Editor – Recent protest actions throughout the length and breadth of our country reflects “cut your nose off to spite your face.”
Whether spontaneous protest actions are justified or not is debatable, but so are the end results of the protests.
Do protests achieve their aims or do they cause more harm than good?
The right to protest is a vital way for people to speak out about issues that matter to them and make sure that people in power listen to their concerns.
Section 17 of the Constitution says that everybody has the right to protest, peacefully and unarmed.
This includes protests which are non-violent but very disruptive.
The law that regulates the right to protest is called the Regulation of Gatherings Act (some people call it “the Gatherings Act” or the RGA for short).
The ‘Gatherings Act’ was drafted in 1993 in a period of great political violence.
The Goldstone Commission, which investigated political violence and police brutality against protesters, recommended that a law be drafted to establish a new framework for the right to protest and change the role of police in protests.
As a result, the Gatherings Act contains some important protections for the right to protest.
The Gatherings Act says what protest organisers must do before a protest, and what the authorities must do, and also what they can’t do.
It also says that authorities must allow people to exercise this right, and can’t just ‘ban’ people from protesting.
When there are serious concerns that a protest is going to be unsafe, the authorities must engage with the organisers to find a safe way for the protest to happen. Only in the most extreme cases can the authorities prohibit a gathering from going ahead. But authorities often abuse this process.
Sadly, protests have lost their impact as far as remedial results are concerned. It sets authorities against residents and the police are sandwiched in between. In many instances, the police are in sympathy with the cause of the protesters, but they are duty-bound to uphold law and order.
Protest by all means, but do so in a manner that will arouse public support and understanding instead of hatred, animosity and determination from authorities not to be blackmailed into positive responses.
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