Commission had not carried out a proper investigation into the situation before issuing its statement. These diametrically opposed viewpoints illustrate the vastly different views about the nature and objectives of protest action in Zimbabwe. The version of the President and the ruling party is that the protests are aimed at illegal regime change and the demonstrations are being encouraged by hostile governments in the West that had imposed economic sanctions upon Zimbabwe to destabilize the country. They maintain that the demonstrators are engaging in violent protests and that the police and military forces are duty bound to suppress this illegal violence. The protesters believe they are simply exercising their constitutional right to mount peaceful protests against the suffering emanating from the dire socio-economic situation within the country which they attribute to mismanagement of the economy and widespread corruption. They believe that the government has failed to redress the situation and that they have a right to publicly protest about this failure through public protests aimed at displaying public dissatisfaction with the situation. They consider that they are being prevented from exercising this constitutional right by a politically partisan police force and military which is using brutal force to break up these demonstrations, sometimes even after the courts have authorized the protests. They also believe that the Public Order and Security Act is being misused against the protestors. The deteriorating economic situation has led to increased public protest action in the country and the response of the police has been to clamp down on protest action sometimes with brutal force which has led to protests against police behaviour. A few days before the first case dealt with below was decided, President Mugabe had roundly condemned judges who had ruled that protests should be allowed to go ahead, saying that protests should not be permitted because they had turned violent. He accused these judges of being reckless. He said: “Our courts, our justice system, our judges should be the ones who understand even better than ordinary citizens. They DARE not be negligent in their decisions when requests are made by people who want to demonstrate.” The President told a conference of the ruling ZANU-PF’s youth wing that “enough is enough” and that he would not allow violent protests to continue.1 From the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act to the Public Order and Security Act After Independence in 1980 it was confidently expected that the new democratic government would move quickly to repeal the highly repressive Law and Order (Maintenance) Act of 1960. The white minority regime had used this legislation as one of its main weapons to try to suppress black nationalism, amending it frequently to make it even more repressive as the liberation struggle intensified. In addition to its many other draconian provisions, it had numerous provisions to prevent and criminalise protest action against the regime. In the case of In re Munhumeso & Ors 1994 (1) ZLR 49 (S) the court had to adjudicate upon whether section 6 of the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act which was still in operation at the time violated the provisions on freedom of assembly and freedom of expression in the pre2013 Constitution. It decided that the section excessively invaded the enjoyment of the rights and was not reasonably justifiable in a democratic society in the interests of public safety and public order. The basis of this decision is instructive, although the provisions of the 1 Zimbabwe Independent 5 September, 2016