Violent protests fuelled by long-term gripes

Published Jul 21, 2016

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Pretoria - Violent protests often linked to service delivery were never spontaneous, but a build up of issues that had been communicated - without solutions.

Experts on Wednesday said protests and related violence were normally the end result of dissatisfaction which had been taken through the different stages before erupting.

They were speaking at a seminar hosted by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, which dealt with violent protests against the backdrop of the upcoming municipal elections.

“People never decide they are unhappy overnight and then wake up and burn schools; they go though a process before protesting,” ISS crime and justice programme manager Lizette Lancaster said.

Lancaster spoke of a “ladder” through which community members took their unhappiness before embarking on violent protests.

She said the first stage was the communication of their unhappiness, which was followed by organising themselves.

As they continued to feel dissatisfied, they mobilised themselves and then turned violent, she said. “We should all be worried about the violence linked to the elections so far this year,” Lancaster said.

She added that while violence was limited to certain areas, the extreme violence and killings in those localities were of concern.

The issues of contention very often included economic disparities and the inadequate housing, low wages and a lack of service delivery, South African Local Government Association’s political analyst Justice Steyn said.

He said local government had been formed between 1999 and 2000 and a lot was still lacking in what it delivered. The failure to deliver on basic services left communities angry enough to turn violent, he said. “The protests are also driven by a lack of institutional knowledge; people do not know what to expect from local, provincial and national government, and so they attack their local structures,” he said.

But the nature of communities to protest violently had its roots in the apartheid era and until the psyche of the country was addressed it would go on, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation’s executive director Nomfundo Mogabi said.

She said protests, by their nature, were not wrong. They were a democratic right for which many had fought. “What is of concern is the violent nature in which they are conducted,” she said. “Increasing agitation is at the root of it. It is the systematic problem which has to be addressed if they are to stop.”

Mogapi explained they had identified poverty, unemployment, inequality and the general history of violence between state and citizen as key in the violent protests.

The build-up of unhappiness and being ignored by their leaders evoked the collective trauma in society. “So when homes were demolished and services not delivered, they felt provoked.”

Mogapi said historical unhappiness reminded communities of a time when their problems meant nothing, and they were forced to live with inequality and unemployment.

“They feel stripped of their dignity and they find themselves stuck in the past, now and in future, with no hope of being unstuck,” said Mogapi.

The government had to deal with those psychological factors if the architecture of violence was to be rooted out of protests.

Deputy Minister at the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Andries Nel, said violent protests were a wave that was holding the world in its grip.

They were a result of the economic meltdown of the late 1990s, from which the world had struggled to recover, he said. “The impact on economic growth and jobs is a determining factor on violence faced in the country,” he said.

Nel said South Africa needed to get the economy moving, enforce social cohesion and wipe out the legacy of racism. “But it would be wrong to lay violent protests at the door of local government,” he said.

He said that would be to paint local government as one big disaster zone, a notion that would lead to the wrong diagnosis and misleading interventions.

@ntsandvose

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