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Jane Duncan Quotes
South Africa
Jane Duncan is an academic, public intellectual and activist at the Journalism Department at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. She works on media freedom issues and is the former director of the Freedom of Expression Institute in Johannesburg.
Also known as: Jane Duncan
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Protests that are sustained over a period of time are usually part of a cycle that unfolds in interaction with the authorities and other protesters.
Failure to notify is not, in itself, sufficient reason to break up a protest if it is peaceful and unarmed.
State repression creates solidarity among movement participants, who justify the need for violence as a form of self-defence.
If a protest takes place without notice but is premeditated, even if it is peaceful, it can be classified as a crime, triggering the opening of a docket.
If a protest does not pose a serious threat to public safety, it should not be prevented, even if the municipality had not been informed about it. The Constitution protects people’s right to assemble.
If netizens want to live free from fear and want, offline and on, then they will not achieve this by handing decision-making about the internet to increasingly secretive, unaccountable governments. Trading freedom for security is no security at all.
The police service is clearly a stressed institution. Considering the high levels of crime in South Africa, the ratio of police to population is on the lower end of the global scale. Those who can afford it opt for private security, which lacks accountability.
There is no doubt that media consumption habits are going to change quite fundamentally in the future, with an increasing reliance on the internet as a source of information and as a communicative tool.
Violence against the police has also been a persistent problem, reducing morale and driving up violent responses. The police have claimed to be under siege from violent protesters but, at the same time, the police have proved to be far from impartial in responding to these protests.