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Cape Town. — The EFF will mount an urgent legal challenge to its leader Julius Malema’s suspension from Parliament, the party said yesterday. “The EFF is . . . lodging an urgent court application to overturn the illegal and arbitrary suspension of the CIC (commander-in-chief) Malema and to suspend enforcement of these criminal rules until the courts have pronounced themselves on their unlawfulness and unconstitutionality,” it said in a statement.

Malema was removed by members of parliament’s security services on Wednesday after he refused to retract a statement in which he called Deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa a murderer. The party said it would not be intimidated by threats of physical violence and “illegal suspensions”.

“(Neither) the EFF nor the CIC Julius Malema will . . . apologise to a person whose hands are dripping with the blood of the workers of Marikana,” it said, referring to Ramaphosa. “We will be serving court papers on the Speaker of Parliament, Baleka Mbete. She must rest assured, the EFF shall emerge victorious.”

The party said it had already lodged a court application to “declare the rule amendments authorising physical assault of members of parliament and their arbitrary suspension as unlawful and unconstitutional.” — News24.