Court postpones criminal charges against Malema
EFF LEADER Julius Malema will continue to face criminal charges of inciting land grabs unless he successfully petitions the High Court in Pretoria to overturn the two charges against him.
Malema had since October 2016 made several court appearances in the Magistrate’s Courts of Bloemfontein and Newcastle for allegedly inciting his supporters to occupy vacant land.
Yesterday, he failed in his first attempt to declare the two charges illegal because his instructing attorney had failed to serve the High Court’s Registrar with a proper notice to challenge the Riotous Assemblies Act of 1956.
The High Court yesterday ordered Malema to file a proper notice for the High Court to hear his constitutional challenge against what he deems “apartheid legislation charges”.
Malema’s legal troubles began in October 2016 when the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) charged him with incitement for comments he made in Bloemfontein, during his party’s elective conference in 2014.
At that conference, Malema told his supporters: “We are going to occupy unoccupied land because we need the land…”
Civil society organisation AfriForum laid criminal charges at the time but a charge was preferred against Malema more than two years later on October 23, 2016.
The second charge of incitement followed comments he made in June 2016 while addressing his supporters in Newcastle, in KwaZulu-Natal, in which he reportedly said: “These whites found us here and not one of them came with a piece of land in their pockets”.
Malema was officially charged with the offence on November 7, 2016 in the Newcastle Magistrate’s Court.
On November 9, 2016 he filed notice in the High Court in Pretoria to challenge the Riotous Assemblies Act arguing that the law was enacted during the apartheid era and was not applicable after 1994.
The High Court in May this year, asked Malema and his legal team to file a proper notice in accordance to Rule 16 (A).
According to Rule 16 (A) legal requirements, any person or entity challenging a clause in the Constitution should serve the Registrar with the notice, on time, and clearly detailing the contents of the legal challenge against any Act.
The notice would then be displayed on all relevant notice boards for a period of 20 days to allow other interested parties to join the court action.
Due to the apparent failure of Malema’s attorney to meet the requirements of Rule 16 (A), the full Bench ordered the EFF leader to file such a notice within five days after the court’s decision.
The matter was postponed to December 12 for hearing.
Initially, Malema argued that his instructing attorney had filed proper papers, but the attorney was not in court in person yesterday to make representation or file an affidavit. This prompted Malema’s legal counsel Thembela Ngcukaitobi to concede that the mistake might have been that of the instructing attorney.
Advocate Ngcukaitobi agreed the matter be postponed. The High Court, however, is expected to make a cost order against Malema, if his attorney, is found to have breached the legal requirements of Rule 16 (A) notice.
Malema remains defiant that the criminal charges of land grabs against him was a ploy to stop him from calling for the land to be returned to black people.
He told hundreds of his supporters that the NPA charged him with incitement purely to force him to apologise for “calling for the expropriation of land without compensation”.
He made the remarks after the High Court in Pretoria refused to hear his application to overturn the charges. The High Court ruled that his legal team failed to provide the court with the valid reasons for his argument.
Last night, Malema admitted his legal team’s error, saying “our lawyers should have taken that matter seriously”.
Despite the legal glitch, he remains adamant that his party would expropriate land from an “Afrikaner Boer” who allegedly refuses farmworkers to bury their loved one on the farm.
In Hammanskraal, Malema said, burial sites are full while there are large tracts of land next to the cemetery.
“That piece of land, where there is no farming or grazing of cattle, should be expropriated to allow the people of Hammanskraal to bury their loved ones with dignity,” Malema said.