7/28/2019 Protesting

1/2

Accused of Ambush marketing and incitement for promoting an anti-xenophobic rally, filmmakerGiuliano Martiniello, research student Samantha Sencer-Mura and director of Centre for CivilSociety (CCS) Patrick Bond were detained at the Durban FIFA fan fest. I personally assisted to thescene.On the same day, we were at quarter finals stage, FIFA was promoting its say no to racismcampaign. Days before, an environmentalist was arrested in the same location while leafletingabout FIFA-related environmental damage. It is interesting to compare what Sepp Blatter says asregards to that on FIFA website, and what Policemen told Patrick Bond, according to his

reconstruction.

"The solution to this problem [racism], as to any other, lies firstly in identifying it andacknowledging its existence," says FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter. "Anyone whocomplacently maintains that racism is impossible in their territory is not only wrong butirresponsible."

1

And here is Bond reconstruction of his exchange with the policeman:

The police superintendent replies, No distribution of pamphlets, especially whichmention xenophobia.Ah, the underlying problem had emerged. The reason the pamphlet was banned wasnot just procedural it was political. You are reminding [people] of xenophobia. Evenmyself I had forgot about that thing, but now you write it down.

Do you think it is not a problem? I asked. Surely Durban police know that a citycouncillor is amongst those still being tried for the xenophobic murder of a Tanzanianand Zimbabwean last year, and that the streets and worksites are thick with tension andinsults against immigrants and refugees.His rebuttal: It happened. Thengovernment stopped it there.Im sure you know that Jacob Zuma said xenophobias a problem, I replied, and thatafter meeting his national executive in May, the president said the ANC branches mustwork against xenophobia, I reminded the superintendent.There is no xenophobia, he insisted but nervously

2.

Evidently, certain thematic are only accepted whether they are spelled out by FIFA, in this sense weare here facing a quintessential ideological work by FIFA which with one hand is rallying againstracism and with the other is preventing others from doing so. To be sure, the overzealouspoliceman was not acting in a legal vacuum. Quite the contrary, since FIFA by-laws explicitly forbidto

engage in conduct which expresses racist, xenophobic cause, charity or ideological concernrelated materials, including but not limited to banners, signs, symbols and leaflets, objects orclothing, which could impair the enjoyment of the Event by other spectators, or detract from thesporting focus of the Event

3. Referring to Johannesburg, Van Der Walt (232) criticises SA laws

allowing too much freedom to privatise public space as in the case of gated communities or innercity complexes. In particular, he quotes a sentence is quoted in which a public protest wasinterdicted on the ground that it would infringe the rights to subjective comfortof employees andclients of the attorneys when they passed by the picketers to enter and exit the offices of theattorneys. The reasoning of the court clearly sought to extend the considerations of peace andquiet to which one is entitled in the private realm of the home to the public space that one enterswhen one ventures into streets. Here, as in the FIFA fan fest case, a restrictive law is tailed on anaffective status, a feeling peace, quite, enjoyment as if the law is supposed to guaranteeprotection to a sort of brandscape, being it that of an office or a Fan Fest. Law becomes tied to theproduction and protection of brandscape. This is example shows how the logic of ME spills over thecity, how the city as a flow of affect is increasingly managed and controlled in atmospheric andrhythmic terms. After all, this is also what is implied by the very definition of anti-social behaviouras alarming and distressing behaviour, subjective notions which can understandably be widenedwith a certain discretion, exactly in the way an anti-xenophobic cause was forbidden in the Fan Festby referring to a by-law legislating against xenophobic cause. If, in the paper of Van der Walt, asecond instance is provided in which the interdiction to the right to protest was bound to the need

1http://www.fifa.com/newscentre/news/newsid=518183.html

2http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,2089

3FIFA stadium code of conduct 4.e, 5.6.e

http://www.fifa.com/newscentre/news/newsid=518183.htmlhttp://www.fifa.com/newscentre/news/newsid=518183.htmlhttp://www.fifa.com/newscentre/news/newsid=518183.htmlhttp://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,2089http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,2089http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,2089http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?2,40,5,2089http://www.fifa.com/newscentre/news/newsid=518183.html

7/28/2019 Protesting

2/2

to demonstrate concrete evidence of the protest causing disruption to peace and quiet, thespecial legal status granted to FIFA on public space allows for such nuances to be easily overlooked.Here, much like in many example of anti-terrorism legislation, law is allowed to act unilaterally inprotection of the atmosphere, being that an attempt to diminish fear or increase enthusiasm.

This resonates as quite similar to the ground on which FIFA legislation prevented political protestsin Stadia and Fan Parks, as impairing spectators fruition of the event. Another sentence however

tied. Obviously, in the case of FIFA, the special legal status of public space during the world cupmeans that such nuance is not possible and that unavoidably the law would decide in unilateralway, materialising a proper binarisation of allowed-non allowed in which the space for judicialdiscretion is closed.

It is evident.