A video has shown the shocking moment a brutal fistfight broke out in the South African parliament.
Security guards ejected opposition lawmakers in an ugly fracas that underlined heightened political tensions over Jacob Zuma's presidency.
About 20 members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party - dressed in their uniform of red workers' overalls - were wrestled from their seats by plain-clothed guards.
They had refused to let Zuma speak and furiously shouted down the Speaker, Baleka Mbete.
As Zuma looked on impassively, the radical leftist lawmakers fought to stay in the chamber until they were physically removed through a side door.
Before the guards moved in, the EFF members, led by their firebrand 'commander in chief' Julius Malema, yelled that it was the president who should be thrown out.
'He broke his oath of office. Zuma is the one who must go,' they shouted.
Outside parliament, Malema told reporters and cheering supporters: 'Zuma will never find peace in this parliament. Every time he comes here the same thing will happen.
'These bouncers must know that if they give violence, we will respond with violence. We are not scared.'
The disruption was the latest in a series of showdowns in parliament as pressure mounts on Zuma to resign or be axed as president by the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
He has been urged to step down by senior ANC veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle, which brought liberation icon Nelson Mandela to power in 1994.
But Zuma retains widespread loyalty in the party, and ANC lawmakers have regularly rallied to his defence.
In April, they easily defeated an opposition move to impeach him.
The EFF, which was also ejected from parliament two weeks ago in similar scenes, says that it does not recognise Zuma as president in the wake of two recent court cases.
In March, the country's highest court found that Zuma had violated the constitution over the spending of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on his private rural residence at Nkandla in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal.
In April another court said he should face almost 800 corruption charges relating to a multi-billion-dollar arms deal that were dropped in 2009, shortly before he became president.
A packed public gallery watched the scuffles in parliament Tuesday, with scores of supporters of the opposition Democratic Alliance wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with Zuma's picture and the slogan: 'Accused No.1'.
Zuma has been wounded by months of scandals, including his sacking of two finance ministers in four days in December which rocked the markets and saw the rand currency plummet.
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