Patriotic Alliance (PA) president Gayton McKenzie on Tuesday formally lodged a complaint with Parliament's Joint Committee on Ethics and Members' Interests against ActionSA MP Dereleen James.

In his submission, McKenzie set out that James breached multiple provisions of the Code of Ethical Conduct, including those requiring members to act in accordance with the public trust, to place the public interest above personal or political interests, to maintain public confidence in Parliament, and to refrain from using derogatory language or bringing Parliament into disrepute on social media.

James announced yesterday she would be laying criminal charges against McKenzie at the Cape Town Central Police Station, following what ActionSA says are intimidatory tactics and threats.

McKenzie is alleged to have threatened James on social media by indicating he had "beefed up" his security and suggesting she should do the same.

The party said the threats arose directly from James’s probing during the Ad-hoc Committee into alleged links between the PA leadership and alleged Big 5 cartel member Katiso Molefe.

ActionSA said it viewed McKenzie’s alleged repeated attempts to intimidate James as a “direct attack on an elected public representative carrying out her constitutional duties to expose criminal capture by drug cartels in South Africa and believes that such conduct must be addressed in accordance with the law”.

PA spokesperson Steve Motale said at the centre of McKenzie’s complaint is James's “deliberate mischaracterisation” of a statement made by the PA leader during a public Facebook Live engagement.

“In that engagement, he used the phrase ‘the road is long’ - which is little more than a commonly understood idiomatic expression meaning that time reveals the truth, that perspectives change and that those who win in the short term do not always win in the long term,” he said.

Motale noted that James had sought to present this as a threat, which it was not.

He clarified McKenzie’s remarks about security, saying it was not mentioned as a warning or suggestion that James should fear for her safety, nor as any form of implied threat.

Motale said McKenzie referred to his continuous security presence to demonstrate the practical impossibility of the allegations being made against him.

“… the point he was making is straightforward: for the allegations against him to be true, those officers would have to be either unaware of, or complicit in, the alleged crimes that James appears to believe are possible. That is not credible,” he explained.

The explanation was taken out of context by James into a narrative of “threat and intimidation”, Motale stated.

“The president even went so far as to be clear that he would deal with James’s attacks politically, nothing about that suggests or implies violence of any kind,” he added.

McKenzie’s complaint against James also questioned her credibility for trusting allegations from sentenced prisoner Jermaine Prim, who Motale said had been found guilty of fraud and theft, and who continued to face multiple additional charges, including impersonating the head of the National Prosecuting Authority.

Motale claimed that James recently approached McKenzie at Parliament, requested a photograph, and engaged with him in a cordial and relaxed manner.

“That is not the conduct of someone who genuinely believes they are under threat. This is not a misunderstanding. It is a pattern: James removes context, ignores corrected facts, and escalates public rhetoric,” Motale said.