National Assembly Speaker Thandi Modise says she is considering a Motion of No Confidence in President Cyril Ramaphosa tabled by the African Transformation Movement.
Modise was responding to questions from the media during a briefing on preparations for the State of the Nation Address (SONA).
ATM leader Vuyo Zungula tabled the motion, citing various failures by the Ramaphosa administration, including the crippling load shedding and unemployment.
One of them is the failure to make his ministers sign performance agreements like he promised. The President promised to make cabinet ministers sign performance agreements. To date this has not happened.
Another issue raised is about Ramaphosa’s promise that there wouldn’t be further power cuts in December and early January. Little did he know that these utterances would come back to haunt him. Now the ATM wants him gone.
The ATM reportedly said it wants voting on the motion to be conducted through the use of a secret ballot.
Modise confirms that Zungula has tabled the motion.
“I have, yesterday, received notice from the ATM on their motion. I am considering the motion. You do know that any motion that comes in front of us must satisfy certain conditions and if it is, we will deal with it as it comes.”
Meanwhile, Political Analyst Ralph Mathekga says the envisaged motion of no confidence to remove President Ramaphosa has no chance to succeed.
If Modise gives the go-ahead for the motion, it will be the first of its kind against Ramaphosa, since he took over from Jacob Zuma.
Mathekga called the ATM’s presence in Parliament is “insignificant,” as the party occupies only two seats in the National Assembly.
“First of all, I would imagine the Speaker is not just readily going to table this motion. I think we might see the back and forth tussle between the political parties before this motion can even be tabled. But if it gets tabled, it will be very interesting because it would have been initiated by the very small party that has got just about two seats in Parliament. However, if one looks at the current caucus of the ANC … I prefer to refer to it as the very unpredictable caucus and it’s not about this motion succeeding. I think it has got no chance of succeeding.”
