Durban - Protesters, carrying flags and holding posters and banners demanding President Jacob Zuma’s resignation, took to Durban’s streets on Friday.
While anti-Zuma slogans were chanted, many voiced their concern over the cabinet shuffle and economic downgrade by two rating agencies to junk status.
Brian Mbeje said: “I am happy, it is a good day. We don’t like the way Zuma is acting, we don’t want him any more.”
Letasha Kalideen said: “We are dissatisfied with what is going on at the moment, we need to stand together.”
Mzwandile Bhengu said he was unhappy with “Nkandla and the Guptas. We don’t trust the people of Zuma, we can’t rely on the government, now that South Africa has junk status.”
Feroz Ameer said: “Enough is enough. Nelson Mandela said if the ANC does to you what apartheid did to you, then you must do to the ANC what you did to apartheid.”
At the amphitheatre on the beachfront, leaders from the Muslim, Hindu, Shembe and Christian faiths addressed the crowd, as did DA political leaders, including chief whip in the National Assembly, John Steenhuisen.
Meanwhile, ANC Youth League supporters forced their way towards the beachfront and attacked a lone DA supporter on his way to the anti-Zuma march, which had already finished.
Police fired stun grenades to disperse a mob that was attacking the man, who was wearing a DA-branded T-shirt just outside the Jewish Hall.
KwaZulu-Natal secretary Thanduxolo Sabelo said he did not witness the incident and condemned it.
“We are not a violent organisation, we mean no harm to anyone. Nobody was instructed to go and harm anyone,” he said.
Asked why members were carrying sticks, he said they had not been instructed to do so and said the intention was not to harm anyone.
Sabelo said their march was to protect Zuma, the ANC and the country. “They must not provoke us as the majority in South Africa, they are taking us down."
Sabelo denied their march was illegal and said they had a permit, without specifying the route.
Police had earlier tried and failed to stop league supporters from moving towards the beach before they returned to the Absa branch on Anton Lembede Street, where they called “pay back the money”.
They sang songs such as “shoot the boer” and chanted “down with white people” and “what has Zuma done?”
eThekwini Municipality employee and ANC provincial executive member, Vuyiswa Calusa, said it was hypocritical that the DA and “so-called Save South Africa” were ignoring everything that had to do with the imbalance of the past.
“But they will go into the house of another man, which is ANC, and demand that head must leave when they have their own Helen Zille.
“She is a racist and recently idolised colonialism and we have never seen their march (against that)”.
Philisiwe Zungu said she left her Hammarsdale home to catch a bus to the march when she heard about the DA’s protest. “We want the other parties to back off. Other parties must worry about themselves, not the ANC.”
Blessing Nkosi said he and two friends came from Waterloo because they had to protect Zuma “in whatever circumstances”.