Sentencing of protesting gogos sparks outcry
● A group of mothers and grandmothers from a village in KwaZulu-Natal have been given suspended sentences after a peaceful protest of 200 people, simply because they couldn’t run away fast enough when police arrived and used crowd-control grenades.
After being denied bail and spending a “nightmare two months” in a prison far from home in Newcastle, they have now heard their fate: all 14 were sentenced to five years in prison, suspended, plus two years of community service for public violence.
This entails sweeping the streets in their community, where inadequate water, electricity and housing are still the order of the day.
Sbongile Mahlaba, one of the women, said this week: “At first I didn’t want to fight this but … we are under house arrest. We have to request permission from correctional services every time we leave town.”
For gogo Cynthia Sithole, the Colenso sentencing comes after the months in prison already caused havoc for her family.
“I look after my three-year-old granddaughter and my own mother, who suffers from a mental disorder. When I was put in prison I had to move my mother to Joburg.”
In denying bail the court said the women were arrested because they were “the slowest in attempting to get away” when the police released a crowd-control grenade. It conceded that the women were in no way “criminally minded”.
According to a Right to Protest Project report, the arrest of protesters on “frivolous and unfounded charges of public violence” is a tactic to make protests lose momentum.
The project uncovered a similar case in Eshowe in KwaZulu-Natal last year, in protests over corruption and lack of service delivery.
“Fifteen protesters were arrested, many of whom were elderly women,” the report says. “The … only reason they were held at the police station was so that the leaders of the protest would come to the police station and they could then arrest the leaders.”
Professor Lukas Muntingh, who heads Africa Criminal Justice Reform at the Dullah Omar Institute, said there was no evidence that the Colenso women had incited violence or damaged property, or even organised the protest.
Ig van Rooyen, the lawyer representing the women, called the sentence “a very harsh punishment”. The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of SA is considering appealing on the women’s behalf, said attorney Zamantungwa Khumalo.
National Prosecuting Authority regional spokesperson Natasha Kara said: “The sentencing … is determined by the presiding officer. It is done at their discretion.”