Reconsidering the origins of protest in South Africa: some lessons from Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorNleya, Ndodana
dc.contributor.authorTapscott, Chris
dc.contributor.authorThompson, Lisa
dc.contributor.authorPiper, Laurence
dc.contributor.authorEsau, Michelle
dc.date.accessioned2013-03-07T10:12:15Z
dc.date.available2013-03-07T10:12:15Z
dc.date.issued2011
dc.description.abstractProtest politics in South Africa has a long history and has been deployed differentially in different historical moments. Whereas protests formed an important vehicle during the fight against apartheid, their rebirth and propulsion to the centre of the struggles in the post-apartheid dispensation have come as a surprise to many. A majority of these protests, so-called ‘service delivery protests’, are reported as emanating from communities’ dissatisfaction with municipal service delivery as well as problems relating to lack of communication between council and councillors on the one hand and citizens on the other. In this article, we interrogate data from five study sites located in Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg. While we found support for the importance of service delivery, our data contradicts many widely held assertions as regards what causes these protests. We were able to show, for example, that these so-called ‘service delivery protests’ may actually emanate from reasons that extend beyond service delivery. Since our data indicates that levels of participation in Cape Town are higher than in Pietermaritzburg on the one hand, illustrating perhaps the different provincial contexts, there is also variation between the relatively high participation rates of the ‘black African’ sites of Langa and Khayelitsha, on the one hand, and the lower rates of the ‘coloured’ site of Bonteheuwel, on the other, which we ascribe to the disengagement of the community in Cape Town, from both local and national politics.en_US
dc.description.accreditationDepartment of HE and Training approved listen_US
dc.identifier.citationNleya, N. et al. (2011). Reconsidering the origins of protest in South Africa: some lessons from Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg, Africanus, 50(1): 14-29en_US
dc.identifier.issn0304-615X
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10566/555
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.privacy.showsubmitterfalse
dc.publisherUnisa Pressen_US
dc.rightsCopyright Unisa Press. Permission granted to reproduce the journal article in this Repository.
dc.status.ispeerreviewedtrue
dc.subjectParticipationen_US
dc.subjectProtesten_US
dc.subjectService deliveryen_US
dc.subjectLocal governmenten_US
dc.subjectWard councilsen_US
dc.subjectCouncillorsen_US
dc.titleReconsidering the origins of protest in South Africa: some lessons from Cape Town and Pietermaritzburgen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
NleyaProtestPolitics2011.pdf
Size:
2.38 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Published version
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.55 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description:
Download

Collections

Research Articles (Political Studies)
Prof. Laurence Piper