Ayanda Kota has Laid a Charge of Assault Against the Police
Ayanda Kota was released from custody on Friday afternoon. Bail was set at R500. The judge made it clear that he considered the charge of 'theft' for failure to return borrowed books to be ridiculous. Although this was not mentioned in court the fact that Ayanda has repeatedly offered to replace the books in question makes the charge even more ridiculous. The prosecutor did not even have a docket on the charges of resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer but he requested more time for 'further investigation'.
Since his release Ayanda has had the bruises, abrasions and swellings from the assault photographed and he has been to a doctor to complete the J88 form which lists the marks left on his body. The doctor's finding is that the marks left on his body are consistent with an assault. Yesterday he returned to the Grahamstown police station to lay a charge against the officers that assaulted him on Thursday afternoon last week. Brigadier Govender, the station commander, and the officers in the charge office were very polite and helpful and one of them even remarked that it just takes a few bad police officers to undermine the good work of the others. The case number is 282/1/2012.
We wish to confirm what happened on Thursday. Ayanda was asked to come to the police station to meet Detective Zulu to respond to a charge of theft that was laid against him in August last year by Rhodes Sociology lecturer Claudia Martinez-Mullen after he had misplaced three books that she had lent him - The Communist Manifesto and a selection of writings by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and another one by Antonio Gramsci. He was asked to be at the police station before four in the afternoon and didn't have time to take his six year old son home as he was coming directly from a meeting at Masifunde. He went to the station voluntarily and asked Richard Pithouse to go with him.
At the police station Ayanda met Detective Zulu and asked to be able to show Zulu sms's to Martinez-Mullen offering to replace the books. But Zulu was very aggressive and just said that he was taking Ayanda straight to the cells. Ayanda then said, calmly, that if he was going to be taken to the cells then the police must either allow him to phone his sister to collect his son or they must drop his son off with his family before taking him to the cells. At this point Zulu began an unprovoked assault on Ayanda with punches to the head and the body.
Ayanda was sitting down at the time while Zulu was standing. Ayanda, still sitting down, threw one punch in defence after receiving three or four blows from Zulu. Other officers then joined the assault. Ayanda was very quickly pushed to the ground and was held down as he was kicked and punched. His trousers were pulled down and he was then dragged out of the room and down the corridor. He was visibly bleeding. There is a camera in this corridor. While Ayanda was being dragged down the corridor he was punched some more and one officer called others to 'come and see the news maker of the year now'. We are requesting that the video footage from the camera in the corridor should be made public.