Abrahams rejects EFF’s argument

• National director of public prosecutions says attacks on act are baseless and Malema’s call for land invasions could lead to unrest

The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and minister of justice Michael Masutha will head to court in September to defend the state’s decision to charge EFF leader Julius Malema for inciting land grabs, under apartheid-era laws.

President Cyril Ramaphosa announced in July that the ANC had decided to change the constitution to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation.

In affidavits filed at the High Court in Pretoria, national director of public prosecutions Shaun Abrahams slammed the EFF’s argument that Malema’s prosecution was politically motivated as based on nothing more than “conspiracy theories”.

In addition to denying suggestions by the EFF that he met with then president Jacob Zuma and his cabinet to discuss the case against Malema, Abrahams has also dismissed the EFF’s claims that incitement charges against Malema violated his right to free speech. “Mr Malema’s position is a frontal assault on rule of law.

“He contends that what his party sees as inadequacies in the land redistribution policies of the duly elected government justifies him in urging his supporters to grab land by [to use his words] any means necessary. This is profoundly at odds with the democratic ethos of the constitution,” Abrahams stated.

“Free expression is cherished in our democratic constitutional order because it protects the rights of people to hold government accountable and to change the government if they are unhappy with how it is running the country. It is an abuse of free speech to use it to ram through an ideologically driven agenda that would upend the constitutional settlement that brought an end to apartheid.”

Abrahams said the EFF’s attacks on the 1956 Riotous Assemblies Act were “baseless”, as the law has “long since been stripped of its apartheid-era baggage”. He also suggested that Malema’s comments, urging EFF supporters to occupy land, could lead to social unrest.

“On at least four different occasions he has urged illegal land invasions, his rhetoric tinged in some instances with a threat of violence.

“It can hardly be doubted that this would spark chaos and anarchy,” Abrahams stated in response to the EFF’s bid to challenge the Trespass Act.

Malema faces charges of incitement in relation to the following incidents:

On December 16 2014, in the Free State, when he allegedly told the EFF elective conference he was “not the Holy Spirit” and could not occupy land everywhere. He urged supporters to “be part of the occupation of land everywhere else in SA”;

On June 26 2016, in KwaZulu-Natal, when Malema allegedly said, “If you see a piece of land, don’t apologise, and you like it, go and occupy that land. That land belongs to us”; he also reportedly told his supporters that a trust fund had been set up

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to assist those arrested for occupying land.

Those cases have been halted while the EFF challenges the constitutionality of the Riotous Assemblies Act and the Trespass Act. That case will be heard on September 20 and 21 in the High Court in Pretoria.

Abrahams says the EFF’s application to have Malema’s prosecution quashed must fail because Malema has failed to first make representations to the NPA that the case against him should be dropped.