There is confusion over whether all charges against local activist and Unemployed Peoples Movement (UPM) leader Ayanda Kota have all been dropped, or only the theft charge.
There is confusion over whether all charges against local activist and Unemployed Peoples Movement (UPM) leader Ayanda Kota have all been dropped, or only the theft charge.
Supporters had vowed to protest outside the Grahamstown Magistrate's court on Wednesday, where Kota was due to appear on a charge of theft relating to books he was alleged to have taken from Rhodes University lecturer Claudia Martinez-Mullen.
On Tuesday morning, however, he received a letter dated 22 February informing him that the case had been withdrawn. While a statement released by the UPM on Tuesday morning said all the charges against Kota had been dropped, Grahamstown police spokesperson Captain Mali Govender said this was not so.
The case of theft against Mr Ayanda Kota has been withdrawn after the complainant Claudia Martinez-Mullen handed in a withdrawal statement, Govender said. The case of assault on police and resisting arrest are however still pending.
The assault and resisting of arrest docket was forwarded and signed by the court on Friday 24 February. Up until the docket was forwarded to court, it was still on the court roll and not withdrawn. His appearance in court today (Wednesday) on this matter is entirely in the hands of the court, said Govender in an emailed reply to questions from Grocott's Mail.
Govender stressed that the cases were entirely separate. Martinez-Mullen had opened the case against Kota last August, but the police had opened a separate case in January. Senior public prosecutor Desmond Amsterdam, however, said if the all the charges were on the same docket, it meant all the charges had been dropped.
He said the docket was back in the hands of the police. Yesterday Kota told Grocott's Mail he was aware that the police planned to their pursue their case against him. The senior prosecutor has dropped the charges but the police say they are pursuing with their case against me, Kota said.
I accept that because it is their right to do that. But to me this speaks volumes and tomorrow they will say this is not politically motivated. The protest march that was planned by the UPM and the Students for Social Justice went ahead on Wednesday, despite Kota's case being dropped.
The UPM, in their statement, said they believed authorities had hoped to avoid the protest by dropping the charges. Around 50 people marched from the UPM offices in Bathurst Street to Church Square, where the organisation's leaders addressed them. Kota said he still planned to take legal action against the police in connection with an alleged assault at the Beaufort Street police station in January.
