AfriForum to ask high court to jail Malema for six months

Rights group AfriForum will on Wednesday ask the High Court in Pretoria to jail EFF leader Julius Malema for six months and fine the EFF R500,000 for ignoring a court order interdicting them from inciting illegal land invasions.

AfriForum’s CEO Kallie Kriel said they intended to go ahead with their application for contempt of court as they had in February obtained a final interdict against Malema and the EFF to stop them from encouraging people to invade land illegally, which was simply ignored.

Kriel said the EFF paid R126,703.59 into the organisation’s bank account to satisfy a costs order for the amount against which they had no defence.

Malema tweeted in a response to The Citizen’s report about the payment, which quoted Kriel as tweeting that Malema and the EFF had paid the amount to AfriForum, claiming: “I won’t afford that. Stop lying,” in an apparent denial of the suggestion that he had personally paid the amount.

Kriel said the EFF had offered to pay legal costs last year after failing to file court papers on time in its bid to have the interim land invasion interdict set aside.

The court granted the EFF’s application to postpone their application against the incitement interdict but ordered the EFF and Malema to pay the costs. Their application was eventually dismissed with costs when it finally proceeded in February.

The court has granted three costs orders totalling R330,000 against the EFF and Malema in three hearings involving the interdict since March last year.

The sheriff of the high court has already compiled a complete inventory of the assets at the EFF’s head office in Johannesburg after AfriForum obtained an execution warrant against the party when it failed to pay the outstanding legal costs by the deadline of 1 November.

AfriForum said the next step would be to sell the EFF’s assets at a public auction.

Kriel said the EFF had now paid the amount it could not challenge, but indicated it would still seek to challenge the other two cost orders against it and oppose the contempt application.

He said the EFF was, however, once again late in filing opposing papers in the contempt application and would probably be forced to ask for a postponement again and offer to pay the costs.

“They’re trying to prevent a public auction of their assets. We are not concerned about their applications because we are confident that we have a strong case.

“We’ve already received an instalment, which we will put aside to fight the EFF because they’re continuing with land invasions, so in effect we will fight them with their own money,” he said.

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