the ANC tried to tell us that a swimming pool was a fire pool at Nkandla, they now want us to believe that the millions of dollars in question was just monopoly money and that there's nothing to answer to or be concerned about."
