Some rallies were allowed to proceed in major urban centres immediately after the September elections while the regime continued to suppress protests, meetings and demonstrations in areas less visible to the international media.
The legal powers to prevent, restrict or disperse meetings depend principally on several laws which are permanently in force and which would remain even if the State of Emergency were lifted. A ban under the Internal Security Act, in force since 1976 and renewed on 31 March this year for a further twelve months, allows the authorities to prevent gatherings of most kinds from taking place. The ban prohibits any outdoor meeting other than sports gatherings or funerals in cemeteries, and any indoor meeting to discuss educational boycotts or industrial action beyond the limited range allowed by the Labour Relations Act. Emergency regulations have further restricted meetings by prohibiting statements defined as 'subversive', including most statements mobilising resistance, and by effectively banning the main anti-apartheid organisations. They have also been regularly used to severely restrict funerals of people killed by the police or of political and community leaders.
Examples of action prevented by bans under the emergency regulations include meetings in support of hunger-strikers in January; commemorations in April of the anniversary of the execution of the ANC combatant Solomon Mahlangu; meetings to celebrate the acquittal on treason charges of Moses Mayekiso and others; meetings to discuss the situation in schools in the Western Cape; meetings in May under the banner 'No submission to restrictions', and meetings under the banner of 'Defy apartheid elections' in June and July.
In other cases the ban under the Internal Security Act was used to refuse permission to hold meetings as with an open-air May Day rally which COSATU planned to hold in Soweto.
Police action against meetings has most frequently been to disperse gatherings, protests and demonstrations. The Minister of Law and Order told parliament that in April this year 19 gatherings were dispersed by police, and the Human Rights Commission said that reports had been received of the breaking up of 46 meetings during August.
Despite the extensive powers of the police and their readiness to enforce the restrictions, popular defiance has been widespread. In many cases meetings have taken place without confrontation because of last minute changes in venue which left the police unable to act. The use of commuter trains for meetings of workers is a further example. The mass defiance campaign involved disregarding restrictions on meetings, and was met by the use of a wide variety of laws.
Simultaneously police violence against meetings and gatherings intensified. Monitoring groups reporting on the period July to August indicated that the whole range of previously observed methods were used. These included preventing access to meetings by mounting roadblocks or surrounding venues with armoured vehicles, and attacks on people with dogs, whips, teargas, batons, shotguns, rubber bullets, stun grenades or water cannons.
Police violence became a further cause of protest and contributed to the pressure leading the government to allow rallies in Cape Town and Johannesburg, by granting permission for them to proceed. Funerals of those killed by the police were also allowed to proceed without the usual restrictions.
Despite these relaxations on some gatherings which were a focus of media attention, armed and violent police action continued against protestors and meetings in the townships and small towns which had borne the brunt of police action throughout the year and in the weeks preceding the elections.
