Court ends Rhodes protest ban...

...but reduced interdict on three students confirmed

AN INTERIM interdict prohibiting protesters at Rhodes University from a wide range of behaviour, including intimidation, kidnap and assault, was yesterday discharged almost in its entirety.

The university wanted to finalise the April order regulating student protest on its campus after a group of some 200 students protested against what they said was a culture of rape and sexual violence.

The Grahamstown High Court confirmed the interdict, in a reduced form, against only three named students – Sian Ferguson, Yolanda Dyantyi and Simamkele Heleni.

The interdict now no longer applies to other protesters.

While Judge Murray Lowe agreed the university had suffered some infringement of its rights during protest action and that it had shown a reasonable apprehension that in the absence of an interdict this would continue, he said its identification of those groups responsible had been absurdly wide and the relief sought vague.

He ruled that defining the respondents as “students engaging in unlawful activities” on its campus and as “persons engaging in or associating themselves with unlawful activities” was just too broad and did not constitute an identifiable group.

“A court does not grant relief in circumstances where there is reasonable uncertainty about what that order means or to whom it applies.”

It was argued that the interim order – which effectively prohibited any attempt to picket its campus and buildings, banned any comment that might unlawfully damage the university’s reputation and restrained any conduct that might affect the “mental well-being” of its staff and students – was too wide and too vague.

Lowe said some activities the university sought to interdict were also constitutionally protected rights.

Mass protest was an important form of political engagement and played an essential role in any democracy.

A blanket order against all protesters regardless of their intention and participation in unlawful conduct was unsupportable, he said.

But he added that the university had shown that the three women named in the interdict were involved in some unlawful conduct not protected by the constitution and it was therefore entitled to a final interdict against them.

The Johannesburg based Socio-Economics Rights Institute (Seri), which had acted for the three students, and a group of concerned Rhodes staff that had intervened in the application, yesterday welcomed the judgment, saying their contentions had largely been upheld.

Seri’s litigation director, Nomzamo Zondo, said their clients welcomed the court’s recognition that the right to protest was essential to a functional democracy.

“Our clients also welcome the court’s remarks disapproving of anti-protest orders granted against large unidentified groups of people.

“The rights to free expression and protest are an essential component of our clients’ attempts to combat the scourge of rape and genderbased violence at Rhodes.”

The three students against whom a narrower form of the interdict had been confirmed were considering the judgment and would soon take advice on how to proceed, said Zondo.

Rhodes University’s attorney Owen Huxtable yesterday said they were still perusing the judgment and would only comment once they had consulted stakeholders.