Pretoria - Panyaza Lesufi, MEC for education in Gauteng, is facing charges of assault, intimidation and incitement of violence and harm.
On Monday Freedom Front Plus (FF+) leader in Gauteng, advocate Anton Alberts, opened a case against Lesufi at the Wierdabrug police station in Centurion.
This comes in the wake, Alberts said, of how Lesufi responded to an alleged racist incident that took place at the Koeitjies & Kalfies creche.
Almost two weeks ago the creche came under fire when one of the parents of a child attending the school posted a picture on social media. It seemingly showed her black daughter sitting alone at a separate table while six white children sat around a table next to her.
The picture also showed a table with a cake, cupcakes and other treats while the other table - where the black girl sat - did not have anything but her lunch box.
Explaining his reasoning behind the decision to lay charges against Lesufi, Alberts said: “He has an obligation in terms of the Constitution and Children’s Act to protect children and their identities. We laid common law charges in this respect against him.
“Those charges are for intimidation, incitement to violence and harm and assault because you can assault a person by mere words and not just by physical action only.”
In this affidavit, Alberts said Lesufi took to social networking site Twitter to advise his more than 26 000 followers that he would be going to the creche at 1pm on June 23 and invited them to join him.
Alberts said Lsufi posted a series of other tweets showing the school and its address - leaving the creche and its staff vulnerable to attack.
“Given the volatile racial environment in the country at the moment it is not far-fetched to state that such whipping up of emotions can easily translate into actual violence - and in this case against the creche management, workers, and most importantly the children who would be caught in the crossfire of the dispute between adults,” Alberts said in his affidavit.
“He (Lesufi) further stated in a following tweet I don’t play marbles with racists’ which makes it apparent that he has already decided that the creche incident was racist in nature and made his thoughts publicly clear on Twitter without first conducting an investigation as is required per the Constitution and administrative law.”
After a meeting with the creche owner, Lesufi posted on Twitter his disgust that all the children in the creche were white and taught by all-white teachers and that the black people at the creche were maids.
“Thereby it was further creating an environment where the creche could be victimised,” Alberts said.
Alberts said Lesufi should have handled the situation in a better way by going there, conducting an investigation and waiting for the findings instead of inciting all his followers.
Oupa Bodibe, acting head of communication, said the Department of Education noted with concern the laying of charges against the MEC.
“First, the department wishes to clarify that the image of the children was originally posted by the parent of the learner, and not the MEC. He was only responding to followers on the matter. Second, the MEC did not invite his followers to join him at the school, instead he responded to an individual to join him. Therefore, he could not have incited violence, intimidation and assault,” Bodibe said.
He refuted the notion that the department passed judgement without investigating the allegations. “The MEC went to the school for fact finding and was concerned with what he found at the creche, especially that there were no black people among the teaching staff, except for the cleaners. He then requested the district social worker to do further investigations.”
He said they were shocked that the FF Plus was not concerned about the allegations of racism and the trauma to the child in question as well as her parent, but rather with protecting the creche. “We are dismayed that FF Plus have ignored a tweet where MEC Lesufi was insulted and called a k****r.”
Bodibe urged the FF+ to withdraw the charges and refrain from abusing scarce state resources.
Pretoria News