Cape Town – Human rights activists have hailed a Constitutional Court judgment decriminalising 15 or more people from protesting without a notice.
Section 12 of the Regulation of Gatherings Act had criminalised the failure to give notice to a municipality for a protest of more than 15 people.
Acting Judge Xola Petse yesterday declared the section unconstitutional and found it was an unjustifiable limitation of the right to freedom of assembly.
“South Africa’s pre-constitutional era was replete with draconian legislation that, in an attempt to preserve the apartheid political order, punished people for assembling when it did not suit the state,” Judge Petse said.
The judgment is the result of a five-year-long battle that saw 10 Social Justice Coalition (SJC) activists arrested in 2013 while peacefully picketing for sanitation outside the Cape Town Civic Centre. The picket grew in size.
SJC general secretary, Axolile Notywala, said: “It’s a victory for the poor, the often forgotten and those who hold real power in this country. Now that power must be realised through activating this right to protest without fear of being criminalised by the state”.
The court set aside the activists’ criminal records.
The case ended up in the Constitutional Court for confirmation after the Western Cape High Court in January this year declared that section of the gatherings Act unconstitutional. The SJC was represented by the Legal Resources Centre, and amici curiae were Equal Education and the Right2Know Campaign.
The minister of police, a respondent in the case, argued that notice allowed for proper planning. However, the apex court said it could not be right for the state to employ heavy-handed measures that unduly limited rights.