President Cyril Ramaphosa has gone to the Western Cape High Court about the Section 89 independent panel report into Phala Phala, asking that the report and its recommendations be “reviewed, declared unlawful and set aside”. He also wants “any steps taken by the National Assembly pursuant to the report” to suffer the same fate. In plain terms, the president is asking the court to remove the legal basis on which Parliament is now expected to move the impeachment process forward.

The report found that Ramaphosa had a case to answer on four proposed charges. These were that he may have undertaken paid work through his farming business while in office, failed to report the theft of foreign money (allegedly from the sale of buffalo to a Sudanese businessman) hidden in his couch to the Hawks as required by law, used the Presidential Protection Unit to deal with a private matter, and acted in a way inconsistent with his office by directing his bodyguard to investigate the burglary rather than reporting it through ordinary police channels.

Ramaphosa’s case against the panel’s report rests on four central attacks. He says the panel applied the wrong legal test, treated information as evidence, relied on hearsay, and failed properly to deal with the definition of bad faith.

Each sounds technical. Each also has a simple answer in the report itself. The irony is hard to miss. The panel was chaired by retired Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, joined by retired Judge Thokozile Masipa and senior counsel Mahlape Sello. Ramaphosa’s case therefore opens by asking the court to believe that some of the country’s foremost legal minds misunderstood the basic legal test for the very process they were appointed to conduct.

The first attack is that the panel used the wrong legal test. Ramaphosa says the panel wrongly interpreted its task, “to determine whether sufficient evidence exists”, as meaning “whether there is a prima facie case against the president”. He argues that the panel had to decide whether “sufficient evidence exists” to justify an impeachment process, not merely whether he had “a case to answer”. Put plainly, the president says the Ngcobo panel got the law wrong.

But the panel explained exactly why it used that test. It said removal from office has three stages, namely “a preliminary enquiry by the panel; a full-scale enquiry by the Impeachment Committee; and a debate and a vote on the motion”. It then made the decisive point. The panel said it was “not the function of the panel to enquire into whether the president is guilty”. That was the job of the Impeachment Committee, which could summon witnesses, hear evidence under oath, and test the matter properly.

That is why this attack is weak. Ramaphosa is asking the court to treat the first stage as if it had to do the work of the second stage. If the panel had to prove guilt before Parliament could proceed, the Impeachment Committee would be pointless. The panel understood this. It said it was a “filter” to ensure that only a motion establishing, “prima facie, that the president has a case to answer”, goes to the committee.

The second attack is that the panel confused information with evidence. Ramaphosa says the panel “failed to consider and interrogate whether there was lawfully obtained admissible evidence, and if so, what was its probative value”. He argues that the panel had to sift the material before it and decide what was admissible evidence against him.

But the panel dealt with this directly. It said the rules “must limit its enquiry to the relevant written and recorded information placed before it by members”. It added that, in this context, “evidence” had to be understood as the information referred to in the rules.

That matters because the panel had no power to hold oral hearings. It could not summon witnesses or officials. The panel itself said it could not “summon any person to appear before it to give evidence or to produce documents”. Its task was therefore to assess whether the information already before it was enough to justify Parliament moving to the proper inquiry stage.

The third attack is hearsay. Ramaphosa says the panel “made conclusions, based on hearsay statements, without regard to the law”. He also says, “Save for the limited evidence I introduced in my response, there was no evidence before the panel.” This is one of the strongest-sounding parts of his case, but the report had already confronted it.

The panel did not pretend there was no hearsay problem. It said, “The president has rightly criticised the evidence contained in Mr Fraser’s statements as full of hearsay.” (Arthur Fraser is a former intelligence operative and was the individual who laid the original criminal complaint against Ramaphosa.) But it then added the part that damages the president’s position. It said “some aspects of the evidence proffered by the president” were also hearsay, because his explanation of the cash depended on what Sylvester Ndlovu, the former lodge manager at Ramaphosa’s farm, allegedly told Ramaphosa.

That is the problem for Ramaphosa. The panel did not simply believe Fraser and disbelieve the president. It tested the competing versions against the surrounding facts. It noted that Ndlovu, the man who supposedly received the cash, had not confirmed the president’s version. It noted that the buffaloes were still on the farm more than two years after the alleged sale. It noted that the receipt lacked key details. It noted that the money was not banked. It noted that no ordinary docket existed.

The panel’s conclusion was therefore not based on Fraser alone. It said, “The cumulative effect of these factors renders it difficult to accept the acknowledgement of receipt as conclusive proof.” It then concluded that “the president has a case to answer on the origin of the foreign currency”. That is not a conviction. It is a finding that the unanswered questions are serious enough for Parliament to test.

The fourth attack is bad faith. Ramaphosa says the rules require serious misconduct or a serious violation to be performed “in bad faith”. He argues that “there cannot be sufficient evidence” unless there is also sufficient evidence that he “acted deliberately and in bad faith”. He also says the panel “never considered whether I acted in bad faith”.

But the report did not ignore bad faith. It defined it carefully. It said serious misconduct means “improper behaviour performed by the president in bad faith”. It said serious violation means conduct amounting to an intentional or malicious violation “performed in bad faith”. It then made the key legal point, namely that “bad faith can be inferred from the nature and the circumstances” of the conduct.

That is the answer. Bad faith does not need to be confessed. It is usually inferred from conduct. The panel looked at what happened. The president’s private residence was broken into. A large amount of foreign currency was stolen. The matter was not reported in the ordinary way and no ordinary docket was opened.

The panel said that the information before it established, prima facie, that “there was a deliberate intention not to investigate the commission of the crimes committed at Phala Phala openly”. That is a bad-faith finding, even if Ramaphosa now disputes it.

This is why the president’s case against the report is weak. He says the panel did not investigate enough. But the panel was not the body with full investigative powers. He says the panel relied on information. But the rules required it to work with written and recorded information. He says the panel relied on hearsay. But his own version relied on hearsay too. He says the panel ignored bad faith. But the report expressly said bad faith can be inferred, and then identified secrecy, discretion, and abuse of office as the relevant facts.

There is also the matter of the man Ramaphosa is now asking the court to treat as having produced a legally useless report. The panel was chaired by retired Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, widely acknowledged in South Africa as one of its finest legal minds.

That does not place the report beyond review. But it does mean the president carries a heavy burden. He must persuade a court that a panel chaired by one of South Africa’s most serious constitutional jurists misunderstood the basic nature of the process it was appointed to conduct.

The simpler reading is that the panel did exactly what it was supposed to do. It did not find Ramaphosa guilty. It found that the president had a case to answer.

That is what the president is really trying to stop: a public process in which the case against him can finally be tested properly.