How a protest march gets stopped: the interdict, the route and the right to march

A march is not one act. It is a notice, a route, a receiving official and a police presence, and when one of those four fails the march stops in the street rather than in the courts. That is the mechanism South Africans were watching in Durban this week, when March and March supporters set out from the Home Affairs office on Moore Road in the rain and were blocked by police officers from reaching Berea Police Station in Musgrave, where their memorandum was to be handed over.

As IOL reported on 27 October, the movement’s leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma told supporters outside the Moore Road office to vote against the ANC on 4 November, and said the government had gone to court to interdict the march. The protest was called over delivery jobs, immigration enforcement and alleged police misconduct. The memorandum listed fair employment opportunities for South Africans, regulation of the e-hailing and delivery industry, support for South African-owned small business, police accountability, effective immigration enforcement, and a call for police to investigate complaints of unlawful practices in its operations or contracting arrangements.

What a reader needs to understand is what sits between a group of people and a police station door.

Under the Regulation of Gatherings Act, a gathering of more than 15 people requires notice to the municipality’s designated official, normally 48 hours ahead, and the convener must be identifiable. The municipality and the police then decide whether the march can proceed on the proposed route, whether it needs conditions, or whether it should be prohibited. A prohibition is not the end of the matter. It can be challenged in court, and a court can set it aside or replace it with conditions. That is the machinery Ngobese-Zuma was describing when she said the movement had been interdicted.

A memorandum handed over at a police station is a separate transaction from the march itself. The station is being asked to receive a document and pass it up the chain. A march can be rerouted and the memorandum can still be delivered by a small delegation. What the crowd loses when the route is blocked is the public event, not the paperwork.

For the drivers at the centre of this, the practical question is narrower than the constitutional one. E-hailing and delivery work in South Africa is governed by provincial operating licences issued through the provincial regulatory entities, by national road traffic rules, and by the platform companies’ own onboarding. A driver who wants to know whether a competitor is lawfully on the road has no single counter to walk up to. The operating licence sits with the provincial regulator, the vehicle’s roadworthiness with the testing station, the driver’s identity documents with Home Affairs, and the platform’s vetting with a private company. Enforcement is split across all four, and a complaint about a store using foreign-national couriers lands with the store, not with any of them.

That fragmentation is why the movement’s demands keep returning to the same four institutions. Employment equity for South Africans in the gig economy would sit with the Department of Employment and Labour. Regulation of e-hailing would sit with the provincial regulatory entity and the Department of Transport. Immigration enforcement sits with Home Affairs and the police. Police accountability sits with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate and the station’s own management. A memorandum handed to Berea police can only travel as far as the police chain will carry it.

For a reader who wants to do something rather than watch, the route is procedural. A complaint about a specific store’s hiring or contracting can be laid with the Department of Employment and Labour. A complaint about an unlicensed e-hailing operator can go to the provincial regulatory entity. A complaint about police conduct goes to Ipid. A complaint about a specific individual’s immigration status goes to Home Affairs, which will not confirm or discuss it with a third party. None of these produces a quick answer, and none of them is a march.

The march itself was 21 months old by Ngobese-Zuma’s account, and the movement has said it will shut the city down on 10 November if the government proceeds with the online asylum registration system. Whether it does depends on the same four things it depended on this week: notice, route, a receiving official and a police line that lets the crowd through.