PA Air school wins interdict

EFF Cacadu coordinator Xolisa Runeli and 13 others have been interdicted from going anywhere near 43 Air School near Port Alfred, after threatening to burn its premises to the ground.

Grahamstown High Court Judge Jeremy Pickering yesterday granted an interim interdict against Runeli and 13 others after the group confronted and threatened Attie Niemann, the director and CEO of the internationally accredited aviation training institution.

Niemann says the incident took place on a restricted area taxiway used by aircraft entering and leaving hangars at 43 Air School.

He says in an affidavit he and others at the school were threatened and treated aggressively and abusively over some three hours. The incident had been filmed and showed the group threatening to burn down the school, warning the international and local students to leave and calling Niemann a racist.

He said some 300 students were in training at the institution which also had some 200 support staff.

All those present had felt threatened by the incident.

The group was disrupting and disturbing the legitimate business of the school, he said. While it is not entirely clear from the papers what had triggered the confrontation, Niemann says a DC4 heritage or museum aircraft belonging to the government had landed at the Port Alfred Aerodrome a few days before.

The aircraft, which is decades old, had a small, old South African flag painted above the doorway

“It seems apparent that the SA government wishes to retain the DC4 in its original form and that is no doubt the choice of the SA Airways’ officials.”

He said it was not the property of 43 Air School and it had no say in how the aircraft was presented.

The group was arrested during the confrontation but were later released.

Niemann says the allegations of racism were unfounded and the reasons they had sought to disrupt the business of the school were “unclear and mystifying”.

In a social media post attached to the court papers, one of the 14 posted that they had been arrested for standing up to the fact that there was an SAA aircraft sporting the apartheid flag parked at the Air School.

Judge Jeremy Pickering gave them until July 10 to show why the interim interdict should not be made final.

Advocate Shaughan Cole instructed by Audie attorneys in Port Alfred and Netteltons attorneys in Grahamstown, argued the matter.