GroundUp and the Campaign for Free Expression have written to the acting minister of police and police commissioners asking for better protection for journalists covering anti-immigrant protests. Archive photo: Ashraf Hendricks
- GroundUp and the Campaign for Free Expression have written to the acting minister of police and the national and provincial commissioners asking for better protection for journalists covering anti-immigrant protests.
- They want directives to be sent to police officers on the ground by 6 November.
- Failing this, they say, they will go to court.
GroundUp and the Campaign for Free Expression (CFE) have urged the heads of the police service to issue urgent directives to police officers on the ground to protect journalists covering anti-immigrant protests.
In a letter to Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia, National Commissioner Fanie Masemola and the provincial commissioners in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, attorney Jacques Louw, writing on behalf of GroundUp and CFE, asks for the directive to be issued by Friday, 6 November.
Failing this, he says, GroundUp and CFE will launch urgent high court proceedings seeking orders that journalists covering public gatherings must be protected and that the State has a “positive duty” towards them.
In the letter, dated 30 October, Louw says GroundUp journalists covering the “waves of anti-migrant and xenophobic protests” have been threatened, obstructed and assaulted.
“In most instances, members of the SAPS were present, observed these incidents but did not intervene.”
Citing specific examples, he said between 6 and 8 October, in and around the Durban Refugee Reception Office on Che Guevara Road and in the Point area, Joseph Bracken and Tsoanelo Sefoloko had been repeatedly told to stop filming and to delete their footage.
Protesters had tried to grab Bracken’s phone while SAPS members stood nearby — one less than a metre away — without intervening.
The following day, Bracken had been pushed, pulled, prodded with sticks and verbally threatened by protesters. His phone had been grabbed. He had been warned that members of the group planned to beat him if he continued filming.
Louw said: “A SAPS member who then approached did not act against those making the threats but told Bracken to move away. Later, Metropolitan Police officers standing beside Bracken watched a liquor store being looted and did not intervene while protesters told him to stop filming.”
On 9 October near the Pretoria Refugee Reception Office, a protester had grabbed the phone from GroundUp journalist Seth Thorne and slapped him several times across his face.
The police officers on the scene had remained in their vehicle. They had failed to follow the group when they moved to nearby shops.
Eventually, an officer had retrieved his phone, and it had been returned to him.
On 27 October, outside the Durban refugee office, March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma had singled out Bracken while he was filming her address to a crowd of about 50 people.
Louw said she had referred to Bracken’s race and said GroundUp had been writing negatively about March and March.
The crowd had turned on Bracken, shouted threats and told him to leave. Although Ngobese-Zuma had called for calm, they had continued to threaten him using “throat slicing” gestures.
“The public naming of a GroundUp journalist by the movement’s leader, in front of her supporters, materially increases the risk to our clients’ journalists at future gatherings,” he said.
Louw said these incidents were part of a wider pattern recorded this year by the South African National Editors’ Forum and the Committee to Protect Journalists “including the publication of journalists’ photographs and contact details in order to target them”.
He said when SAPS members “elected to idly stand by”, the State was violating its legal obligations under the Constitution.
Louw referred to proceedings in the Durban High Court last Friday, when Judge Peter Olsen granted an interim interdict in favour of SAPS. The judge barred March and March from directing, committing, instigating or encouraging lawlessness and looting or attacking Home Affairs premises. Protesters cannot wear masks or carry any objects or weapons.
Until 7 November, they are only allowed to protest between 9 am and 3pm. The matter returns to court in January next year.
However, Louw said, whatever the outcome of that case eventually, it only impacted March and March’s protests in e’Thekwini, and it did not give any protection to journalists.
He said GroundUp and CFE requested that a directive be issued, instructing police officers:
- to take reasonable steps to ensure that journalists can report on gatherings safely;
- to immediately intervene when a journalist is threatened, assaulted or obstructed or when anyone attempts to seize phones and equipment or force the journalist to delete footage;
- not to stand by when tension between protesters and journalists escalates; and
- to arrest, where it is lawful to do so, any person who commits such offences in their presence.
He also requested that SAPS nominate an officer and supply a telephone number, whom journalists can contact, if need be.
Approached for comment, the office of the acting minister said the letter would be sent to the national commissioner for further processing.
The national commissioner did not respond to inquiries.
© 2026 GroundUp. This article is published under the GroundUp Republication Licence Version 1.0. Email [email protected] to request permission to republish.
