PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WOMEN FOR JUSTICE FOR MARIKANA WILL GO TO COURT TO DEMAND THEIR
RIGHT TO MARCH!
Issued by: Marikana - Women Unite!
27 September 2012
The women of Marikana condemn in the strongest possible terms
the attempts by officials in the Madibeng and Rustenburg municipalities to
prevent them from exercising their constitutional right to assembly and freedom
of expression.
Today, a delegation of women from the Women’s Forum,who are
organising a march against police violence in Marikana on Saturday 29 September,
met with public safety officials, the traffic police, and representatives from
the Marikana police station and North-West SAPS to work out the route and other
details.
After a three-hour delay to the start of the meeting, the women
were informed that their march had been banned. This is the second time in just
over one week that the women of Marikana, who have followed all legal requirements
of the Regulation of Gatherings Act, have been deprived of their right to
assemble. The first banning order was given verbally and via sms, contrary to
what the law requires, on Thursday 20 September. This led to the postponement
of a planned march on Saturday 22 September. The women of Marikana have
followed all legal procedures outlined in terms of the Act, and have
demonstrated a willingness to cooperate with the authorities, but have
confronted nothing less than bureaucratic confusion, obstruction and unlawful
conduct by officials of the two municipalities. This conduct violates the
letter and spirit of the Act, which requires the authorities to facilitate the
right to protest, rather than place bureaucratic obstacles in its way.
The Rustenburg local municipality has put in writing the grounds
on which the march is denied – these include that the “purpose of the march
does not meet the requirements of the Gatherings Act” and that the “application
was not done within seven days”, which is patently untrue as is evident from
the correspondence between the conveners and the Municipality. Two other
reasons given are similarly spurious and do not constitute sufficient grounds
to deprive the women of their constitutional rights. It should be noted that
the Act does not permit the authorities to regulate protests on the basis of
their purpose: to do so would allow them to pick and choose which marches to
allow and which to disallow based on the content of the march, which could well
lead to censorship of marches that are critical of the government or the ruling
party.
The women have instructed their attorneys, the Centre for
Applied Legal Studies, to launch an urgent review application in the High Court
to overturn this unlawful decision.
We demand our
rights to assemble and protest peacefully!
The women of Marikana are marching because they want to see
justice done for the death of their husbands, fathers, sons and brothers at the
hands of the police. They want justice for the death of Paulina Masuthlo, who
died on the 19th September, a few days after she was shot with
rubber bullets by the police. The women want to see justice for the shooting of
three other women with rubber bullets on Saturday 15th September.
People’s homes, the streets they walk on, the schools in which
children learn, and the shops residents frequent are no longer safe. And they
are not safe because of the police. The police are supposed to safeguard and
protect; but in Marikana they kill and injure and create fear.
And this is why the women want to march on the police. They have
had enough of the violence, and the fear and the criminality of the police.
They want justice done. And they want to restore their community and their
homes to places of safety. This can only happen when the police fully withdraw
from Marikana, and when the police are held to account for their violent and
unlawful actions.
Some of the women who will participate in the march are the
widows of the mineworkers who were killed. It is part of their need to grieve
and remember.
Today, immediately following the denial of the women’s march,
the Marikana Support Campaign was also denied the right to picket outside the
Civic Centre in Rustenburg on the 2nd October, the day the Marikana
Judicial Commission starts its work. No reasons were given for this denial.
They are joined with the women of Marikana in bringing an urgent High Court
application to review the banning order. And the R2K marches tomorrow despite
police non-compliance with the Gatherings Act. These developments signal to us
the shutting down of democratic space.
The women of
Marikana feel very strongly that if the authorities break the law and block
this march, they will march on Saturday in peaceful defiance, claiming their
fundamental rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.
WE GO TO COURT AND WE WILL MARCH IN DEFENCE OF OUR DEMOCRACY!
For more comment, please contact:
In Marikana: Thumeka (084) 714 0111
In Johannesburg: Sipho (071) 635 8668 or
Samantha (083) 384-0088
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