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Pretoria - The Gupta family has accused the EFF of threatening violence and xenophobia in its urgent application to interdict the party's leader Julius Malema and its members from further tough talk.
Lawyers for the family and companies they own were expected to go head to head with the EFF’s legal team in the High Court in Pretoria on Tuesday.
The application, according to a founding affidavit filed by Oakbay Investments CEO Nazeem Howa, is pursuant to "threats issued by the respondents jointly and severally to solicit violence from its members".
"The purpose of this application is to obtain an interdict restraining the respondents from executing or reporting the threats…" Howa wrote in the affidavit. Malema was accused of lashing out at the Gupta brothers and their commercial interests "with a clear and unambiguous threat of violence and xenophobia".
"These threats were aggressive, repeated and inciting," Howa said.
He relied on statements made by Malema in a national press conference, as well as a missive issued by EFF Gauteng leader Ntobeng Ntobeng.
"It is obvious from the aforesaid that the respondents decided to rely on unfounded and slanderous allegations in order to incite violence. They convinced their supporters that the applicants are fraudsters and criminals without one single shred of evidence."
The EFF leader had made veiled threats against staff of
Gupta-owned media outlets The New Age and ANN7 at a media conference last week,
saying the safety of their journalists could not be guaranteed.
He went further, saying that a call to action would see the Gupta family removed from the country.
New Age and ANN7 editor-in-chief Moegsien Williams told News24 earlier that the application aimed to interdict the EFF from making good on any threats to staff, property and shareholders of the Gupta-owned companies.
