Marching (and marching along the route we want) - a lesson in asserting your civil rights

As you might be able to tell from the title of this post - we won! As an update from the last posting - on Wednesday, we served the municipality papers for an urgent motion brought before the Durban High Court. The motion requested that the Court confirm our clients' right to freedom of peaceful assembly; to declare that the decision of the municipal manager was unconstitutional; and to confirm our clients' right to hold a march on their chosen route where the municipality failed to meet the threshold to restrict their march under the Regulation of Gatherings Act. Emma and I had a bit of a rough day on Wednesday, but everything eventually got served and filed with the Court. Luckily, the people accepting service were generally quite nice (people don't like when you show up with court papers as a general rule). Not long after I wrote my blog on Thursday, we had a call from our client - the Civil Society Committee for COP17. Apparently the City Manager had contacted their rep the evening before offering another route (by my count we are on route 7 now). He had already made a decision, but seemed to be going back on it, conveniently after the papers had been filed with the Court. Hmmm - Anyways, the City Manager proposed that we meet at noon - last thing I wanted to do was sit in another meeting discussing the streets of Durban and how much traffic would be disrupted. However, the route that had been proposed was great from our perspective. It allowed us the two things we were most focused on - to march down Dr. Pixley KaSeme Street (one of the major streets in the Durban downtown) and to march along Samora Machel Street, which goes along next to the International Convention Centre where negotiations are being held. Yahoo! So, things were looking good. The meeting got pushed into the evening, but I still couldn't figure out why we needed a meeting. What ended up happening was that our client went to retrieve the letter approving the new route at around 6:00pm without needing a meeting (thank goodness). Problem - we were already on the rolls for court the next morning. So we proposed that we ask the Court, on consent, to make the letter approving the new route an order of the Court. Seemed logical to me. At 9:30 on Friday, Emma, along with 2 others from our office and a Jo'Burg Advocate (from the LRC Constitutional Litigation Unit) were over at the High Court. I had to miss on account of a meeting with the KZN Street Kids Alliance (which I will tell you more about later). But, two hours later, Emma texted me to say that the case was still going on - I was quite surprised, an order on consent should take 20 seconds. So, after the meeting I was off to the High Court. I arrived just in time. I squeezed into the gallery seating with Desmond (the convener of the march and C17's main guy with regards to the march) and Sue (a reverend with the Anglican Church and representative of the faith community within C17). The judge started - I have to admit, it didn't seem to start very well. The judge was asking questions about why other parties had not been named as respondents and all kinds of strange, irrelevant questions. I was concerned, the judge just did not seem to be getting it. Our Advocate was having trouble getting the judge on our page. But then, all of the sudden, you could see the penny drop, and he was on our side. He figured it out. So here is a little run down of the questions - Judge to LRC - so you want this letter made an order of this Court? LRC - Yes. Judge (to Municipality) - Do you have a problem with that? Municipality - Yes. Judge - What? It's your letter? How can you have a problem with me making it an order of the Court? Municipality - I have been instructed by my client to oppose having the letter made an order of the Court Judge - Ok, well, let's move onto costs. (I may be adlibbing a bit, but that's the gist of it).

And the costs also went our way. Nice. Yeah for us! Success! So we left the Court with an order requiring the city to provide police and close roads in order to allow us to walk from Botha Park, along Dr. Pixley KaSeme Street turning at Samora Machel Street, handing over a memorandum to UN representatives at the ICC and finally, ending the march at the beach. We were all very happy heading back to our office.

So what do you do after working that hard for a march - you join it. I also decided that marching is a very South African thing that I would like to experience and what better march to take part in? Ellie and I decided to head to our office where we were expecting to join with the Faith Community for the first part of the march before joining with the rest of the Civil Society march. This is what it looked like at Diakonia...At Diakonia, we met up with Asha, who I work with. Asha is an amazing woman. The role she has played and continues to play in social justice is astonishing. She fought against apartheid and continues to fight to keep government accountable to the people of South Africa. If you are going to march, there is no better person to go with than Asha, the super experienced marcher (It makes me laugh when she talks about marches now, and how they aren't as exciting as they used to be, no dogs and such with the police). Asha convinced us to head over to Botha Park and join the main march. She said that we should see it from the beginning, and I have to say I'm glad we did. It was an experience and I was very proud of the work we did, feeling pride as we passed the street signs saying Dr. Pixley KaSeme Street.

Here are some photos of the march. This was what we were greeted with at Botha's Park...intimidating? Slightly. The police were out in full force and riot gear ready. Apparently there was a scuffle before the march even began between ANC Youth League Members and youth from the Democratic Left Front. We were there and didn't notice anything, although apparently the riot police stepped in. But don't worry, it wasn't all police. Actually, the march came together really well. Lots of organizations; lots of ways climate change is impacting different lives; and generally a positive atmosphere - I mean there was a clown on a unicycle. At the march, we met up with Emma. Oxfam had extra signs, I also liked their message, so these were the placards we used. Not surprisingly, there were some Canadians there. Want to know how to spot a Canadian? Dead give-away is somebody wearing a CBC t-shirt. Also a dead give-away - an MEC backpack. There was a solid crowd. Estimates were between 5000 and 7000. Some signs were better than others and some t-shirts better than others. But in general, the message was the same, get going on combating climate change! The WWF had awesome shirts. I wanted one. Although we were a little late starting thanks to the scuffle I mentioned earlier, the march had quite a festival atmosphere to it. As my mom said, a parade with a purpose. We also decided that best course of action would be to stay with the giant puppets from Oxfam, then you can't get lost. This is Asha. This is us walking down Dr. Pixley KaSeme Street (you can just see the street sign on the right hand side). I also happened to run into Awa. She was running all over the place getting things ready for her latest story, but stopped for a picture and a little protest. This is what happens if you walk too long next to the puppet, you have to start assisting in carrying the giant thing. Ellie was very happy about this turn of events. As much as this march was about saying to the negotiators here in Durban - get your stuff together and do something - for me it was also a confirmation of the human rights that are essential to a functioning democracy. It seems to be a constant battle here - to hold people (and government in particular), to the standards set out in the Constitution. But it made me feel really good to do work that confirmed the importance of these civil rights. So yeah to a successful march and yeah to a successful case!