Two white security officers in Machadodorp have been indicted over a viral video that shows them assaulting a black man and dragging him to the trunk of their van. After appearing in the Belfast Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, they have been remanded in custody.

The incident shows quizzed locals gather around their van asking the two men if they were policemen as they held the man down. A woman called them racist.

According to the police spokesman, Colonel Mtsholi Bhembe, the two men had acted at the behest of a businessman whose employee had a fight with the assaulted man. He said the two men were arrested upon the arrival of the police to the scene and arrested with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

The locals were however mortified by the incident and have taken out their displeasure by burning two trucks and blocking the road between Machadodorp and Carolina. Bhembe also said they lit the businessman’s shop.