EFF MP arrested at Pretoria police station over an affidavit, due in court Monday

An Economic Freedom Fighters MP was arrested on Thursday night at the Brooklyn police station in Pretoria and is expected to appear in the Hatfield Magistrate’s Court on Monday, according to eNCA, which first reported the arrest.

The MP, a 33-year-old woman, was arrested after she allegedly assaulted a police officer at the station’s Client Service Centre, where she had gone over the commissioning of an affidavit, police say. She was released on a warning.

That is the whole of what has been placed on the record so far. No charge sheet has been made public, no plea has been entered, and the allegation has not been tested in any court. Under South African law an arrested person is presumed innocent until a court finds otherwise, and a release on a warning is not a finding of guilt. It is a decision by police that the accused will attend court without being held in custody in the meantime.

For a reader who has not followed the story elsewhere, the details that matter are institutional rather than dramatic. The Client Service Centre is the front desk of a police station, the counter where the public comes to open a case, certify a document or commission an affidavit, the sworn statement that carries legal weight when it is signed before a commissioner of oaths. Commissioning an affidavit is routine administrative work and it is the ordinary reason members of the public walk into a station.

Brooklyn is a Pretoria suburb east of the city centre, and the Hatfield Magistrate’s Court is the district court that serves that part of the capital. A first appearance there on a Monday is the standard next step after an arrest and a release on warning. It is a procedural hearing, not a trial.

Assaulting a police officer is a criminal offence in South Africa and is prosecuted like any other assault. Members of Parliament do not carry immunity from the ordinary criminal law. The Constitution protects the freedom of speech of MPs in the National Assembly and its committees, and that protection has never extended to conduct alleged to have happened at a police station counter. Where a sitting MP is charged, the case proceeds through the same courts as anyone else’s.

What happens on Monday is likely to be brief. The court will be asked to set the matter down, and depending on how the state intends to proceed, the case will be postponed or a trial date will be fixed. The Enquirer will report what the court records once that appearance has taken place.

The EFF has not yet responded publicly to the arrest in the material available at the time of writing, and the party’s position will be reported when it is stated. The South African Police Service has confirmed the arrest through its account carried by eNCA. The MP’s name has not been released.

Source: eNCA, EFF MP arrested for allegedly assaulting police officer.