What the government doesn’t want you to know about violent protests in SA
With state broadcaster, the SABC banning violent protests from the screens of millions of South Africans, a new report shows just how many protests in the country are likely to qualify.
A new research document from the University of Johannesburg (UJ) has revealed how frequently protest action really takes place in South Africa, and the reasons behind them.
Specifically, the report shows that community protests – or service delivery protests – are the second-most common form of protest; the majority of which are classified as “unrest”, involving police intervention.
This pattern of “unrest” carries across five of the nine protest groups covered in the report, showing that a significant portion of the 4,000 protests happening in South Africa every year could potentially be denied coverage.
Protests by the numbers
The number of protests taking place on average per day has been put forward by some politicians at 30 – though research by Africa Check, looking at media-reported events found this to be massively overstated, with the average sitting closer to three per day.
The new findings from UJ, however, look at police-reported protest action, in which it found 67,750 protests have taken place between 1997 and 2013, or around 11 per day, on average.
This number could be higher, the researchers noted, when taking under-reporting into account, with the total likely sitting closer to 71,000 protests over the period.
Police-recorded protests (PRPs) are incidents recorded on the IRIS database as either “crowd (peaceful)” or “crowd (unrest)” with the characteristics of a “protest”.
Incidents are recorded on a daily basis, so a PRP is a unit of protest lasting up to 24 hours. That is, if a protest recorded on the IRIS database as a crowd incident lasts for five days, it is treated as five PRPs.
2012 was the worst year for protest action in South Africa, when 5,500 protests were recorded, while 2004 was the year with the lowest number of protests, with 2,300 recorded.
Assessing the data is impeded by a problem with definitions, the report said, noting that major events and sporting occasions are often categorised as “gatherings” or “demonstrations” – but in reporting its data, the researchers only considered incidents where there was evidence of actual protest action.
Nationally, Gauteng is home to the most protests, followed by the Eastern Cape. On a per-capita basis, however, the Free State has the most protests, the report said.
Why people protest
The focus of the protests – the ‘why’ behind protest action – was determined from samples of the total data.
According to the findings, labour protests were the most common in the country, with 46% of all reported protests falling under this category, followed by “community protests” (encompassing service delivery protests) at 22.1%.
Party political protests account for only 1.7% of the estimated PRPs.
The involvement of political parties and factional interests has been a subject of much debate in the analysis of protests in South Africa, the researchers said.
The data presented below represent PRPs where a political party is explicitly involved, and does not necessarily capture factional struggles, which have been suggested are a primary motivating factor in protests.
Looking at violent – or “unrest” protests, a large number of service delivery protests ultimately turn violent, while the greater proportion of labour protests remain peaceful.
Xenophobic protests – while still a small amount – are increasing, the researchers noted, with a violent outcome almost always guaranteed.
More on protests
This is how many protests there are per day in South Africa
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