The Economic Freedom Fighters ( EFF), will challenge the outcomes of an investigation by the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) which cleared its members of wrongdoing in the death of Collins Khosa, Julius Malema said on Monday.
Malema, EFF leader, was speaking at a Black Lives Matter rally the party held at the US embassy in Pretoria to protest over the death of American George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25 after a police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.
Speaking to the media, Malema said the party was confident it would get a favourable judgment from the courts. He spoke to EFF supporters while Khosa’s wife, Nomsa Montsha, stood alongside him.
He said the party moved quickly to the defence of the Khosa family after his death. “The first thing we did was to send lawyers, that if they need legal representation we are there. That is why you see Ian Levitt Attorneys helping them with advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi. We briefed them and we moved beyond that. We buried Khosa because we knew the family will struggle because they are a poor family from Alexandra.”
Montsha also shared a few words, saying that she watched as soldiers and police brutally assaulted and killed her husband.
In March, days after the start of the national Covid-19 lockdown to stop the spread of the coronavirus, 40-year-old Khosa died at his home in Alexandra, Johannesburg.
According to court papers filed by his family, he was approached by SANDF
members who asked about a vacant chair and half a glass of alcohol next to it.
Khosa replied that he was allowed to drink at his home, but the soldiers
allegedly did not take kindly to the comment.
They allegedly assaulted Khosa, poured beer over his head, held his hands
behind his back while they choked and beat him, slammed him against a wall, and
used the butt of a machine gun to hit him.
Once they had left, Khosa’s wife said she laid him on their bed and held his
hand but, not long after that, she noticed he had stopped moving. When the
ambulance arrived, he was already dead.
While the police were busy with a murder investigation, the SANDF also instituted a board of inquiry into Khosa’s death, chaired by Brigadier Viscount Ngcobo. Meanwhile, the court found in favour of Khosa’s family in a damning judgment against the SANDF and police.
Last week Tuesday, the SANDF’s legal adviser Elvis Hobyana filed an explanatory affidavit to the court to explain which steps it had taken since the judgment.
Attached to this was the findings of the board of inquiry, which stated that
the soldiers accused of killing Khosa cannot be held liable for this death as
there was no link between the injuries he sustained due to their actions and
him dying.
It further stated that Khosa and his brother-in-law were “undermining the
two female soldiers”, the force used to get the men to comply with the
officers’ instructions was “pushing and clapping” and that Khosa was
“conscious and healthy when the security forces left”, News24
reported earlier.
Malema said he was convinced that the judges will be on “our” side.
source: News24
#SAPNews
