Recently, Flow PR’s Caroline Smith donned her activist cap and nabbed some airtime on the national news, marching for the rights of all South Africans in the face of some alarming proposals regarding the Constitution that would see some citizens stripped of their rights.
Caroline explains that the Constitutional Review Committee has agreed to review certain articles of the Constitution pertaining to the protection of gay rights.
“We were marching because of this decision,” she says. “Our view was: If you take away the rights of one group in society, where do you stop?”
Roughly 1 000 people, from different backgrounds and representing a variety of lifestyle choices, gathered at Wits University on Saturday afternoon. They then marched to Constitution Hill, where they delivered a memorandum calling for all human rights to be upheld for all South Africans.
“I was marching as a concerned citizen who is married thanks to South Africa’s Constitution,” says Caroline. “The crowd was very mixed and there were all sorts of amusing signs and chants being sung.”
The march was one of several that took place in cities across the country.
“We were happy to get news coverage across all three SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation] channels,” says Caroline, who was asked by a news crew to answer a few questions. “They wanted to interview me because they said that I had opinions,” she says with a chuckle. “I told them that the Constitution is designed to protect all of us.”
The Johannesburg march was organised by Monique Walker and Genevieve le Coq, who, according to Caroline, did a remarkable job. “And I think we succeeded in our aim. This was something that was flying under the radar. We wanted to say, ‘Listen, this is happening, and you should be aware of it.’”