ABSTRACT

It is a very sad fact that we have to spend Human Rights Day asking the courts to protect our basic rights from a repressive government. The historic protest in Sharpeville that is being commemorated across the country today was against the pass laws – laws that sought to keep African people out of the cities. Today we are going to court against Sutcliffe to stop him from denying us our right to access our city. We will march on Jacob Zuma tomorrow irrespective of the outcome in court. But we want the court to confirm our right to march because we do not want our members to, again, be shot and arrested for exercising their basic democratic rights. It is the community organizations and poor people’s movements who are protesting around the country who are true to the spirit of the struggle against apartheid. The politicians who try to heard (sic) the people into stadiums to tell them that the politicians in their cavalcades are the true inheritors of the spirit of that struggle have made themselves our enemies.