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.

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Members of the opposition Democratic Alliance then walked out in protest against the presence of armed police in the House.

The delivery of President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation speech, traditionally listened to in silence by members in a joint sitting of the upper and lower houses, was delayed by an hour as red-boiler-suited members of the Economic Freedom Fighters rose on questions of privilege.

They asked when Zuma would comply with the Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s ruling that he pay back money used to personally enrich himself from state-funded security improvements to his private home.

Speaker Baleka Mbete responded that this was not the occasion for such questions. When he persisted, she ordered Julius Malema to leave the chamber.

He refused.

When the Sergeant at Arms from the National Assembly and Black Rod from the National Council of provinces could not move him, Mbete ratcheted up matters.

Parliamentary leader of the Democratic Alliance Mmusi Maimane led a walkout when the speaker would not confirm that the armed men involved in scuffles with the EFF members were police.

He told reporters in the lobby

That having police in the House violated the consitution and the rule of law that Nelson Mandela had worked for.

Zuma who grinned through the ruckus began his speech saying South Africa’s growth target of five percent annually was under threat because of slow global economic conditions.

However the job situation’s more promising with more than 15 million South Africans in employment.

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