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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Police-recorded protests (PRPs) are incidents recorded on the IRIS database as either “crowd (peaceful)” or “crowd (unrest)” with the characteristics of a “protest”.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Why people protest<\/strong><\/p>\n The focus of the protests – the ‘why’ behind protest action – was determined from samples of the total data.<\/p>\n 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%.<\/p>\n Party political protests account for only 1.7% of the estimated PRPs.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Xenophobic protests – while still a small amount – are increasing, the researchers noted, with a violent outcome almost always guaranteed.<\/p>\n This is how many protests there are per day in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n SABC to censor \u201cviolent\u201d protests in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"Number](\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Number-of-protests.png\")
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