As the local government elections will be held in a few months, community protests in the townships and informal settlements, particularly in Gauteng, are expected to escalate. This is largely due to service delivery issues.
The concern is that these protests tend to be violent. In the process, public property and infrastructure are destroyed and damaged. Sometimes human lives are lost and injuries are sustained.
Unfortunately, our police personnel are not trained to deal with mass protests. And their record in this regard is dismal. Expecting the opposite would be unrealistic. Police rely on their instincts to deal with mass protests.
Violent protests are not a new phenomenon in South Africa. They are one of the effective weapons we used to fight the evil of apartheid. Pity these protests didn’t die with apartheid: they are still with us in the democratic dispensation.
They have become part of our political culture. The masses also use it as a political communication. Though effective, the practice is destructive – as indicated above. And the practitioners seem oblivious of this fact.
The masses also use this kind of protest as a bargaining tool against government. This is partly because the language our democratic government seem to understand is violent protests. Hence protesters use it to get the government’s attention.
One of the contributory factors to this challenge is government’s poor communication. Government needs to improve its communication machinery in order to combat this challenge. Otherwise, the practice will persist.
That said, protesters believe they have a democratic right to destroy and damage things. They don’t, and they must be told. The masses need to understand that public property is theirs. And as such, they need to protect it – not destroy it.
There is a desperate need to educate the masses about the consequences of violent protests. It violates the rights of others, especially innocent people and motorists, who have become soft targets.
It also destroys public property and infrastructure. This must stop.
