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EFF leader Julius Malema
Waldo Swiegers, Netwerk24
- EFF leader Julius Malema says that police officers must be used to the circumstances in which they will be pushed.
- Malema was speaking at the Randburg Magistrates Court, where his trial was postponed.
- The trial will now be held on October 28 and 29.
EFF leader Julius Malema and EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi are on trial for assaulting a police officer, but Malema says the police officer should be the one to apologize, as well as the Presidential Protection Unit and VIP Protection Unit.
Malema spoke at Randburg Magistrates Court on Tuesday after the trial was postponed.
The trial will now take place from October 28 to 29.
While the state was ready to present its witnesses to appear on Tuesday, the magistrate, Lieland Poonsamy, had to postpone the process after having to listen to a series of requests from the media seeking to cover the hearing.
Addressing supporters outside the court, Malema said: “Why do they have a common assault [case] against a police officer? The police are pressured every day. If they opened common assault cases, then there would be no files available because the police are under pressure every day. ”
SEE | Here are the pictures showing Malema and Ndlozi ‘lied’ about the ‘assault’ on a police officer – AfriForum
Malema and Ndlozi are accused of assaulting a police colonel in April 2018 during the funeral of the icon of the struggle Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.
News24 previously reported that the incident was captured on CCTV footage and the officer later opened a case.
Malema said police officers should be used to difficult circumstances, in which they are sometimes pushed by disgruntled and often emotional people.
He added that the officer, who filed a complaint, was a “white man who suffers from privileged [and] he thinks he can’t be pushed the way the police are pushed all the time. “
“You have to push the police because, half the time, they go into difficult areas, even where people get excited at times, some are irrational, they don’t think well.
“When a police officer is pushed into a situation like that, always understand that, as a law enforcement officer, you will find yourself in difficult situations.
“You have to be guided by the Ubuntu spirit from time to time and understand that when people are in graves, most of them are excited that day.
“But [white people] I don’t understand Ubuntu. Ubuntu doesn’t have a word in English, that’s why they don’t know it because it doesn’t have a translation, ”said the leader.
He continued:
In any case, it is they who owe us an apology, not the other way around. That white man named Venter must apologize to us. The presidential protection unit must apologize to us. The VIP protection unit must apologize to us. They don’t respect blacks.
Malema also expressed concern that party members, who were marching peacefully outside the court as the proceedings began, were being guarded by police officers.
He said the police seemed to associate the gatherings of black people with violence.
He also said police were not in Senekal in the Free State last week, where chaotic scenes broke out during the court appearance of the suspects charged with the murder of the farm manager, Brendin Horner.
“The police have come here to monitor a peaceful march, but in Senekal, where the whites burned police vans and entered the court with force, [and] police station with force, there were no police to sniff.
“The blacks are gathering here, the police will come. The white terrorists, when they gather in Senekal, when they block the N14 and the N1, there are no policemen with a stinky boot next to the whites.
“But when blacks meet, the cops won’t waste time wearing a stinky boot … They think that where blacks are, there will be violence because they have associated us with violence.”
