Video challenges driver's assault claim

Published Oct 2, 2015

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Pretoria - Tshwane motorist David Ndlovu, who claimed that police attacked him and his wife, swore at the officers and called them names, according to video footage of the altercation.

A video, anonymously delivered to the Pretoria News, shows the 10-minute altercation between police and Ndlovu, who was driving along Rigel Avenue in Pretoria East with his wife Monica.

In the video, Ndlovu appears to be very aggressive, swearing at the officers and calling them names.

Ndlovu name-drops the ANC, telling the officers he is a senior member in one of the party's structures, and that he is an advocate.

 

 

PRETORIA NEWS EXCLUSIVE: David Ndlovu claims police assaulted him and his wife when they stopped them for a search. But this video clip of the incident tells a different story... Warning: Explicit content

Posted by Pretoria News on Friday, October 2, 2015

 

He asks them if they would do the same if he was a white man and constantly swears at them. He refuses to listen to their explanation on why they want to search the car.

Ndlovu has since questioned the authenticity of the video, claiming it may have been altered to omit certain scenes and to show the police in a good light.

In the video Ndlovu can be heard accusing the police of racially profiling their targets, after they explained that they were doing investigations related to taxi violence.

There had been taxi violence in the vicinity of Menlyn earlier and their BMX X5 had been followed out of that area and on to the highway, as part of an investigation, according to police.

Ndlovu and his wife Monica approached the Pretoria News on Tuesday morning to tell the story of being stopped by policemen on bikes as they drove home in Pretoria East.

The couple spoke of being thrown on the ground by the uncompromising officers, who kept their guns on them while they lay on the ground.

Ndlovu said he had been humiliated by the police, who had surrounded them with vehicles flashing lights, and had taken pictures of them while telling them that laying charges against them would amount to nothing.

The police, he alleged, refused to explain the reason for the apparent attack on the unarmed civilians. He said one of them grabbed him and slapped him across the face when he tried to act brave in the face of brutality.

They had stripped him of dignity by harassing him in the manner they did while his wife looked on, he had said, adding that they had treated his wife like less than a woman when they told her to lie down with her face on the ground.

“It is almost like they are waging war against us civilians just because they can,” an angry Ndlovu told Pretoria News earlier this week.

But in the video, the police are seen explaining their mission to the couple.

“Can we search you car sir,” an officer is heard saying, to which Ndlovu sharply retorts by asking if he looks like a criminal.

He then pulls his phone out and tells them he is calling the commissioner (of police). He says he is an advocate who owns a bottle store and who has a lot of money. He says his car was not stolen; but is fully paid up and belongs to him.

In the background, Ndlovu's wife Monica allows the search of the car and then begs her husband to stop arguing and go home.

She intervenes and tries to break up a scuffle when Ndlovu seems to attack an officer.

When the police pointed three cameras out to him and told him they were recording the incident to protect themselves against any litigation, he told them he was not interested.

“I will break this thing,” Ndlovu screams at them, reaching out to grab the camera mounted on a police biker's helmet, causing policemen to rush to restrain him.

 

When confronted with the video footage evidence, Ndlovu admitted to being very angry at the time. “But were they right in stopping me on the road?” he asked.

He said the police had probably altered the footage to remove evidence of their assault on him and his wife and hid the fact that they had been made to lie down.

“They were not authorised to take a video of me, so even if I might have misrepresented some facts they had no right to treat me like a criminal,” he said.

He insisted that he had been hit, sworn at and treated like a common thug, and said he would continue to pursue a case of assault and crimen injuria against his assailants.

@ntsandvose

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Pretoria News

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