The altercation on Monday afternoon was captured on video by Egan Ezra who was allegedly hit in the face by the unidentified driver of a silver VW Polo.
A young girl was seated in the front passenger seat of the Polo during the fracas‚ in broad daylight on a busy street.
It all started when a man accused Ezra of not maintaining the correct following distance.
Grabbing what appears to be a pick-handle‚ the aggressor stormed towards Ezra screaming‚ in Afrikaans: “Ek sal jou f****n dood bliksem‚ jy ry soos n p**s”.
Loosely translated‚ the threat was: “I will f****n beat you to death. You drive like a p**s.”
The two argue and the aggressor continues to hurl abuse – allegedly calling Ezra a hotnot - until he realises that he was filmed.
“Who said you can take a photo of me‚” he demands to know in Afrikaans and then appears to jab the weapon into Ezra’s face through an open driver’s window.
In a second video‚ Ezra followed the man down the road and the altercation almost turned violent again.
“This guy was very angry and you can’t fault him for being angry … but violence is never the answer‚” Ezra told TimesLIVE on Tuesday.
Ezra said: “I laid a charge at the police so they will try to locate him to get his side of the story. I don’t want him to rot in jail. It is not ok to drive with a weapon in your car and use it to attack people. Only in self-defence would it be acceptable.”
He said that after he posted the video on social media someone had messaged him saying that they recognised the man.
“I only had a bottle of water in car and what was I going to do with it? When you angry you converse‚ you don’t attack. I am being criticised for being too calm but that is just my nature; violence has never been appealing to me.”
Describing the incident in a post on Facebook‚ he said: “Well friends‚ today I had the personal experience of being assaulted by a man... When I passed him and gave him the ‘head-shake’‚ he responded by calling me a ‘hotnot’ which is Cape for ‘I don't like you because you have a nice tan’.
“He then swerved in front of me a 2nd time‚ showing aggressive hand-signs and even though my lip-reading is not on CIA-field-agent level‚ I could make out the words ‘ek sal jou bliksem’- which is Afrikaans slang for ‘I will make you say Eina’. Eina means ouch by the way.”
Events that led to the altercation were not captured on video and the irate motorist is yet to reveal his side of the story.
