The Durban High Court has handed the state a temporary operational toolkit for policing the March and March protest movement: demonstrations confined to the hours between 9 am and 4 pm, and marchers barred from carrying weapons or covering their faces. The interim order, granted on the government’s application, is the latest step in an effort to manage a campaign that authorities say they have been unable to keep within lawful bounds.
The government approached the court with a specific operational complaint. It said it had failed to contain violence, intimidation and looting linked to the March and March protests in Durban, a failure that has made the marches difficult to police and has raised the cost of maintaining public order in the city centre.
The restrictions follow a series of violent marches through the Durban CBD, including a gathering outside the refugee reception centre on Moore Road. Those demonstrations, part of an anti-illegal immigration campaign, have repeatedly tested the capacity of police and municipal authorities to keep protests peaceful.
Judge Peter Olsen, delivering the ruling, framed the interim order as a procedural measure rather than a judgment on the merits. The order does not amount to a finding of wrongdoing by March and March or its leaders, he stressed. The allegations would only be determined once both sides have filed their papers and the matter is heard next year.
What changed: the case now moves to a defined timetable. The respondents are expected to file their replying affidavits by 11 January 2027, and arguments for a final order will be heard when the parties return to court on 18 January. Until then, the interim restrictions remain in force, giving authorities a temporary framework for managing the marches while the legal questions are resolved.
For the movement itself, the order imposes immediate practical constraints on how it can operate. Demonstrations must fall within a seven-hour window, and participants may not carry weapons or conceal their faces, measures aimed directly at the conduct that has accompanied recent marches. March and March has distanced itself from any violence and intimidation during its demonstrations, a position its leadership will now have to argue in court.
Meanwhile, the interim order sits within a broader run of developments around the movement. KwaZulu-Natal police have denied that arrest warrants were issued for March and March leader Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma and her husband. The movement’s leader has also weighed in publicly on the immigration crisis following a Constitutional Court ruling, and protesters have previously vowed to make Durban ungovernable, a pledge that underscores the enforcement challenge the government says it faces.
What happens on 18 January will determine whether the current restrictions harden into a final order. For now, the court has given the state a limited set of tools: bounded protest hours, a weapons ban and a prohibition on face coverings, all meant to make the marches easier to supervise on the ground. Whether those measures are sufficient to prevent a repeat of the violence, intimidation and looting cited in the government’s application is the practical question the coming weeks will answer.
The sequence of events, from violent marches in the Durban CBD to an urgent court application and now an interim order with a January hearing date, shows how the dispute has moved from the streets into the courts. Both sides will present their papers, the allegations will be tested, and the final order, if granted, will set the terms under which March and March can demonstrate in Durban going forward.