Poo protest leader Andile Lili has lodged a criminal complaint saying he was insulted and assaulted at Cape Town's Civic Centre.
|||Cape Town - Poo protest leader Andile Lili has lodged a criminal complaint with police against Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille’s bodyguards and metro police, saying he was insulted, assaulted and manhandled at the Cape Town Civic Centre.
But City Speaker Dirk Smit said Lili’s version was a distortion of the truth, and he had been “gently escorted” from the building.
Sithembele Majova, another member of the so-called poo protesters, said he had been assaulted along with Lili and had also lodged a complaint with police.
Lili said: “One bodyguard even called me k*****. I almost cried. I was angry. I was very angry. The manner in which they treated me was very inhumane… The law of this country has to take its course.”
He told reporters outside the Cape Town Central police station that on Tuesday he had gone to the civic centre to enquire about pension funds owed to him by the city. He was expelled from the council, where he was a proportional representative, in March.
Lili, who Western Cape Premier Helen Zille named as a ringleader in the so-called poo protests, said two bodyguards and three metro police officers forcibly removed him from a chair and aggressively escorted him to a lift.
He said one of his arms and back were injured in the process. While in the lift the officers and the two men placed his face against the lift enclosure and hit him with their fists, he said.
He said there were pictures of him pasted on the walls to show he was not welcome in the building.
ANC councillor Loyiso Nkohla, who was with him at the time, took video footage as Lili was pulled into the lift.
“There are DA councillors who have been expelled but their pictures are not on the walls of the City of Cape Town to say that they are not allowed on a particular floor in the building,” Nkohla said.
Majova said he had been at the Civic Centre to apply for permission for a march. He was stepping out of a lift when Lili was pulled in. Majova said he was pushed back into the lift.
“They said I was with him and they started beating us.”
Smit said: “Lili’s claim of assault is yet another example of his series of publicity stunts to salvage his political career from oblivion. The photos of Mr Lili in the building are to alert officials that he is no longer a councillor,” Smit said.
He said Lili had tried to force his way to the fifth floor of the Podium Block without an appointment.
He said when security officials told Lili he was not allowed to access the floor without an appointment, Lili became aggressive and vowed that “he was prepared to die” in the area rather than leave.
xolani.koyana@inl.co.za
Cape Times