(FXI/IFEX) – The following is a 9 September 2006 FXI media statement: FXI Welcomes Release of Nationwide Research Report on Abuse of Right to Protest The FXI today released a research report revealing widespread violations of the right to demonstrate in South Africa. There is a gap between what the role-players perceive the Regulation of […]
(FXI/IFEX) – The following is a 9 September 2006 FXI media statement:
FXI Welcomes Release of Nationwide Research Report on Abuse of Right to Protest
The FXI today released a research report revealing widespread violations of the right to demonstrate in South Africa. There is a gap between what the role-players perceive the Regulation of Gatherings Act to be providing for in certain instances and what the legislation actually says. This lack of understanding is compounded by the inconsistent application of the Act by under-resourced municipalities and police. The report was informed by interviews with civil society and municipalities in the major metropolitan areas, as well as protest hot spots such as Harrismith, Khutsong and Middleburg. The report is available on the FXI website at http://www.fxi.org.za
In desperately poor communities across South Africa, there is little or no access to the mainstream media and their parliamentary representatives are either unwilling or unable to assist. Feeling profoundly disempowered and ignored, residents vent their anger and frustrations on the streets, holding placards or shouting slogans demanding water, electricity, housing and jobs. By crushing these street protests, the government is cutting off its nose (and ears) to spite its face: it is refusing to allow the only channel left for communities to appeal to their political leaders to heed their poverty-stricken plight.
The FXI notes with concern a disturbing pattern that emerges from the research: activists that oppose the government’s macro-economic policies and their communities’ slide into deeper poverty are finding themselves isolated and targeted by municipalities and their law enforcement machinery. In the process they are denied their constitutional rights to freedom of expression and assembly.
Police officers are often ignorant of the Gatherings Act or, more worryingly, abuse the Act to prevent people from protesting and marching in public. Social justice movements in Johannesburg, such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum, and in Durban, such as the Abahlali base Mjondolo (shack dwellers movement), are unfortunate examples where certain organizations are blacklisted and their gatherings are prohibited even before the due process provided in the Act takes place. Prohibitions or restrictions based on the political viewpoint of the protester are patent and unjustifiable violations of the right to protest.
6000 protests were officially recorded during the 2004/05 financial year, of which almost 1000 were banned. These shocking statistics prompted the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) to investigate how the right to protest, enshrined in our Constitution, is being applied throughout South Africa. The FXI’s findings were that many marches were deemed to be illegal because municipal police, in contravention of the Regulation of Gatherings Act, had simply banned them. Although the Act holds the notion of a demonstration as a right and not as being contingent on the approval of the State, this right was often not respected by local authorities. The processes leading up to a march are critical because the violence seems to erupt when either the march is banned or the police believe they have a free hand to use all means necessary to break up the march. In instances where local authorities appreciate the notion of gathering as a right, it is articulated as a disadvantage for effective law enforcement, rather than a commitment by the legislature to ground the Gatherings Act firmly in constitutional jurisprudence of the right of to freedom of expression and assembly.
The FXI joins the call by trade union COSATU for an exhaustive, top-level investigation into the conduct of the police, both before and during protest marches. The FXI report strengthens the demand for a broader discussion between government, the police services, the labour movement and civil society to review the policies and guidelines under which the police operate during political and industrial demonstrations, in order to make sure that police brutality and abuse of the right to march never happens again.
