Protest action in South Africa is superficially explained as a function of poor levels of service delivery. It is likely that the true explanation is more complex.

Numbers published by the Institute in the South Africa Survey show significant gains in the number of households with access to services ranging from housing to running water and electricity. The bulk of these improvements have been brought about by the ANC in government. Considering the degree of corruption and incompetence in government, the Institute has previously said that it is surprising that the ANC has achieved as much as it has. Through its social grants network the government now contributes the greatest single source of income in a third of all African households. A quarter of the population receives monthly grants from the state.

Simple ‘failure to deliver’ is therefore not a sufficient explanation for the level and intensity of protest action that confronts the government and the ANC. It is more likely that a coherent explanation for the protest action will be found in issues of relative deprivation, inequality levels in our society, very high unemployment among young black South Africans, a failed public education system, regulatory hurdles to labour market entry, and an empowerment policy that caters only to the black elite. General lawlessness and weak law enforcement capacity then create an environment for the protests to turn violent. It is around these issues that journalists, analysts, and politicians should focus their analyses of the protest phenomenon.

While they do that a more pressing concern for the government should be how the protest phenomenon is likely to develop.

What we currently see is a series of isolated incidents that flare up with varying levels of intensity and then die down again. In some cases protests in one community spark a similar uprising in another community. In almost every case the protest action is accompanied by varying degrees of violence. In many cases this violence is directed at local government officials and infrastructure. Local government buildings are burnt down, and in extreme cases, so are the houses of elected councilors. Foreigners also come under attack.

The protests generally take place in poor black neighborhoods with a mix of shacks and government-built RDP houses. This is true of protest action across the nine provinces and across urban and rural areas. The protests are restricted to within the boundaries of these communities. They do not spill over into middle class suburbia.

The protestors are chiefly young black South Africans. It is telling that many of the protests occur during working hours when people with jobs would be at work. This is suggestive about the role the unemployment among young black South Africans plays in the protest phenomenon.   

The political response to the problem is usually for officials at local level to run for cover and for those at provincial level to do the same. Where they do intervene to address protestors these officials often come under attack. It is therefore left to national government and the ANC from their national offices to acknowledge the protest, to assure that community grievances will be addressed, and to chide protesters for their violent action. Very few if any cabinet ministers or ANC NEC members have been brave enough to visit flash points while protests were in action and to directly address community members.  

 The law enforcement response has been to deploy the police services to break up protests after, in some cases, declaring the protest action ‘illegal’. In many cases these efforts degenerate running battles and skirmishes as police rubber bullets are met with stones thrown by protestors. In this South Africa is probably one of few democracies that act so harshly against protest by its citizens – even violent protest. It is certainly one of very few that permit their security forces to shoot at their citizens - even with rubber bullets.

The above is a short but accurate description of the majority of the protests that have been directed at the government but it is by no means assured that it will remain an accurate description.

There must come a point at which protestors in different parts of the country realize that they are probably all protesting about similar issues. When that happens, and it may happen within the term of this government, then you have the recipe for a national protest movement.

A necessary condition for the successful establishment of such a movement is that it has a leader. In our case that leader will be black, politically unknown, young, charismatic, from a poor community, politically astute, a product of the early beginnings of the protest movement itself, and with no ties to the ANC or its allies. A personality in the mould of a young Steve Biko or Chris Hani might fit the bill. Without the leader the movement will never get off the ground.    

With charismatic leadership such a protest movement will immediately escalate the target of the protests from local government level past provincial government level to national government level. The cabinet will lose the ability to blame protestors' unhappiness on local government failures. Answers and assurances of improvements will be expected from senior government and ANC leaders. Failures and unfulfilled promises will result in mass protest marches outside Parliament, the Union Buildings, and the ANC’s headquarters.

While the government will seek to capture the leadership of the movement into the ANC it will probably fail. Being party to corruption and excess that is increasingly coming to be associated with the ANC could destroy the credibility of any young community leader in the eyes of his or her community.

The ANC may hope that in retaining COSATU and the SACP in the alliance it is protecting its left political flank from exactly the kind of protest movement described in this article. But this strategy may also fail.  

COSATU has tied its purported pro-poor credentials too closely to the corruption and excess on display in the ANC. In South Africa’s case employed people at any level have come to represent a relative elite. In its enthusiastic backing of the ANC, COSATU may have positioned itself at odds with the aspirations of the real poor. It may come to regret that should a larger protest movement get off the ground. As for the SACP it is not clear what it is anymore, why it is in the government, or whether it would get any popular support were it one day to fall off the ANC’s coattails.    

The implications of such a movement for South African politics could therefore be considerable. The relative repositioning of our political spectrum could see the ANC and COSATU catering to the black elite, black employed, and black middle class. The DA could cater to the white, and sections of the Indian and colored elite, and middle classes. The protest movement could cater to the unemployed black youth and black poor which together could make up between 30% and 50% of the ANC’s support base. 

Such a movement is unlikely to have the wherewithal to compete in elections but this will not matter. Groups that lead ‘velvet revolutions’ are in any case more effective outside the constraints imposed by formalized politics. The strength of such a movement is to use mass action to demand concessions from the government. In so doing it gives political representation to a large sector of our society who do not believe that they are receiving sufficient representation from the ANC and its allies.

- Frans Cronje