To those who did not march yesterday...

I have been criticized for supporting participation in the protest march this week.

Do we not understand that economic protest action is quite legitimate, that it in fact reflects, very profoundly, that we are living in a democracy now and have rights we never dreamed of exercising years ago?

If we believe in something strongly enough, we should have the guts to go out and make a public statement about it.

People were fearful of participating because too often they see absolute indiscipline and criminal behaviour by participants in "strike" action. More usually those types of incidents occur during strike action related to specific wage negotiations as opposed to economic protest action which does not relate to a particular company or industry. Economic protest action is typically about issues which impact our lives as South Africans in a more general way. As a rule, those protests are peaceful and without incident.

At the very least, every South African will be affected by the e-tolling issue - more especially, when it inevitably is rolled out across the country as it probably will be. When it pushes up the cost of everything which needs to be transported, everyone will be affected. Had the citizens of every town and city participated in marches, it would have sent an extremely powerful message to government. Instead, only a few of the those who traditionally do not participate in "strikes" took to the streets to demonstrate their objections.  Make no mistake - a powerful point was made yesterday by the thousands who participated, but the number of protesters should have been in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

Many did not want to be associated with the outcry against labour brokers and alleged they did not participate because of that - a lame excuse. It was clearly well understood that certain people were supporting one or the other of the issues in question, if only judging by the posters they were waving about.

Come on South Africans! Exercise your right to protest peacefully and enjoy the feeling of brotherhood and solidarity as you march shoulder to shoulder with your compatriots towards a common goal.

(Someone should organize protest action relating to the rhino situation now ...)