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JOHANNESBURG.
A South African police officer who clashed with the ex-wife of former president Nelson Mandela after stopping her car for speeding pressed criminal charges against her yesterday, his union said.
The officer and a colleague stopped Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s car for reckless driving and speeding on December 30, then got into an argument with her, her driver and a bodyguard, local media reported.
After the incident, the driver and bodyguard pressed charges of intimidation and pointing a firearm against the officers, saying one of them, Warrant Officer Jannie Odendaal, had sworn at the bodyguard and Madikizela-Mandela.
But trade union Solidarity said yesterday that Odendaal had merely performed his duty and was being intimidated by the political elite.
“He was only doing his job. Madikizela-Mandela and her bodyguards are the ones whose behaviour on that day should rather be investigated,” Dirk Hermann, the union’s deputy general secretary, said in a statement.
“We will not allow that the political elite intimidate members of the police who are merely performing their duties properly.”
Odendaal brought a charge of defeating the ends of justice against Madikizela-Mandela, a charge of assault against her bodyguard and a charge of reckless and negligent driving against her driver, the statement said.
Odendaal, who is white, and his colleague, who is black, have been transferred to other police stations pending the outcome of an internal disciplinary process and the criminal case against them, opened by Madikizela-Mandela and her bodyguard .
Odendaal told the Johannesburg-based Times newspaper after the incident that the city’s top police officer had told him all criminal charges would be dropped if he and his colleague apologised.
Madikizela-Mandela campaigned tirelessly for her husband’s release during his 27-year imprisonment during apartheid.
But her image was tarnished by a series of scandals, including her links to the kidnap and murder of a young activist and a 2003 fraud conviction.
She officially separated from Mandela in 1992, two years after his release.
She remains an MP and a member of the ruling African National Congress party’s national executive committee. — AFP.