Battle lines are drawn between security authorities and an anti-World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) grouping after deadlock arose over the route of the group’s protest march planned for Saturday.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Ngcakula warned at a Sandton press conference on Monday that marchers who deviate from a set 1,8km route in Sandton ”will fall foul of the law and will be acted against”.
Ngcakula said 17 groups had applied for permission in terms of the Regulation of Gatherings Act to stage protests to coincide with the WSSD, but that four of the applications had not yet been approved.
Negotiations to approve two of the four had ”deadlocked” he said.
Barely an hour later, in nearby Alexandra township, the Social Movements Indaba announced their plans to march on the main WSSD venue in Sandton on Saturday regardless of the authorities’ refusal yet to grant them approval. The Social Movements Indaba is a coalition of local groups opposed to what they term ”corporate globalisation” and are supported by international activist groups.
Trevor Ngwane, secretary of the group, said an application to march from Alexandra to Sandton — in other words outside the approved 1,8km route — had been turned down.
”Our constitution allows us freedom of assembly, freedom of association. The only option for us is to defy the criminalisation of our march.”
Ngwane charged the South African government was ”increasingly resorting to the methods of the apartheid regime, which is to respond to dissent with bullets, with stun grenades, by throwing activists into jail”.
Government has in recent weeks taken a zero-tolerance approach to protest activity appearing to be related to the WSSD. Near 200 people have been arrested in various protests in Johannesburg, while Ann Eveleth, an American citizen who has acted as media consultant to another anti-WSSD group, the Landless People’s Movement, remains in custody.
On Saturday evening police broke up a candlelight march by Social Movements Indaba organisations and international activists. Riot police fired stun grenades without warning to stop marchers reaching Johannesburg Central Police Station, which the activists wanted to symbolically rename ”Thabo Mbeki-John Vorster Square” to protest what they see as the stifling of dissent by the government of President Thabo Mbeki. John Vorster Square was the apartheid-era name for the police station.
That march had no prior approval under the Regulation of Gatherings Act.
Jody Kollapen, director of the South African Human Rights Commission, was reported at the weekend as saying he was concerned that constitutional rights were being curtailed in the way authorities reacted to protest.
”If a march is technically illegal, that does not in itself warrant state intervention. State intervention would only be justified when there is a threat to public order, life or property.”