702, Friday night

I want to end off by saying I think that the whole March and March thing, the court case, the decision by the court to limit certain things, is, in my opinion, less about dealing with protests that are dangerous than it is about putting out a message to the international world that South Africa is doing.

Something about this. Because I think that if the real issue is to try and address the issues raised by March and March and organizations such as that, that you go and speak to them. You have a sit-down and you have a conversation with them. The court route, the army, bringing in the army route is only going to create martyrs. People are going to defy.

Those directives by the courts because they will say, but we have a constitutional right to protest, and government cannot tell us not to protest, and they cannot tell us how to protest, especially when we are protesting against them as government. So, if the idea is to say, listen, we gotta get this right, guys, can we talk? Then you talk, you have a conversation.

But I unfortunately think that this has been tactically wrong by government, by the South African police. I think all they will do is create martyrs. They will create people that will resist what the courts have said. Already there is talk of resistance through what the courts have said. And all that it will do is give a sense of legitimacy of a new struggle by those who will defy.

The court's decision. And once again, you'll have a situation where people believe themselves to be martyrs. And the struggle continues. I think that the South African government, the police, wasted a very, very important opportunity here to call them in and have a conversation. I know that during the week they had some people with the inter-ministerial, what do they call it? Inter-ministerial, darada.

Led by Mamo Logo Kobai. And the sense out there is that you invited people that are tokens, people that nobody really respects in that space. And you avoided the people that you ought to be talking to. And instead, you took those people to court instead of having a conversation with them and saying, guys, we're on the same side here. We might disagree with the modalities and the practicalities, but we're on the same side here. We all agree that we need to do something about.