Medical personnel were called into the National Assembly after a brutal fist fight between members of the ultra left Economic Freedom fighters and parliamentary protection officers ordered to remove them.
The EFF members in their red boiler suits refused to allow President Jacob Zuma answer Parliamentary questions. They insisted he was the one who should be removed for violating South Africa’s constitution.
This is the second time in a fortnight that scuffles have erupted in the National Assembly after speaker Baleka Mbete ordered the protection officers to remove EFF MPs who refused to allow President Jacob Zuma to speak.
The MPs threw bottles and hard hats – part of their worker uniforms – at the security officers.
Outside the chamber they set off a fire hydrant and broke a glass door with a steel rod.
Medical personnel were called to assist an MP – understood to be from the ANC – who collapsed.
MPs from the governing party are calling for the EFF members to be charges with criminal damage to parliamentary property.
EFF leader Julius Malema says his party has exhausted all peaceful means to ask Zuma to resign. In future they will answer violence with violence.
Earlier this week the EFF failed in a court bid to interdict Mbete not to use protection officers to remove MPs when they prevented Zuma from speaking in Parliament.