South Africa: What Does the Constitutional Court's Judgment On Protests Mean?

20 November 2018

On Monday, after three years of court battles, ten people who protested without permission in 2013 finally could rest easy that they would not get criminal records. Here's an explanation of what the Constitutional Court judgment in the case known as SJC10 means.

Section 17 of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution guarantees that everyone "has the right, peacefully and unarmed, to assemble, to demonstrate, to picket and to present petitions". The guarantee is not absolute: exercising the right to protest, even peacefully and unarmed, can infringe upon the fundamental rights of other people.

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