The Democratic Alliance (DA) Member of Parliament on Justice and Constitutional Development, Glynnis Breytenbach, has laid charges of inciting violence against three of former president Jacob Zuma’s children as well as EFF leader, EFF leader, Julius Malema. Breytenbach has laid the charges at the Cape Town Police Station.

She says the charges relate to utterances that Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla, Edward Zuma and Duduzane Zuma made either in the media or on social media platforms that could be construed as inciting violence. Charges against Malema relate to tweets in which he said deploying the army was akin to declaring war on citizens.

Breytenbach says inciting violence should not be tolerated.

“In my view if you are a leader with influence in society and in particular a political leader, you owe it to South African’s to uphold rule of law, within confines of Constitution, do whatever you can to encourage followers and other citizens to obey law. what we see is wanton destruction of private property, people have died, over 70 I think, its unnecessary, its uncalled for and it cant be fixed,” says Breytenbach.

Twitter suspends Malema’s account

On Tuesday, Twitter suspended Malema’s account for 12 hours over his Twitter post that if the government deployed members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), his ground forces would have to come out in numbers and take to the streets.

Twitter believes the statement has the potential to incite violence.

For the duration of the suspension, Malema wouldn’t be able to tweet, or retweet and will only send inbox messages to his followers until it has been lifted.

Other social media users have since criticised the EFF leader for his comments.