A Limpopo farm manager who is on trial for attempted murder and malicious damage to property has denied an accusation of being racist, saying that he has "many black friends".

Ex-convict Mark Scott-Crossley told the Lenyenye magistrate's court on Tuesday that his altercation with a farmworker, Silence Mabunda, was not racially motivated.

"I'm not a racist. I have many friends who are black people. A few days after my arrest I received a text message from one police captain named Moss from Acornhoek who wrote 'God bless you and everything will be fine," he said.

This was during re-examination when Scott-Crossley's attorney Karl van Tonder asked him to clarify on the allegations put forward by the state that he told Mabunda to leave the area at the time of the altercation because it is not meant for black people.

Van Tonder further asked Scott-Crossley why he didn’t report the accident to the police.

Scott-Crossley responded that he had contacted his other lawyer and later met with Van Tonder in Kempton Park, Gauteng.

"I contacted my lawyer Mr Smith and later drove to Kempton Park to meet Mr van Tonder in his offices, and both of them were in contact with the prosecutor and local police station commander in Hoedspruit," he said.

Scott-Crossley also blamed the absence of street lights as another contributing factor to the accident.

"I was speeding to reach home early and there were no street lights hence I crashed into the wall. The area was dark and if there were street lights I wouldn't have crashed into the wall," he said.

The state alleges that Scott-Crossley ran over Mabunda, 37, with his Jeep, breaking Mabunda's phone, in what appeared to be a racially motivated altercation near Hoedspruit  in 2016.

Prosecutor Erick Mabapa told Scott-Crossley on Monday that he intended to kill Mabunda by driving over him after an altercation.

Three journalists who were expected to testify on Tuesday didn't come to court.

Van Tonder asked for  a postponement to allow him to write to three news editors requesting them to release the reporters.

He said the journalists reported various versions of the incident as told by Mabunda.

Scott-Crossley told the court that Mabunda had told journalists that he was speeding with the driver's window open.

"Mabunda further said that I was driving slow. In other reports he said he saw me and there was no way he could have seen me because it was dark," he said.

Magistrate Carol Honwana postponed the matter to June 14-15 to allow defence witnesses to testify.