EFF MP in court on assault charge after clash with man at ex’s home

EFF MP Nazier Paulsen appeared in court on Thursday on a charge of assault following an incident involving a man parked outside his former wife’s house earlier in August, he confirmed on Friday.

Paulsen said he had gone to the house to fetch his daughter for a piano lesson, at his daughter’s request via text, and saw a stranger parked outside.

“When you see a strange-looking car you ask a person what you are doing there,” he said.

He alleged that the man swore at him in reply.

Paulsen is also in the midst of fraught divorce-related action.

In a video, his car is seen parked outside a house and a woman shouts for him to leave, but she says the man in the car is a friend.

The situation becomes increasingly heated as the woman waits for the gate keys to go outside, and another woman emerges with a coat hanger to try and calm things.

A charge of assault was laid against him relating to the events that followed, and he appeared in the Bellville Magistrate’s Court on Thursday.

“I didn’t throw a punch at him,” he said. “All I did was grab him by his collar for swearing.”

His next court appearance is on September 28.

In the meantime, he has laid a charge against the person who distributed a video taken during the confrontation, he said.

Charges of the theft of a laptop were recently withdrawn against Paulsen. The charges related to a laptop he had not returned when he left the Western Cape legislature.

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