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[1]Chapter 1: Introduction: The dynamics of community protests in South Africa

Introduction

In the twenty-first century, in which notions of a liberal, democratic nationstate thrive, protests in South Africa can be seen as the defining experiences and political apparatus of modernity, shaping public spaces, discourse, and popular culture. As an ongoing and pervasive phenomenon, protests have also redefined the economic, social and cultural dynamics of communities in South Africa. It was not so long ago that as a nation, South Africa moved from a political system concerned with racial polarization, to a nation concerned with truth and reconciliation, to the present nation concerned with the consolidation of constitutional democracy or the so-called rainbow nation. Thus, the current nation is geared towards promoting democratic values, a pluralistic political dialogue and an environment conducive to citizen participation. But notably, protests, which have been a prominent feature of black political expression in South Africa for many years, have taken on a striking resonance. These protests, which have been thrust to the forefront of mainstream politics, are no more apparent than in the realms of local communities.

Globally the rise of insurgent citizenship has not only grown in quantity, but has also evolved in terms of mobilization and protest tactics in both democratic and authoritarian political settings. Buoyed by a wider range of organizational networks and the use of technology to mobilize, protests transcend geographical borders. Global forms of mobilization aimed at facilitating economic, social or political change can be traced to, for example, the tremendous accomplishment of Occupy Wall Street in the USA, the generalized rise in various forms of political protests in Latin American countries, communal conflicts in Sudan, Arab Spring revolutionary tactics in Egypt and Tunisia, and the recent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Scholars ascribe the rise of political protests in recent decades largely to the process of (post)modernization, which emphasizes how the individual’s values have radically changed their way of interacting with the political[2] system (Inglehart and Welzel 2009). This process triggered the reduction of political trust among citizens, while self-expression values gained priority, including the emergence of the so-called insurgent citizenship (Brancati 2014; Addler 2012; Inglehart and Catterberg 2002; Norris 1999).

The international discourse on sustained popular mobilization advances two competing views on the extent to which protests assist or impede democratization. In her book From Protest to Parties, Lebas (2011:14) argues that, to a large extent, scholars have viewed sustained popular mobilization as an impediment to democratization. Arguments advanced for this view are that popular demands can overwhelm weak states, reduce the “flexibility of the actors who have the power to form pacts and make compromises”, or trigger authoritarian retrenchment. This perspective, however, is challenged by several scholars who purport that sustained protests advance democracy and transform the character of state-society relations (Machado, Scartascini and Tommasi 2009; Runciman 2014).

The focus of this book is on community protests directed against municipalities in both predominantly black communities and white communities in South Africa. These protests are a daily reality for many South Africans and involve communities going on the rampage over the perceived provision of basic municipal services such as water, electricity, sanitation and other municipal obligations. This, inevitably, devolved into what I refer to as a civil strife (a sustained collective advocacy to address a concern). This strife against municipalities cuts across geographic and demographic boundaries, but, in what has become a somewhat hegemonic account by scholars, is the considerable attention given to community protests that often turn violent and at times deadly in predominantly black neighborhoods in South Africa. In contrast, the nonviolent protest tactic of refusing to pay rates and taxes directly to municipalities by ratepayers’ association in white communities, has received scant attention.

The book connects the critical issue of community protests to the equally precarious issue of political trust in local governance in South Africa by using comparative analysis of grassroots activism in predominantly black communities and predominantly white communities. Against this background, the book begins by asking several questions. Why, in an era of democratization, is South Africa experiencing such high levels of contestation between citizens and their local municipalities? In response to the question, this chapter provides a concise overview of the nature,[3] prevalence and dynamics of community protests in South Africa since 2004.

Why this book?

My interest in pursuing this book was triggered by two main events. First, it was the prime time television news which covered an unarmed protestor in Ficksburg (a typical large town in the Free State Province) being murdered by a number of police officers without provocation in April 2011. While not being the first unarmed person to have been murdered by the police in postapartheid South Africa, a decisive point was reached in respect of community protests in the country. This despicable act was rightly summed up Pithouse (2011:180) to conclude: “they murdered a man who had, with thousands of others, taken to the streets in protest at the unconscionable contempt with which the poor are treated in this country”.

Second, a headline of a newspaper I read in 2012 stated, “Children held to ransom for services”. The report stated that about 17000 pupils in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa had been forced out of school for over four months (Nkosi 2012). The angry protestors from predominantly black communities cited a string of ‘broken promises’ by the government as their reason for protesting, and argued that the closing of schools was in the best interests of learners. I found it perplexing that parents could proactively prevent their own children from securing their future through education. Fast-forward to 2014, the so-called Northern Cape “No Road, No School” protest in Kuruman struck again and prevented learners from more than 50 schools from attending classes, thus, costing them a year of learning.

More specifically, the Olifantshoek/Kuruman cases represent some of the many intriguing cases of community protests in contemporary South Africa. These cases also represent a significant shift in community protests in the country: that public schools are being used as bargaining power in local struggles. For Jansen (2012), a key aspect of this shift is that such events had never happened before, even during the apartheid years. He further elaborates:

What kind of society closes down its schools for months on end because of demands for a tarred road and for the ejection of a single person, the mayor? Think about this for a minute. I am not contesting, for the moment, the legitimacy of the community’s[4] demands for better services or more competent officials. I am asking a broader question: why would a community sacrifice the one route out of poverty for rural youth in a socially and economically oppressed community like Olifantshoek and other areas of the Northern Cape? (Jansen 2012:2-3).

Another key shift in the nature of community protests involves their increasingly disruptive and violent character (Paret 2015). Scholarship has shown how community protest activists regularly move back and forth between institutional and non-institutional spaces of engagement and use violence to advance collective causes (Marais et al. 2008; Matebesi and Botes 2011; Steyn 2012). Furthermore, von Holdt (2013:590) provides another perspective on violence in South Africa by drawing attention to how inequality and economic exclusion, as well as the institutional challenges of a society in transition, produce a highly unstable social order in which violence is growing. He further argues that “democracy may configure power relations in such a way that violent practices are integral to them – producing a social system we may call violent democracy” (Von Holdt, 2013:590). As Tlhabi contends,

It is not the first time we have seen property being damaged by protesters and to pretend that this has never happened in our lives would be silly. But there are certain experiences that the heart cannot get used to. Like death. The trauma of having lost and buried a loved one does not make the situation easier to bear the next time someone else dies. And so it was that I joined fellow South Africans in expressing our horror at images of bloodthirsty residents throwing bricks at a former ward councilor’s house, ripping off the television satellite dish and, in the ultimate act of mob violence, setting a car on fire. These images were accompanied by angry voices threatening more violence and vowing to unleash further destruction. The visuals were not just reflective of residents who were fed up but rather, were a microcosm of the violent society in which we live (Tlhabi 2011:1).

As I was writing, a cursory glance at any article about protests in South Africa between the latter part of 2015 and early 2016 has been aptly dubbed the rise of “fallism”. Fallism, in this context, refers to the nationwide student and worker activism against lack of transformation and colonial legacies in tertiary institutions (Pilane 2015), conducted under banners such as #RhodesMustFall, #FeesMustFall, and #EndOutsourcing. These protests, although vastly different, have two things in common with mainstream community protests: the return to revolutionary catchphrases and the eroding of the public education system in the country. Moreover, these forms of student activism are largely shaped by what typically constitutes “protest” and what might be seen as effective tactics to advance protest goals.

These illustrative examples broadly highlight the fact that the current[5] wave of community protests in contemporary South Africa are as rampantly institutionalized and personally and socially detrimental to impoverished communities as apartheid was. There is a deeper issue here, however. Regardless of the explicit right to protest as enshrined in the South African Constitution (Republic of South Africa 1997), and regardless of the purported anger and frustrations of protest activists, a moral challenge remains for the country: Why have community protests not yet provoked, within the frameworks of a liberal-democratic society, any major moral outrage in South Africa?

The book is timely for three main reasons. Firstly, while the growth of international scholarly interest in protests has been substantial (Della Porta and Piazza 2008; Klandermans 1997; Lipsky 1965; Opp 2009; Swain. 2010), the upsurge in community protests in South Africa is matched by a growing, though limited, body of research investigating this phenomenon (Ballard, Habib and Valodia 2006; Booysen 2015; Booysen 2009; Brown 2015; Langa and von Holdt 2012; Piper and Nadvi 2010; Robins 2010, Tapscott 2010; Zuern 2011). While I applaud the insights and contributions of these studies, including the work of other leading private and university based research units, there remains a dearth of studies on the more “subtle” form of protest of withholding rates and taxes from municipalities, a tactic used by ratepayers’ association in predominantly white communities in South Africa. Thus, the book informs the growing literature on community protests and also fills an empirical void by including protests by residents’ associations both in predominantly black and predominantly white areas.

Secondly, with a few notable exceptions, the most striking and somewhat surprizing revelation to emerge about studies on community protests in South Africa is the ignorance of the voice of municipalities. Therefore, the book also focus on the narratives of municipalities, the Provincial Departments of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) (an independent organization mandated by the constitution to support local government).

Thirdly, the book seeks to make a modest contribution to the theory of political trust by drawing on an intricate three-dimensional theoretical framework of trust-institutions-actors, combined with insights from Karl-Dieter Opp’s (2009) structural-cognitive model (SCM). The SCM emphasizes the implicit link between macro-level political institutions and[6] motivations to participate in protest activities. For instance, the cognitive system of individuals, which includes identity and framing processes, is largely influenced by beliefs and attitudes towards formal political structures and processes. When relevant macro changes first enter the cognitive system of individuals, they set in motion cognitive processes that may create incentives to protest. These incentives include material as well as non-material costs (i.e. identity or identification with a group).

I use the metaphor of a swinging pendulum, where what I call a ravenous political trade-off between state and citizens, takes place along a continuum of political trust, with trust-building on the left end and distrust on the right end. The ravenous political trade-off constitutes the inherent conflict between the interests of politicians and citizens. To this end, the framework explicates how political trust, a cognitive function conceptualized as an individual’s confidence in state institutions (a local municipality, in this context), influences actors (citizens) to engage in protest action. While political trust functions as a linkage mechanism between citizens and the political institutions that represent them (Kong 2014), the framework suggests that it is the structure of the community groups that motivates community groups with a fundamentally set of similar grievances to embark on miscellaneous protest tactics.

The book will also be centrally relevant to racially polarized postconflict and post-liberation countries with longstanding and highly institutionalized states. Deepening our understanding of protests at community level may lead to a determination of how an effective trustbuilding intervention strategy should be approached. This will go a long way in repairing the ever-growing gulf of distrust between state and non-state actors and, as a result, halt the strife against local governance. To this end, three primary questions underlying the book are: How are community protests socially constructed and rendered meaningful at collective level? What elements of the “social fabric” enable communities to sustain mobilization against their local municipalities? What incentives motivate civic groups with a fundamentally similar set of grievances to embark on different protest tactics?

[7] Community protests: some conceptual clarity

A large body of literature has been devoted to the concept of “protest” - a central aspect in the study of social movements. These studies have shown that protests are dynamic and characterized by great complexity. Broadly, protests are defined as a “resource of the powerless … [who] depend for success not upon direct utilization of power, but upon activating other groups to enter the political arena” (Lipsky 1965: 1). In this regard, collective action is arguably the most defining characteristic that differentiates protests from other forms of political behavior such as voting. But a universal definition of the concept “community protests” is still elusive. The media, government and some scholars still use the term “service delivery protests” to illuminate the demands of residents. For example, Booysen (2007:21) described these protests broadly as being led “against both the quality of service delivery and public representation of grass-roots’ service delivery needs”.

But for others, the notion of “service delivery protests” not only blurs the debate, but also ignores the wider context of the issue (Friedman 2009; Pithouse 2011). For them, the issue encompasses much more than just the provision of basic services. A further linguistic challenge about the term is despite being pervasive in the political discussions of South Africa (Le Chen et al. 2014), “service delivery” is not universally defined (Stewart 2013). Furthermore, conceptions of the protest action as a way in which the use of violence is viewed as a natural and justified response by various actors (Von Holdt 2011), an effect of neoliberal economic policies in post-apartheid South Africa (Alexander 2010; Runciman 2014, Swart 2013), or “a rebellion of the poor” (Alexander 2010), are grounded in the precarious living conditions of black South Africans (Stewart 2013) and assist in understanding the dichotomy between community grievances and protests.

More recent scholarship, though, has also contributed much to the divergence in definitions of protest action. For instance, Powell, O’Donovan and de Visser (2015:4), describe the protest action as civic protests that refer to “organized protest action within a local area which directly targets municipal government or targets municipal government as a proxy to express grievances against the state more widely”. The authors allude that the definition of the protest action as a form of civic conflict is useful in locating the South African experience within the broader field of comparative[8] international scholarship on conflict in fragile and conflict affected countries. Conversely, others generally delineate the protest action as a form of “community protest”. For example, Paret notes:

Community protests refer to collective actions that take place within a highly localised geographic area, such as an informal shack settlement or a section of a township. They are popularly labelled as ‘service delivery protests’, in reference to common demands for services such as water and electricity… (Paret 2015:121).

The aforementioned conceptual innovations by Paret (2015) and Powell et al. (2015) elicit both similarities and differences. For instance, one key element in both definitions is the emphasis on the fact that the protest action typically takes place in a highly localized area. However, only Powell et al. (2015) mention municipalities as the target of the protestors, whereas Paret (2015) explicitly focuses on residents’ common demands: water and electricity.

The definition by Powell et al. (2015) is a valid point of reference to shift from the focus on the term of “service delivery protests” to community protests. In this regard, I extend the two definitions by describing the protest action as collective action by residents in a highly localized area (community), which directly targets a local municipality over the provision of basic services such as water, electricity, and sanitation, including a wider spectrum of concerns such as housing, roads, government corruption, rampant crime, and unemployment.

It is this concept of community protests that underlies this book. It highlights one key broad aspect that characterizes the definition of community protests: that the protest action takes place within social contexts. Thus, community protests are defined on the basis of the often taken-for-granted dynamics of local government participatory governance. Furthermore, the concept embodies a new orientation toward the responsibility of municipalities in post-apartheid South Africa.

Tracing the inner logic of official state rhetoric on community protests reveals, in the words of the South African President, that “in some cases people protested against municipalities even if the issues at hand did not fall under their mandate” (News24 2014a). In hindsight, this seems to be an eminently sensible general analysis about the issue. However, this notion of community protests is highly untenable and may generate misguided policy and intervention responses. Such views are also not sensitive enough to the profound complexities of constructive engagement between municipalities (or broadly, the state) and local residents.

[9]For instance, the emphasis on participatory governance in post-apartheid South Africa has been linked to substantive innovations in public participation. One such innovation included a set of requirements for public involvement in various decision-making processes similar to those in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. These requirements, among others, include public consultation on the annual municipal budget, the integrated development programme (IDP) review process, and the service delivery contracting process (Barichievy, Piper and Parker 2005; Booysen 2009; Mubungizi and Dassah 2014; Piper and Nadvi 2010). This local participatory planning process, as in the case of Brazil, France and Spain (Ganuza, Nez and Morales 2014), is particularly prone to community protests. Evidence from several case studies in South Africa has shown that residents often identify a lack of housing, poor roads, and sewage systems as development priorities during IDP meetings (Botes et al. 2007; Johnston and Bernstein 2007). I contend that once the local municipality agrees to these priorities and includes them in the IDP, is it therefore not logical to assume that residents will approach municipalities should these needs and concerns not be addressed at a later stage? As I explain later in the book, IDPs (or participatory budgeting in international discourse) have become a contentious issue on whether municipalities implement them because it is normatively desirable to do so, or for the very practical reasons of achieving better municipal performance.

Local governance in South Africa

There is substantial literature on the local government system in general, and municipalities in particular, in South Africa. This sub-section is concerned, therefore, with an overview of the performance of municipalities, and not with providing an exhaustive account of local governance in the country.

Over the past few decades, many studies on the notion of democratic local governance were conducted in a variety of contexts in South Africa (Lobe 2008; Mohamed 2000; Patel 2006; Pillay 2001; Tshabalala and Lombard, 2009). The surge in the number of studies on local governance was largely as a result of the major reforms and new institutional mechanisms aimed at promoting the engagement of local elected leaders with their respective communities (Tshabalala and Lombard, 2009). Prior to the new[10] political dispensation in South Africa, local government had little autonomy, and decisions were subject to judicial review by provincial and national governments (South African Local Government Association 2013). This period, characterized by wide-ranging popular mobilization against the apartheid government, was later followed by an era that coincided with the growing expectations of public consultation and articulation between popular needs and government action (Booysen 2009) from South African citizens.

It is perhaps important to pause here and provide a brief exposition of local government structures in South Africa. Broadly, there are currently three categories of municipalities in South Africa: metropolitan, district and local. Both metropolitan and district municipalities form the layer of government directly below the provinces. More specifically, while metropolitan (or metro) municipalities execute all the functions of local government for a city, on one hand, district municipalities execute some the functions of local government for a district, on the other hand. The district municipality comprises several local municipalities, with which it shares the functions of local government. Thus, local municipalities represent a subdivision of the district municipalities, and form the third layer of government (Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs 2014). There are currently eight metropolitan municipalities, 44 district municipalities, and 207 local municipalities. All municipalities are governed by municipal councils which are elected every five years. In turn, municipal councils are managed by an executive committee consisting of an elected executive mayor (Electoral Commission SA 2016) - a political appointee who serves as the political head of the municipality – and a municipal manager who acts as the head of the administration of a municipality and the accounting officer (Surty 2010).

Historically, the administrative structure of local government was fragmented due to its duplication for each race group in South Africa. Since the advent of democracy, efforts to transform and develop municipalities into institutions of effective administration and service delivery LED to their newly found expanded and developmental role. To this end, the right of citizens to a basic level of services is enshrined in the South African Constitution. In this regard, municipalities are expected to deliver these services within the limits of their resources. However, this is an oversimplified means of evaluating municipalities. Too often are municipalities required to cross subsidise a number of national and provincial functions such as health services, roads, planning and land use management and transport being performed at the local level (South African Local Government Association 2015).

[11]In response to the challenge of realizing the full role and potential of a developmental local government, municipalities in South Africa adopted largely technocratic processes. These processes focused “on ensuring service delivery and sustainability within legislated structures and systems” such as integrated development plans and budgets (Heese and Allan 2016). Thus, municipalities are often overwhelmed by rapid processes and approaches ranging from addressing past weaknesses to the process of consolidating the transformation of local government (South African Local Government Association 2015). This also include dealing with delicate, complex and multiple service delivery and governance problem areas: huge service delivery and backlog challenges regarding, for example, housing, water and sanitation; poor communication and accountability relationships with communities; problems with the political / administrative interface; weak civil society formations; intra- and inter-political party issues negatively affecting governance and delivery; and insufficient municipal capacity due to lack of scarce skills (Department of Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs 2009).

One of the most recent approaches adopted in the local government sphere is the Back to Basics Campaign, initiated in late 2014 by the then Minister of Cooperative Governance and Local Government, Mr. Pravin Gordhan. The goal of this campaign was for municipalities to ensure that they get the core functions of providing services “to the right quality and standard” and ensuring “good governance and effective administration”. The five pillars of the campaign are, i) putting people and their concerns first; 2) supporting the delivery of municipal services to the right quality and standard; 3) promoting good governance; 4) ensuring sound financial management and accounting; and 5) building institutional resilience and administrative capability (Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs 2014). However, almost a decade ago, Thornhill (2008) argued about the elusive aspect of the lofty ideals of the so-called developmental local government in South Africa (Thornhill 2008).

In respect of the perception that citizens of South Africa have about local government, an elegantly written book edited by Muhammad Olimat – Arab Spring and Arab Women, is helpful. The book provides a detailed and carefully contextualized account of the death of Muhammad Bouazizi, a fruit vendor in a central Tunisian town. An important aspect of this story is that before setting himself on fire, Bouazizi went to the municipality to complain about a police woman. He was “told to leave and no one would talk to him”. Needless to state, this later provided the spark for what has become known as the Arab Spring (Olimat 2014:14). What happened to Bouazizi at the[12] municipality is all too common to many South Africans: an unresponsive local government system.

The foregoing discourse advocates a thesis of an unresponsive local government system. Increasingly, though, the peculiar juxtaposition of the local government character with unresponsiveness seems to have skewed any real discussion of several contextual factors: a system with devolved powers inhibited by centralizing tendencies; political expediency, compounded by the demand by communities for the provision of basic services, which were ancillary issues during the apartheid era. As such, many believe the criticism of municipalities has become unwarranted.

However, this does not dent my conviction that the performance of some municipalities in South Africa is questionable. Objective indicators such as the Auditor-General of South Africa (a Chapter 9 institution that has a constitutional mandate to enable oversight, accountability and governance in the public sector) and the Municipal IQ (a specialized local government data and intelligence organization) reports contribute to this conviction. For instance, the report of the Auditor-General for the 2013-14 financial year took a decidedly more positive view of municipal financial audit results than previous audits. Still, only 40 of the 268 municipalities received financially unqualified audit opinions with no findings for the same financial year (Auditor-General of South Africa 2015). The Municipal IQ’s annual set of results for 2014 reveals that municipalities in the Western Cape and Gauteng provinces of South Africa typically remain the best managed and most competitive. The findings suggest, nevertheless, that there are still “too many cases of individual underperformance, typically in areas that are the most developmentally disadvantaged; namely, former homeland and rural areas” (Municipal IQ 2014).

Meanwhile, the outcome of the Local Government Elections of August 3, 2016 in South Africa (see Table 1) has ushered in a new political era in South Africa and, in particular in the metropolitan municipalities won by the Democratic Alliance with the support of other smaller opposition parties (Letsoalo 2016). The Democratic Alliance, which only controlled the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality, are now in control of four of the eight metropolitan municipalities. Given that five of the eight metropolitan municipalities (Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, eThekweni, Johannesburg, and Tshwane) accounted for half of all community protests between 2007 and 2014 (Municipal IQ 2014; Powell et al. 2015), issues relating to municipal service delivery and the administration of municipalities will be under the constant scrutiny of citizen in these metros. While it is too early to evaluate the impact of the coalition-led municipalities on service delivery and[13] governance, the possibilities that they open for local governance is monumental. It remains to be seen whether these municipalities will become more responsive and extend purview of democracy at local level, or become a space where the ostensibly ideological and doctrinal differences among the newly-found political allies take centre stage.

Table 1: Leading political parties in the metropolitan municipalities of South Africa, 2016

Metro	Leading political party	%
Buffalo City	African National Congress majority	58.74
City of Cape Town	Democratic Alliance majority	66.61
City of Johannesburg	Hung council led by the Democratic Alliance	38.37
City of Tshwane	Hung council led by the Democratic Alliance	43.11
City of Ekurhuleni	Hung council led by the African National	48.64
eThekweni	Congress	56.01
Mangaung	African National Congress majority	56.52
Nelson Mandela Bay	African National Congress majority Hung council led by the Democratic Alliance	46.71

Source: Adapted from Independent Electoral Commission SA

South Africa can find some general lessons and also some specificities from countries with longstanding and highly institutionalized local government systems such as Australia, Japan, and New Zealand, as well as parts of northern Europe and the United States. But, notwithstanding the progressive nature of local governance in these countries, numerous studies have commented on the challenges faced by the political democratization and decentralization at municipal level in several Latin American countries (Nickson 2011), Ghana (Okuru and Armah-Attoh 2015), Pakistan (Ahmad and Abu Talib 2013), Uganda and South Africa (Chulu 2015). Thus, any attempt to understand local governance needs to consider how political institutions and processes work, as well as the different mechanisms of interaction between the state and non-state actors. This may explain the influence of these factors in exacerbating the incongruence between municipal local government obligations and the lived experiences of communities. The most critical question observers and analysts have since debated in this regard, is whether the gulf between municipalities and residents will be narrowed to halt the protracted contestations and indifferent relationship between the two actors. The structure and mobilization tactics of the civic groups are discussed in the next section.

[14] Civic groups in contemporary South Africa: A racial gulf

Over the last decade, there has been a significant increase in the number and prominence of civic groups involved in fomenting community protests in South Africa. Although new social movements emerged consistently in the period after 1994 (Ballard et al. 2006), the dramatic eruption of community protests in Diepsloot (a densely populated area in Gauteng Province) and Harrismith (a typical town in the Free State Province) in September 2004, represents a defining moment in the history of what has been known as service delivery protests (Alexander 2010; Booysen 2009) and currently community protests. Then, the protests were labeled as being “spontaneous” (Ngwane 2011), but since then, South Africa has witnessed unrest of significant proportions at local government level across the country.

Figure 1 depicts that these protests increased substantially from about ten in 2004 to more than 100 in 2009 and 2010, and subsequently reached unprecedented levels, with 173 protests in 2012. Since then, the annual incidence of community protest activity has remained within the high range recorded in 2012, with 2014 representing the highest peak at 191 protests (Municipal IQ 2016). Service delivery protests constituted 80% of all violent conflict events in South Africa in 2012 (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project 2013:10).

I acknowledge the limitations inherent in the Municipal IQ Hotspots Monitor. The Hotspots Monitor is only concerned about “a protest involving more than 100 people … [and] that pertains to local government service delivery issues” (Municipal IQ 2014).

[15]Figure 1: Major community protests, by year (2004-30th April 2016)

Source: Municipal IQ Hotspots Monitor (2016)

Historically, the South African local government system was also the target of civic groups (also referred to as neighborhood or residents’ associations throughout the book) during the apartheid era. Similar to the emergence of urban movements in Europe and Spain during the 1970s (Castells 1983), in what is well-documented elsewhere, black civic associations in South Africa spearheaded the boycott of rent, electricity and water bills during the 1980s. This was an effective protest tactic against the apartheid government, but no one could predict that the culture of non-payment in black communities would continue unabated (albeit in a less organized manner) in postapartheid South Africa. These groups were highly politicized, while civic groups, in the form of ratepayers’ associations in predominantly white areas played a somewhat instrumental role in local governance by contesting local elections (Seekings 2000).

Ironically, starting in 1996 with the rates dispute in the affluent predominantly white area of Sandton in Johannesburg, 24 ratepayers’ associations, led by the Sandton Federation of Ratepayers’ Associations (Sanfed), adopted the tactic of boycotting rates and taxes. Although relatively unsuccessful in achieving their goals, ratepayers’ association have, undoubtedly, not only presented major challenges to the new black-led[16] democratic local councils, but inadvertently brought to the fore the ongoing racial polarization in the country as well. There have been strong sentiments from various sectors, including the South African National Civic Association (SANCO), which represents black communities, that ratepayers’ associations are small groups of white elites concerned exclusively with their own interests, who aim to undermine local municipalities led by democratically-elected blacks (Camay and Gordon 2000).

What then are the organizational structures of the civic groups behind the community protests in post-apartheid South Africa? As the democratic political dispensation in South Africa evolved, so did the civic associations. That said, there are four major aspects pertaining to the organizational structure and mobilization tactics of these groups. First, the groups are still organized along geographic societal lines, and thus, a highly structured racial order. The groups are commonly known as concerned residents’ forums or concerned groups in predominantly black communities, and as ratepayers’ associations in predominantly white communities in South Africa. In this regard, the new political dispensation has failed in creating a window of opportunity for new forms of social group and mobilization at community level to compel municipalities to provide what should be common basic public goods that are accessible and publicly provisioned. Second, both groups have an ambivalent relationship with the state (or municipalities, which serve as proxies for the state). However, these groups have unequal access to resources and, as Monaco (2008) argues, this implies that some actors are more influential than others. As such, this explains the titles of the empirical chapters: Schools and roads as bargaining power in predominantly black communities (Chapter 4), and ratepayers’ association and the “cheque book” protests in predominantly white South African communities (Chapter 5).

Third, and closely linked to the first two issues, is that while community protests in both predominantly black and predominantly white communities neighbourhoods are organized around and motivated by basic municipal service provision, the lived experiences of activists in black areas expand much more broadly than this narrow focus. More fundamentally, black citizens in South Africa are rigid with tension, partly as a result of a sense of entitlement created by years of unfulfilled political promises of a “better life” for all.

Consequently, with some notable exceptions, notable traits and mobilization tactics of civic groups in predominantly black communities are that they are highly fragmented and spontaneous, with intimidation, destruction and violence serving as indicators of the overt manifestation of[17] the strife against local municipalities. These civic groups lack internal democracy, discourage debate and are led by individuals who are eager to establish local hegemony.

Fourth, ratepayers’ association in predominantly white communities are highly structured and linked to a national organization: the National Taxpayers Union (NTU). The NTU is an umbrella body with more than 300 community ratepayers’ associations across South Africa. As stated earlier, these ratepayers’ associations withhold rates and taxes from municipalities and, in some places, provide particular municipal services themselves.

The associations seem to follow four common steps to establish their grievances. Firstly, they document their efforts to resolve the problem through engagements with the local municipality in the form of meetings and grievance letters, amongst others. Secondly, if these efforts fail, they declare a dispute with municipalities in terms of legislation. Thirdly, they withhold rates and deposit their payments into an interest-bearing account. Fourthly, they provide detailed accounts of these deposits to the municipality (Multi-Level Government Initiative 2011).

For the reasons given above, community protests have presented a diverse set of outcomes. But a common theme that emerges from the literature is that the civic groups have a fundamentally similar set of grievances. These grievances are varied and complex. However, it is widely acknowledged that the reasons for the protests can be divided into three broad categories: systemic (maladministration, fraud, nepotism and corruption); structural (healthcare, poverty, unemployment and land issues); and governance (limited opportunities for civic participation, lack of accountability, weak leadership and the erosion of public confidence in leadership) (Matebesi and Botes 2011; Ngwane 2011). At this juncture, questions that I answer later in the book are: what happens to the leaders of civic groups in predominantly black communities in the aftermath of protests? What incentives motivate community groups with a fundamentally similar set of grievances to embark on different kinds of protests? What are the implications of the increasingly common trend to disrupt schooling or destruct schools during community protests?

The evidence

The research question was empirically investigated between May 2011 and August 2015 by comparing community protests in predominantly black[18] communities and white communities in four of South Africa’s nine provinces: the Free State, Northern Cape, North West, and Western Cape. In order to account for the different protest tactics, two case study sites were selected in each province: a predominantly black community and a predominantly white community.

The provinces and case study sites were selected for several reasons. Firstly, the different provinces illustrate a significant variation regarding the main sources of discontent, protest tactics and protest outcome. Secondly, since the eruption of the first community protest in South Africa in 2004, there has been a significant variation in the prevalence of protests in the selected provinces: Thus far, the Western Cape Province, which is home to the most top-performing local municipalities, is one of the leading protestridden provinces in the country. The prevalence of protests in the other three provinces ranges from low to medium. Thirdly, the other three provinces selected (Free State, Northern Cape, North West), are led by the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC).

Previous studies have shown that the dynamics of community protests are shaped by complex processes of internal contestations between various factions within the ANC and the local municipality (Langa and von Holdt 2012). Thus, the findings of the three case studies can be described as broader trends with relevance to community protests in the other remaining five provinces under the political leadership of the ANC. Conversely, the Western Cape is somewhat a special story. It is the only province ruled by an opposition political party and is useful in exploring the role of different political dynamics in community protests.

Broadly, the primary data entailed in-depth interviews with grassroots/civic groups, ratepayers’ association, municipal managers, and provincial officials of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA). SALGA is an autonomous association of municipalities and serves as the voice and sole representative of local government with its mandate derived from the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

Figure 2: Map of the case study areas and provincial boundaries of South Africa

Source: Author

In addition, a survey of 1200 residents was also conducted in the four predominantly black communities across the four provinces. Prior to the community survey, I had already built rapport with community leaders during[19] several visits to the case study areas. These community leaders played a prominent role in informing community members about the study. The primary purpose of the sampling design was not to yield a probability sample, but to ensure that broadly representative neighborhoods in each study area were included. To identify individual residents, a multistage cluster sampling strategy was applied. Firstly, the study areas were divided into clusters (enumeration areas). Secondly, each enumeration area was narrowed down by randomly selecting a number of blocks within the cluster. The number of households selected was determined by the required sample size. Any adult household member who was available and who had resided in the community for 36 months at the time of the interviews was eligible for inclusion.

The survey data was collected by means of face-to-face interviews conducted by trained fieldworkers between March 2013 and June 2015. In total, 1200 residents participated in the survey: 200 (16.7%) in Ficksburg, 250 (20.8%) in Ganyesa, 350 (29.2%) in Grabouw, and 400 (33.3%) in Kuruman. The statistical analyses were performed using the SPSS software programme version 23. Broadly, more males (n = 731, 60.9%) than females (n = 469, 39.1%) participated in the survey. In addition, three out of four of the residents had lived in the study area for more than 15 years at the time of the survey.

Since there is a dearth of studies on ratepayers’ association in South Africa, data was also obtained from an additional 30 of the 220 active ratepayers’ associations in the country.

Plan of the book

This book is largely written from a social science perspective and aims to contribute both to the development of theory as well as to empirical, field-based research in the field. The book’s main focus is on the central role of political trust, state-civil society relations, and local governance in community protests. These are topics that garner interests from academics of various social science disciplines, including sociology, political science, political geography, and political psychology.

Through a critical, but uplifting tone as well, the book holds an important policy and practical implication which extends beyond scholarly contributions. This involves the recommendation of procedures relating to minimum uniform norms and standards for municipalities in dealing with[20] community grievances and community protests. This aspect may be of interest to academics who are, broadly speaking, interested in collective action and local governance in racially-polarized settings. The book proceeds as follows.

Chapter 2 extends the research problem introduced in Chapter 1 by focusing on the theoretical framework that will guide the discussions in chapters 4 to 6. To this end, the chapter seeks to make a modest contribution to the study of the link between what I call an intricate three dimensional framework of trust-institutions-actors and community protests. It does so using a metaphoric swinging pendulum to explicate how political trust increases or decreases, depending on a peculiar combination of institutionalized and non-institutionalized mechanisms, as well as drawing on Opp’s (2009) structural-cognitive model. In this regard, trust not only serves as a mechanism to regulate and enforce equilibrium, but also as a reservoir that the state (or municipalities) draw on to return to a normalized environment.

The chapter further demonstrates how a common identity is created within civic groups during the identity formation stage and the construction of the so-called “constituting other”. This constituting other refers to local authorities and other political institutions. Whilst interacting with municipalities, the chapter argues, civic groups construct alternative channels of political expression such as protest action as a direct response to the distrust of local authorities. The next part of the chapter will show that the mantra, “when formal institutions are weak, actors are more likely to participate through alternative arenas”, holds true if one assesses the actions of civic groups in South Africa

Chapter 3 seeks to contribute to current debates on the dialectical relationship between the state and civil society in post-apartheid South Africa. By tracing the historical roots of local governance and, in particular, participatory governance - defined as a set of structural and procedural requirements to realize public participation in the operation of provincial and local governments – the chapter outlines central features of the development of state-society relations in South Africa. In so doing, the chapter further deepens the background and theoretical issues discussed in the first two chapters. The chapter enables readers to situate the study of community protests within the context of state-civil society relations at local level. It also reveals that the widely-observed commitment in South Africa to participatory local governance at all levels of government is reflected in a multitude of laws and policy documents. However, concerns remain regarding the effectiveness of these institutional mechanisms for participatory local[21] governance. A pertinent question asked is to what extent participatory governance - as envisioned in the South African Constitution – has triumphed or failed. Throughout the chapter an appraisal is provided of how citizens and the groups that represent them are influenced by the performance of local governance structures. The chapter ends by describing some challenges facing local governance and the extent to which participatory governance has triumphed or failed in South Africa.

Chapters 4 and 5 contain the presentation, analysis, systematization and interpretation of the case studies. The first half of both chapters focuses on the socioeconomic and political context of the case study areas. In the second half of the Chapter 4, I present evidence of how the tension between actors – the municipality and residents – becomes antagonistic due to the trust deficit. The trust in local governance is largely influenced by unresponsive municipal officials, as a paper trail of evidence illustrates the attempts made by residents in the different provinces to engage with the state. More specifically, I outline how the spontaneous, highly fragmented civic groups with weak authority structures in predominantly black communities fail to constrain intimidation, violence, and the mass destruction of public property.

The chapter then accentuates how the variation in patterns of protests in predominantly black communities across the four case study provinces can be explained by localized factors such as in-migration and racial disparity in the Western Cape, and the demand for proper infrastructure in the other three provinces. For example, an enduring legacy of separate development in the 224 rural villages in the Northern Cape has led to demands for tarred roads. Sadly, though, the residents led by the so-called Roads Forum, forcefully closed down schools in 2012 and again in 2014, each time costing more than 16 000 learners a year in learning. The chapter ends by concluding that, while many community protests in South Africa are founded in fundamental constraints such as deep-seated backlogs in rural areas, the level of trust in political institutions remains a significant determinant of protests. Since the dynamics underlying protests differ, it is important to respond to individual protests to prevent the trend - of blocking national roads and using learners as bargaining power - from spreading to other parts of the country.

Building on the preceding chapter, and consistent with the proposed theoretical framework, the chapter helps claim that community protests in predominantly white communities are led by highly structured ratepayers’ association. Here, the leaders and members of the ratepayers’ association meet regularly to discuss activities. Thus, collective action is organized through a sanctioning system consisting of strict norms requiring cooperation. Unlike residents’ forums, ratepayers’ association do not believe[22] in the efficacy of violence and prefer to challenge the hegemony of the state through peaceful and legal means.

Together with the other three case studies on ratepayers’ associations, the chapter also explores one of the most enduring associations in South Africa: the Sannieshof Residents and Ratepayers’ Association (SIBU). SIBU is based in the North West province and its strife against the local municipality was primarily about water supply and sanitation services. Readers will note that the white town of Sannieshof has no reticulated water or sewerage system, with residents relying on a municipal tractor to extract sewage at least once a week from their septic tanks. SIBU was formed in 2005 after the tractor broke down and residents spent more than seven weeks without this essential service. The sewage system disintegrated and, consequently, sewage bubbled from septic tanks and even toilets. Since then, SIBU has been boycotting the paying of rates and taxes to the municipality and, instead, uses the money to provide services to residents on behalf of the municipality. The chapter concludes that the protest tactic of ratepayers’ association – namely the withholding of municipal rates and taxes from the local municipality (or the refusal to pay) – is a highly contentious issue.

In Chapter 6, the concluding chapter, is a summary and general discussion of the major arguments provided in the book and some recommendations are offered. The chapter raises fundamental questions about the state’s response to community protests in a country with structural pathologies such as ingrained inequality, poverty, and growing unemployment. The chapter demonstrates how several macro-political opportunities and advancements made by the continued democratization of South African society have been favorable for the development of protests in the country. The chapter further underscores some of the challenges faced by participatory local governance in maintaining the stability of state-civil society relations. Accordingly, the effects of community protests have been tangible and visible in South Africa, with almost daily reports of violent confrontations with police, extensive damage to property, looting of businesses, and at times, the injuring or even killing of civilians. This is largely influenced by the diverse, fluid and multifaceted nature of protests in both predominantly black and predominantly white communities.

The chapter argues that in order to halt the strife against local governance in South Africa, the state should invest in the capacity of municipalities to provide services to citizens. In addition, a normative question about the values of protestors in predominantly black communities is posed: does the lack of service provision warrant the destruction of public facilities and the closure of schools? It asks whether these are these the[23] norms and values South African parents want to permeate into the future. It concludes that participatory governance systems that are context-specific and accountable, as well as the adoption of minimum uniform norms and standards for municipalities in dealing with community grievances and community protests, will go a long way in arresting the strife against local governance.