WATCH: #JozitoStellenbosch protesters, cops clash for hours

Protesters were on Wednesday prevented from entering the centre of Stellenbosch after an hours-long engagement with police, in which rocks and rubber bullets whistled near the Cape Winelands town.

Several organisations had united under a social media hashtag of #JozitoStellenbosch and planned to make a 2.1km march from the suburb of Kayamandi into the Cape Winelands town’s epicentre.

But a heavy police contingent, backed up by municipal law enforcement agencies and private security, thwarted this.

Shortly before 10am, a group of around 50 protesters gathered near the Kayamandi police station. But the crowd was immediately warned that their gathering did not have legal permission to proceed. And after several rapid warnings, police used a water cannon to disperse the crowd.

The protesters disappeared into the network of narrow roads and alleyways, which thread between the thousands of small homes in the hill-side suburb.

And for the next four hours, protesters and angry residents engaged in games of cat-and-mouse with police – raining down rocks and other projectiles on to the troops, who returned fire with rubber bullets and stun grenades, also known as “flashbangs”.

After about three hours, a small group of protesters gathered and requested permission to make their way down the southward-running Plankenbrug road towards the Onderpapagaaiberg precinct, but were denied permission to gather by SAPS, who cited disaster regulations.

The crowd was again dispersed by police, and the surge-and-retreat pattern of engagement resumed.

In nearby commercial districts, businesses’ security guards kept a vigilant eye on proceedings, shutting their premises’ security gates when the thunderous sounds of engagement neared.

In the town centre, meanwhile, Stellenbosch’s famous tourism precinct remained dead-quiet.

But shop assistants said this was their ongoing daily reality under various lockdown regulations and the knock-on impact on tourism.

“This is not our ‘new normal’. This is a graveyard,” one curio shop owner told News24, asking not to give his name.

His colleague added: “In three months, we have not made one single sale. Not one.”

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