‘Why service delivery protests happen’

Failure by local authorities and other government departments to deliver basic services such as water, electricity, roads and improved access to health among others could see a marked rise in service delivery protests as communities try to express their disaffection to the authorities, a local expert said.

A University of the Free State (UFS) senior lecturer in the department of sociology, Dr Sethulego Matebesi, who recently conducted a study to establish the main reasons behind service delivery protests, told The Weekly this week that South Africa had well established participatory mechanisms for communities to engage the authorities over any issues of concern, but at times these were not utilised resulting in people opting for protest action.

“The upsurge in service delivery protests activity is reflective of the extent to which formal institutional channels for citizen engagement with the state have failed,” said Matebesi in a telephone interview.

Titled “Civil Strife Against Local Governance: The dynamics of Service Delivery Protests in Contemporary South Africa”, the study defines service delivery protests as collective action taken by a community which is directed at a local municipality over poor or inadequate provision of basic services.

Issues that normally lead to the protests cover a wide spectrum of concerns including housing, infrastructure development, and corruption.

According to the study, these protests increased substantially from about 10 in 2004 to 111 in 2010 across the country. They subsequently reached unprecedented levels in 2012 when 173 protests were recorded while the first nine months of 2014 registered 134 demonstrations.

“There is need to revisit the issue of local governance in order to find ways of improving relations between communities and their municipalities,” said the UFS lecturer.

Matebesi said strife against municipalities cut across geographic and demographic boundaries.

He said that considerable attention was however given to community protests that often turned violent and at times deadly in the black dominated areas.

But, said the study, the non-violent protest tactic of refusing to pay rates and taxes directly to municipalities by ratepayer associations in white communities has often received limited attention.

In order to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of service delivery protests in South Africa, Matebesi said he embarked on the study to examine, through a grassroots civic organisation-based comparison, the differences between highly fragmented residents groups that often use intimidation and violence in predominantly black communities and highly structured ratepayer associations that primarily use the withholding of municipal rates and taxes as in predominantly white communities.

The study is primarily based on a field research conducted in three provinces where two towns each were picked for the case studies.

In the Free State, Ficksburg and Heilbron were selected while in the Northern Cape, Kuruman, including surrounding villages and De Aar were used.

In the North West the towns were Ganyesa and Sannieshof.
The study found that the causes of protests are varied and complex, and can be divided into three broad categories: systemic causes which result from maladministration, fraud, nepotism and corruption; structural, due to healthcare, poverty, unemployment and land issues and governance, as a result of limited opportunities for civic participation, lack of accountability, weak leadership and the erosion of public confidence in leadership.

“These sets of systemic, structural and governance conditions deliver the identity, resources, and motivation necessary for successful group mobilisation,” Matebesi said.

In all case studies, the residents’ forums and ratepayer associations provided a paper trail of evidence of attempts to engage the local municipality, provincial government, and in some instances, the presidency.

The study also found that there is a causal link between trust and good governance.

It says that it takes time to build trust, and sustained interaction between the citizenry and municipalities either enhances or decreases the level of trust between the two parties.

“When citizens interact with political institutions such as municipalities, participatory governance structures, and local leaders, they know what level of service and treatment to expect.

“If citizens are dissatisfied with the service and treatment they receive, this is likely to lead to higher levels of dissatisfaction and distrust in political institutions.

“In turn, if the trust-deficit is too wide, tension between the state and communities increases.

“Thus, from the perspectives of citizens, such political institutions will be regarded as weak and not to be trusted,” according to the study.