Judgment No. CCZ 9/18 Civil Appeal No. CCZ 5/18 THE CONTENT OF THE RIGHTS Accepting, as I do, that the rights that are protected under s 59 are the right to demonstrate peacefully and the right to peacefully present a petition, one issue that has exercised my mind is whether it is then necessary to further limit the rights. In view of the position that has been taken by the respondents in this matter, this issue is largely an academic and idle question that does not require an answer for the purposes of this judgment. It was never the contention of the respondents that the measures taken by the first respondent were in response to peaceful demonstrations. To the contrary, the papers filed in the High Court, in opposition to all the applications, recalled and emphasised the violence that had accompanied the earlier demonstrations by some of the applicants as a basis for imposing the ban. Thus, in the collective view of the respondents, the first respondent was responding to the past violent demonstrations by imposing a ban on all future demonstrations for a period of one month. At no stage did the respondents contend that s 27 of POSA can be invoked to prohibit peaceful demonstrations and peaceful presentation of petitions. That issue aside, the right to demonstrate and to present petitions was recognised by the High Court as one of the rights that form the foundation of a democratic state. I cannot agree more. I am also in full agreement with the observation of the High Court that the attainment of the right to demonstrate and to present petitions was among those civil liberties for which the war of liberation in this country was waged and that these two rights are included in the fundamental rights referred to in the preamble to the Constitution. To these observations that are peculiar to this jurisdiction as observed by the High Court, I may add on a general note that protests and mass demonstrations remain one of the 7