Rising anger about corrupt councillors, high food and energy prices, poorly maintained infrastructure, and internecine struggles for power are some of the issues over which South Africans are increasingly taking to the streets.
Among the high profile incidents were the strike-related violence and killings at Marikana; demonstrations in Ficksburg in April 2011 during which community activist Andries Tatane was killed by police; and the on-going crisis in Kuruman where 40 schools have been closed due to strike action since June, affecting thousands of children and putting their futures at risk.
South Africans are frustrated and angry. For many marginalised people, public violence and the destruction of infrastructure are the only way to force high-level politicians to pay attention to problems that have festered for months. The barriers between poverty and economic prosperity are so high as to leave most South Africans feeling voiceless and marginalised - with the precariousness of their existence apparently not recognised and understood by those in power.
It is important to be able to monitor and report on public violence and protest by citizens against the state. Accurate data would allow us to better assess the scale of public frustration, and determine how many communities have reached the point at which their anger and frustration leads to destruction of infrastructure, lost school days, deaths and injuries. It would also allow us to monitor the response of the state and politicians to issues of burning concern.
Although community-level protests seem to have dramatically increased since 2009, the official statistics provided by the South African Police Service (SAPS) offer a somewhat garbled story.
A year ago, police reported in that during the 2010/11 financial year there were 11,680 peaceful gatherings that required a police presence. These are described in the SAPS Annual report as ‘assemblies, gatherings, meetings and demonstrations.' There were also 971 violent public protests (which the police call ‘unrest incidents') resulting in the arrest of 3,671 people.
These figures represented a 52% increase in the number of peaceful incidents from the previous year (2009/10) when there were 7,913 peaceful protests; but a slight decrease in the number of violent protests from 994 in 2009/10 to 917 in 2010/11. Still, this worked out to an average of five violent protests every two days.
These figures tell us that around 1 in 12 protests are violent, suggesting that violence may be a last resort. However, the Incident Registration System (IRIS) used by the police only counts an incident if 15 or more people are involved so many incidents of public violence such as vigilantism and xenophobic attacks may go uncounted.
But making sense of exactly what the police statistics tell us about violent public protests is tricky, because while the SAPS Annual report provides information about the number of public gatherings and the percentage of these that are regarded as ‘unrest related' - these figures do not match the number of cases of ‘public violence' opened by the police. In 2009 the SAPS opened 1500 cases of public violence, the highest number since 2005. Since then the number of cases has steadily decreased, to 1152 in 2011/12. But since this figure describes the number of cases opened by the police, rather than the number of protests that turned violent, it does not get us any closer to a better reflection of the reality of community-based protest.
The data gathered by Municipal IQ from press reports about local government protests seems to support the general trends revealed in the SAPS data. These data show a dramatic increase in public protests against municipalities from 27 in 2008 to 105 in 2009. After slight a drop in 2011 there was a notable increase in 2012. Figures for the first six months of this year show that there were more protests against local government in this period than in any other year since 2004.
Figure 1: Major service delivery protests, by year (2004 - July 2012)
[Source: Municipal IQ Municipal Hotspots Monitor]
Municipal IQ has also reported that there was an increase in the number of protests that turned violent in July 2012 - with 88% of the protests taking place in that month becoming violent - suggesting increasing anger and frustration. Almost half of these protests took place in informal settlements during the coldest winter month. Municipal IQ has attributed this to the increased sense of desperation felt by marginalised communities. This is not something we could check against the police statistics, because even the most recent police data are six months out of date. The Municipal IQ figures are significantly lower than the SAPS statistics, as the police have a more comprehensive data collection system in place.
Why is this important to monitor?
A report titled The smoke that calls - published in 2011 by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), and the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at Wits University - offered a compelling analysis of the factors that drive violent community protest. The authors argued, amongst other things, that the police, have a pivotal role in determining whether or not a protest turns violent. They said the failure of the police to respond quickly can allow violence to spread, such as was the case with the xenophobic attacks in 2008. In some cases, the research found that rather than preventing violence, overzealous police action, "escalated confrontation and tension which rapidly took the form of running street battles between protesters and police officers". This has very serious implications for police legitimacy.
Particularly after the events at Marikana, there is an increasing risk of the police being seen as antagonists in local struggles. Even at 2010/11 levels, when the police nationally were dealing with an average of around 34 protests a day, the public order policing units were stretched beyond capacity. If we are to avoid falling into a deeper cycle of violence, developmental and political solutions will have to be found to unacceptable social conditions affecting most of the country's poor communities.
As the most visible representation of state power, bad behaviour on the part of the police erodes the already tenuous relationship between the police and communities. This can undermine crime reporting and, more seriously, reduce trust in the police by the most vulnerable, such as those who are victims of rape and child abuse.
Violent public protest has many causes, including allegations of rampant corruption and nepotism in local government structures. Some protesters blame poor service delivery on the deployment of ANC cadres to positions for which they are not qualified. The former Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, speaking to the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) in East London in April 2012 admitted that ‘many of our municipalities are in a state of paralysis and dysfunction'. He said local government was perceived to be incompetent, disorganised and ‘riddled with corruption and maladministration'. He indicated that if what happened in North West Province was indicative of the state of municipalities elsewhere in the country, there might be a need to declare a ‘national state of emergency' on local government. This is evidence of a very serious and dangerous failure on the part of government.
Addressing the problem has been left very late in most cases, and fixing the problem will take time. Citizens are impatient, and the state is likely to rely heavily on its security forces to stem the tide of public resistance. This is unsustainable. The more the police are used by the state to control public anger, the greater their illegitimacy in the eyes of increasingly frustrated citizens.
The rapid increase in food and fuel prices is expected to continue, and there is no end in sight for internal ANC conflict or poor local government performance. We therefore expect an increase in public and violent protest in 2013 and for the foreseeable future, with serious consequences for the economy, social conditions and South Africa's reputation.
Statistics and data are not a solution, but we need better information about the extent and nature of the problem if we are to be able to better understand and respond to it. This information exists and we would urge the police to consult with civil society to determine how we can measure and report on this phenomenon coherently.
Chandre Gould is a senior researcher in the Crime and Justice Programme at the Institute for Security Studies.
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