{"id":228778,"date":"2022-06-14T11:16:11","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T09:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/court-victory-for-civil-society-in-protest-fees-case\/"},"modified":"2022-06-14T11:16:11","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T09:16:11","slug":"can-cities-charge-fees-for-protests-heres-what-a-judge-ruled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/can-cities-charge-fees-for-protests-heres-what-a-judge-ruled\/","title":{"rendered":"Can cities charge fees for protests? Here\u2019s what a judge ruled"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/Graphics\/lisa_nelson\/the-constitution.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/can-cities-charge-fees-for-protests-heres-what-a-judge-ruled.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Illustration: Lisa Nel<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">The Right2Know Campaign and the Gauteng Housing Crisis Committee have won their case against the City of Johannesburg about the levying of fees on protest organisers.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/can-cities-charge-fees-for-protests-heres-what-a-judge-ruled.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">Johannesburg High Court Judge Margaret Victor has ruled this practice by local authorities unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p class=\"intro\">South Africans should be entitled to rely on government for the supervision of gatherings to ensure public safety and adequate traffic control free of charge, the judge said.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Fees levied by the City of Johannesburg on organisers of protests and pickets are unconstitutional, Johannesburg High Court Judge Margaret Victor has ruled.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs a constitutional democracy, it is imperative that we move towards a position of facilitating rather than oppressing those who seek to exercise their constitutional rights to protest.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is indeed a matter of public concern, and it is my hope that this judgment will have implications for the exercise of the right to assemble, for the applicants, and for the public at large,\u201d Judge Victor said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/activists-say-they-have-pay-protest\/\">The application<\/a> was launched by the Right2Know Campaign (R2K) and the Gauteng Housing Crisis Committee with the assistance of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, on the basis that the levying of fees \u2013 sometimes as much as R15,000 \u2013 stymied the constitutional right to protest.<\/p>\n<div class=\"editor-summary\"><strong>Read the full judgment <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/documents\/right2knowdocx.pdf\">here<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<p>The applicants argued that many protests represented people who were unemployed and poor \u2014 and were organised by \u201cworking class activists\u201d who wanted to highlight \u201cbread and butter\u201d and service delivery issues.<\/p>\n<p>The levying of a fee by the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) and the City of Johannesburg, posed a real risk of people being deterred from exercising their constitutional right to assembly, demonstrate, picket and petition, it was argued.<\/p>\n<p>They said the request for a fee was presented \u201cas though it was a precondition for approval\u201d. This was not authorised by the Gatherings Act.<\/p>\n<p>The City and the JMPD opposed the application: They argued that the City has legislative power through the Municipal Systems Act to levy fees for services, such as the need for increased traffic policing as a result of protests. They said all non-governmental and non-profit organisations were given an 80% discount.<\/p>\n<p>They denied that the payment of the fee was conditional for approval for the event to go ahead.<\/p>\n<p>In her ruling, Judge Victor cited the Constitution: \u201cEveryone has the right to peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and present petitions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She said the right had earned its place in South Africa\u2019s Constitutional democracy in part, because of the role protests play in holding government accountable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is not a right that can be easily limited \u2026 and the manner in which government regulates protests must ultimately be compatible with the Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis application brings to the fore the fact that those wishing to exercise (that right) are subject to the \u2026 tariff determination policy in terms of which a fee is levied from the convenor which can range between R170 and R15,000.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The judge said the Gatherings Act regulated the process to be adopted before proceeding with a protest, including that an application had to be made with the relevant municipality. It was silent on the fees issue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe applicants argue that the right to protest necessarily includes the right to protection by the state, thus the respondents\u2019 argument that they charge fees in order to provide traffic policing measures is untenable,\u201d said Judge Victor.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Victor said municipalities, the linchpins of local governance, must be capable of levying fees for certain services. However, she said, the Municipal Systems Act was extremely broad and did not make mention of any power to levy fees in relation to protests.<\/p>\n<p>This amounted to a municipal attempt to \u201cregulate protests\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>And the Gatherings Act was the primary legislation governing the right to assemble, not the Municipal Systems Act.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am of the view that the supervision of gatherings to ensure public safety and adequate traffic control constitutes one of the core services that South Africans should be entitled to rely upon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cImportantly, they should be entitled to do so free of charge,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n<p>She said the respondents had attempted to rely on \u201clack of resources\u201d. To this she said: \u201cOurs is a constitutional democracy that has chosen to advance the project of human rights. This comes at a cost, and not one that shall fall upon the shoulders of the most marginalised among us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Judge Victor said that the submissions of the respondents \u2013 that no payment does not mean that no protection is offered and that the South African Police Service was still deployed for crowd control purposes \u2013 did not satisfy her concern that those who did not pay, were given a \u201clesser quality of rights\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>She ruled that the levying of fees in terms of the City\u2019s tariff determination policy for the holding of gatherings was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>She ordered that the declaration of unconstitutionality be effective from the date of the order, 10 June 2020, and that the City pay the costs of the application.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2022 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/can-cities-charge-fees-for-protests-heres-what-a-judge-ruled.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Illustration: Lisa Nel The Right2Know Campaign and the Gauteng Housing Crisis Committee have won their case against the City of Johannesburg about the levying of fees on protest organisers. Johannesburg High Court Judge Margaret Victor has ruled this practice by local authorities unconstitutional. South Africans should be entitled to rely on government for the supervision [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":228779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-228778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"tag-groundup","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/can-cities-charge-fees-for-protests-heres-what-a-judge-ruled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}