Local activists have vowed to "paint High Street red with [their]anger", as police categorically deny attacking well-known social activist Ayanda Kota at the Beaufort Street police station last week.
Local activists have vowed to "paint High Street red with [their]anger", as police categorically deny attacking well-known social activist Ayanda Kota at the Beaufort Street police station last week.
This comes after an incident on Thursday that a witness claimed amounted to intimidation, in which police allegedly assaulted and taunted Kota in the presence of his six-year-old son.
The chairperson of the Unemployed People's Movement (UPM), whose prominent involvement in service-delivery protests in 2011 saw him chosen as Grocott's Mail's Newsmaker of the Year, had been arrested earlier that day on a charge of theft.
In a puzzling twist, his accuser in the theft case – which concerns three books – had been one of his strongest backers during these protests.
Following the incident at the police station on Thursday, additional counts of resisting arrest and assault were added to Kota's charge sheet. After a night in jail Kota, wearing a blood-stained shirt, appeared in court on Friday morning and was released on R500 bail.
He showed signs of physical discomfort while standing in the dock. Speaking to Grocott's Mail outside the court afterwards, Kota said he had gone voluntarily to the Grahamstown police station on Thursday after officers left a message at his mother's home that he must report to the police station before 4pm that day.
Kota said when he arrived with his six-year-old son, Siba, and a friend, prominent political analyst and Rhodes University lecturer, Richard Pithouse, a detective, whose name is known to Grocott's Mail, told him he was under arrest for theft.
Kota said when he asked if he could take his son home before returning to discuss the books in question, the detective began to attack him. Pithouse's version of the incident, during an earlier interview with Grocott's Mail outside the court on Friday morning while waiting for Kota to emerge, matched Kota's. He said other police officers then joined in.
“When Ayanda was on the ground being beaten up, one of them [policemen]said, ‘Come and see the newsmaker of the year now’,” Pithouse told Grocott's Mail. “It looked like they were enjoying the attack. It was obviously unprofessional and plainly about vengeance and intimidation, and the charges are completely bogus.”
Outside the court, Kota told reporters he had been under police surveillance for some time, often in a threatening and insulting manner. “My mother’s home has been searched by police before, but with no warrant.
When I enquired about it at the station, they had no knowledge of the search being permitted," Kota said. "I’ve even had a policeman show me his middle finger while I was walking in the street.”
United People's Movement members, meanwhile, have vowed to ensure justice for Kota. Organiser, Sithembiso Gaushe, said they would encourage Kota to press charges against the police. Another member, Bahle Sofute, said, “We will call comrades from all over the country to come support our leader. This will not end here, we will make sure the police pay for the trauma of Ayanda and his son. We will paint High Street red with our anger. This police brutality must stop.”
According to a media statement issued by spokesperson for the Grahamstown SAPS, Captain Mali Govender, the police "deny any act of brutality and insist that the police officer effecting the arrest acted in accordance within the confines of the law”.
The statement continues to say that Kota “allegedly borrowed one book and stole two others from the home of the victim and failed to return them…”. Regarding Kota's claims that police assaulted him, the media statement says, “He arrived at the station and when the investigating officer tried to arrest him, the fracas began, where he resisted and assaulted two of our police officers.
"The officer continued with his task and arrested the suspect and safely placed him behind bars.” Rhodes University academic, Claudia Martinez Mullen, laid a charge of theft against Kota, claiming he had failed to return a book he borrowed.
In court, however, the charge sheet referred to two textbooks, while the subsequent police statement claims three books are in question. Kota’s court case has been remanded to 29 February 2012.
