Joburg metro cops happy with ‘peaceful’ Cosatu marches

Metro police have declared that the marches led by the labour federation Cosatu in Johannesburg were peaceful and orderly, despite that larger-than-expected crowds flooding the streets of central Johannesburg on Wednesday afternoon.

Johannesburg metro police department (JMPD) spokesperson Wayne Minnaar reportedly said the extra bodies came from supporters who joined the march later in the day as the crowd made its way to Anderson Street near the Minerals Council offices.

“There was a huge deployment of law enforcement and they started at Cosatu House before they went down Wolmarans Street, Stiemens Street and then right at the end, a second group joined at Anderson Street,” he said.

“What we have concluded is that though we did plan for a protest on a much smaller scale, supporters joined in much larger numbers. However, we can see that the protest was orderly. There was no chaos, only the numbers were very high. When people walk through the streets, especially in large numbers, each time they have to cross the street, it is impossible to maintain proper social distancing.

“Also, we must bear in mind that when people walk for long distances they breath faster, and we noticed that people started to remove their masks after walking that long distance. So we would not consider them any different to joggers who tend to remove their masks after or during a jog.”

But the JMPD also wants to meet with the organisers of the march in order to come up with a better strategy for handling crowds during such events, given that this was the first legal protest under Alert Level 1 lockdown since the implementation of the first lockdown in March, Minnaar said.

Simnikiweh@citizen.co.za

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.