Protests the ‘biggest diversion of police resources’

So angry are South Africans about the poor delivery of services that more than 9,600 protests were held in the country in a year.

Gauteng had the highest number of demonstrations nationwide between April 2022 and March 2023, prompting provincial police commissioner Lt-Gen Elias Mawela to warn politicians on Wednesday that attending to service delivery unrests was the biggest diversion of police resources.

There were 630 protests in Gauteng in the past three months (January to March). 

Delivering the fourth-quarter crime stats for the province, Mawela said: “Service delivery protests remain the core diversion of our resources. I will continue referring to January until March, as a season of discontent. It is during this time of the year that we usually experience more protests and unrest,” said Mawela.

“These, together with low and medium-risk major events that we must police, are a cause of the diversion of our much-needed resources for crime combating. For the last quarter of 2022/2023 we had a total of 630 crowd-related incidents that were responded and attended to, of which 475 incidents were peaceful-related protests and 155 were unrest-related incidents.

“Even today, we have our hands full here in Diepkloof [Soweto], you know the hostel residents have blocked the main road there, it is just chaotic, and not only that, across the province we have so many protest actions,” he said.

0 of 5

Police statistics show that there are at least 26 protests daily across the country.  

Political analyst and Tshwane University of Technology lecturer Levy Ndou said people usually saw protests in a negative light but they should be seen as a way of assisting the government to do its job.

“When the [community] protests, they are assisting the government to [pull] up their socks and do better. When there are no protests, the perception is that people are happy,” he said.  

Ndou described South Africans as being generally patient, and would wait months for authorities to change their situation and when they eventually did protest, it would mean they were tired of waiting.

“When we blame the government for not doing [its] work, we should also look at ourselves, because it is us who’ve put these people to be our leaders. My view is that we need to revisit the requirement for people to become our leaders.

“I think our bar is too low – when the requirements say you should be 18-years-old, a South African citizen and you should be registered as a voter, so anybody can lead in SA.”

University of Johannesburg director for sociological research and practice Dr Trevor Ngwane said there was a belief that the only way to get government’s attention is to protest.

Ngwane said since the ANC took over in 1994, there was a “very brief period of honeymoon” where people seemed to trust and believe that the party could address their needs.

But a few years later, citizens started losing faith and turning to protest actions to have their issues addressed. 

“People have lost faith in the willingness or ability of the ANC government to deliver to their needs. This government is not prioritising the needs of the poor and of the working class. President [Cyril] Ramaphosa said clearly – [during his State of the Nation Address] and everyone was taken aback – that it is not the job of the government to create employment and that really hurt ordinary people. 

“If you are sitting at home and unemployed and maybe you have been unemployed for five years or 10 years or you are one of the youths who have never gotten a job and the president of the country says it is not the government’s job to create jobs so you can lose hope and trust and get very frustrated and angry, so the ANC has failed on that point. The first move people need to do is not to vote for the ANC next year. I think the ANC should get out of power,” he said.  

DA Gauteng leader Solly Msimanga agreed that people felt that government only reacted when they protested.  

“We need to ensure that people change their perception of what government and democracy are and how it should work.”

He said South Africans decided to stay away from voting instead of voting for the alternative. 

Msimanga said when people didn’t vote, it didn’t take away the problem, and when they continued voting for the same people they would continue being unsatisfied.  

ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba said it was quite “unfortunate” that South Africans had lost hope in government and the democratic system.  

“People are protesting because they don’t know any better. They don’t know any other solution. The solution is not about burning tyres or burning clinics. Learn to vote politicians in and learn to vote them out because you don’t owe them anything,” he said. 

chabalalaj@sowetan.co.za