Africa-Press – South-Africa. The ATM’s court bid to force the Speaker of Parliament to hold a secret ballot in Wednesday’s motion of no confidence in President Cyril Ramaphosa has been struck from the roll.
After hearing arguments from counsel for National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and the ATM, Judge Rosheni Allie of the Western Cape High Court found the ATM had brought the application with “self-created” urgency.
This means that Wednesday’s motion of no confidence in Ramaphosa, the first he will face, can go ahead with an open ballot, as there is no court order preventing the National Assembly from continuing with it.
Conceivably, the ATM could ask for a postponement of the motion, or withdraw it.
On the same day, the DA’s motion of no confidence in Ramaphosa’s Cabinet will be heard, also with an open ballot. On Monday morning, advocate Stephen Budlender SC, for Mapisa-Nqakula, argued that the ATM had created the urgency of the application themselves.
After pressuring Mapisa-Nqakula to reschedule the motion and making a decision on the voting, she informed them on 16 February that the vote would not be by secret ballot, as they requested.
Budlender said the ATM could have brought the application to review Mapisa-Nqakula’s decision then.
He said, instead, the ATM nine days later wrote a letter to request Mapisa-Nqakula to review her decision.
Budlender said it was a “classic case of self-created urgency”.
Advocate Anton Katz SC said the ATM actually brought their application one court day after the date for the motion to be heard was set by the National Assembly Programming Committee on 10 March.
“The matter is clearly urgent,” he said, adding that the Speaker’s attempt to avoid scrutiny should not be allowed.
Allie said a motion of no confidence should be dealt with expeditiously.
She said the courts were expected to deliver substantive justice, and coulkd not do this when it was placed under “extreme pressure”.
Allie said there was “no logical explanation” why it was necessary to ask Mapisa-Nqakula to review her decision, and the application could have been made on 16 February.
With the motion being on Wednesday, Allie would have had 48 hours to make a ruling.
“This is not the way justice must be seen to be done,” she said. She described the ATM’s application as “lopsided and handicapped”.
She said there was “no rhyme or reason” to wait until the date the motion was to be heard was known for the ATM to bring the application.
She found that the urgency was self-created and struck the matter from the roll with costs.
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