South Africa court rules impeachment proceedings against president should not have been blocked

South Africa's Constitutional Court has ruled that parliament violated the constitution by blocking moves to impeach President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2022.

The ruling came as a result of a legal challenge by opposition parties. A panel of legal experts had originally said that Ramaphosa may have a case to answer after burglars stole more than $500,000 in cash, hidden in a sofa, from his rural home.

That theft led to allegations that he had not accounted for where the cash had come from. The president denied wrongdoing.

Impeachment proceedings were blocked in a parliamentary vote, at a time when Ramaphosa's African National Congress still had a majority, which it lost at the last election.