As Roodepoort and the country as a whole are being paralysed by service delivery protests, everyone has an opinion or theory about the phenomenon.
Now a study by the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Social Change Research Unit conducted by Professor Peter Alexander, Doctor Carin Runciman and Trevor Ngwane has shed some interesting light on the problem.
According to their research these protesters are not just mindless mobs out for chaos and anarchy, but have method to their madness regarding their violent and destructive behaviour.
The research was based on a database of 2 020 protests recorded since 2004 in Diepsloot, Balfour, Piet Retief and Thokoza.
Ngwane explained that protesters were methodical when it came to destroying government property since they believed that it would create a better chance for government to meet their demands. Furthermore the researchers also said that it was a fallacy that these communities did not regard what they destroyed as their own. It was rather a case of realising that these were their facilities and that they “own it but that you have to lose something in order to gain something bigger”. They also knew that this would gain greater attention.
Runciman also said that these protesters were much more independent than generally thought and that so-called political influence played a very small part.
According to the research the majority of grievances being protested about were related to service delivery, housing, water and sanitation, and electricity.
For more findings and facts from the research read nest week’s Record.
