Protests watched: Cwele

[LazyLion]

An early warning system is in place to alert law enforcement officials to potentially violent protests, State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele said on Tuesday.

Delivering his budget vote speech in the National Assembly, Cwele blamed "socio-economic factors and the global economic slowdown" for security risks, which included violent service delivery protests.

While the Constitution guaranteed South Africans' rights to gather, picket, and protest, violence should never form part of such actions.

"Let us be upfront and loudly state that in terms of our laws, it is a crime to incite or participate in act[s of] violence during protests," he said.

Organisers of, and participants in, violent demonstrations would face the consequences.

"We now have [a] plan and are ready [to] deploy the full capacity of the democratic state to identify, prevent, or arrest, and swiftly prosecute those who undermine our bill of rights by engaging in acts of violence," said Cwele.

Security agencies were working together to deal with this.

Intelligence structure had implemented specific measure to provide early warning to law enforcement agencies and relevant departments on planned protests that had the potential to turn violent.

According to Cwele, the factors leading to violent protests would also come under scrutiny.

"The assessments will also focus on the underlying root causes in order to advise on speedy and integrated response to grievances."

There has been a steep increase in service delivery and wage-related protests over the past few years.

The state has come under fire for its responses, specifically after 34 miners were shot dead by police during a wage-related strike at Marikana in the North West on August 16 last year.


Source : Sapa /cp/hdw/dd/jk
Date : 14 May 2013 16:29

 

[2026]

In south africa striking is so often and mostly violent than the south african government has decided to create a dedicated system to combat it. South africa is in such a ****ed up state of affairs

 

[Albereth]

Let's say Cwele is talking crap and move on shall we? Or should we tarry a while and debate why this idiot needs a budget in the first place?

 

[Paul Hjul]

Cwele needs to read the operational manuals and applicable legislation before making an even bigger ass of himself. He is behaving like a thug trying to intimidate people who don't agree with his kleptocratic politics.

Crime Intelligence has always monitored public gatherings - it is a core police function to maintain public order (sadly this is often derailed by politicians trying to resort to violence its threat - - as police a microphone in Kouga can attest. Most of the information is provided to the police voluntarily by the organizers of protests who notify the municipality of the gathering [unlike the United Kingdom where you notify the police directly we have in SA added municipalities into the mix with the effect of creating a f^c^-up] and through unintentional voluntary disclosure - you cannot go around with a loudspeaker telling people about a march without the cops hearing.

Section 3 of the Regulation of Gatherings Act is specifically designed to enable the police to have enough information at their disposal to perform an assessment of what policing requirements exist and to get the correct police on the ground if need be (ie not those from an armed robbery unit as Zuma sent to Marikana). What Crime Intelligence is dismal at doing is performing their statutory duty (s3(5) of the RGA) of providing information to the Responsible Officers (who are designated by the municipality) of gatherings which they have reason to believe are being planned and for which no notice has been given to the Responsible Office (which is the case if they find out about a planned gathering outside of the notice sent to the police by the Responsible Officer) such that cooperative peaceful planning can take place.

At least 3 times a year I give police and municipalities information about a planned gathering and at least three times and at least three times a year there is a cock-up with the municipality. There should not be anything sinister and in a democratic country committed to the rule of law the cops perform function in public order as supportive rather than intimidation (something I have amusingly experienced where the presence of boot bearing cops prevented municipal by-law enforcement from misbehaving) - - the problem isn't with the police, as an entity, it is with politicians wanting to use the police to fight their battles.

EVERY SINGLE VIOLENT PROTEST IN SOUTH AFRICA is preceded by peaceful protests which are obstructed by municipalities and political organizations and every single municipality that I have looked into fails to implement the RGA properly (this list includes: City of Cape Town, Kouga, Makana, Manguang) and all of the available literature shows that municipal thuggery in the East Rand and gross incompetence in Johannesburg underlies escalations into violence in Gauteng. KZN is a pure abomination by all accounts and public order policing has been rolled into the same units that deal with apprehending armed robbers - so go figure the violence count.

Frankly the Minister and his National Commissioner need to read the Constitution, the RGA, the police operational literature and (with only a little bit of self promotion) the academic literature* on the RGA, public order policing and democracy.

* with more than a little self promotion: particularly the very limited amount found in journals committed to juridical sciences

 

[Sinbad]

Cwele didn't even notice his wife being a drug kingpin.