Easing the state of disaster may lift the lid on community protests
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Since March, material conditions have worsened significantly for most of the population. SA is well known for its protests, and in normal circumstances one might expect heightened conflict. Yet in practice most protests have been prohibited under state of disaster regulations and senior politicians have warned that marches spread coronavirus. So what is the reality of protest action under lockdown, and what is likely to happen in future?
Before answering these questions it is necessary to explain how we reached our conclusions. For 1997-2013 analysis of protests could draw on data released by the SA Police Service (SAPS), and this yielded a quantity and quality of information not matched anywhere in the world. For the period from 2012 statistics are derived from the international Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled) project.
Acled is assiduous and rigorous but it is overwhelmingly dependent on media reports, which cover only a small minority of protests. Comparing our analyses of Acled and SAPS data for 2012 and 2013 we found that SAPS protests outnumbered Acled protests by more than seven to 1.
There are several biases in media data. In particular, it is especially poor at capturing industrial protests, including strikes, and is inclined to ignore orderly protests. Despite its weaknesses, media data, specifically that gathered by Acled, is valuable for assessing trends.
Acled provides real-time data with notes on events and sources of evidence. Rather than rely on dashboard categories, which are applied inconsistently, we have worked with these notes, a painstaking task. For this, a protest was defined as “a popular mobilisation in support of a collective grievance”. Rather than limiting ourselves to overall numbers of protests, we also investigated the grievances and the actors (those mobilised).
Largely as a consequence of student mobilisations there was a bulge in protest action in 2015 and 2016. The increase in 2019 is much steeper, reaching a total of 1,473 protests recorded by Acled. Of these, using our categorisation of actors, 602 involved “residents”, up from 175 the year before (which is close to the average for 2012 to 2018). In the past, we would have termed these “community protests”. Most were about service delivery.
The decline in the number of weekly protests that occurred in March is dramatic, but that is partly because the peak in February was exceptional. There were 75 protests in January, quite a low number but not uncommonly so ...
Before answering these questions it is necessary to explain how we reached our conclusions. For 1997-2013 analysis of protests could draw on data released by the SA Police Service (SAPS), and this yielded a quantity and quality of information not matched anywhere in the world. For the period from 2012 statistics are derived from the international Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (Acled) project.
Acled is assiduous and rigorous but it is overwhelmingly dependent on media reports, which cover only a small minority of protests. Comparing our analyses of Acled and SAPS data for 2012 and 2013 we found that SAPS protests outnumbered Acled protests by more than seven to 1.
There are several biases in media data. In particular, it is especially poor at capturing industrial protests, including strikes, and is inclined to ignore orderly protests. Despite its weaknesses, media data, specifically that gathered by Acled, is valuable for assessing trends.
Acled provides real-time data with notes on events and sources of evidence. Rather than rely on dashboard categories, which are applied inconsistently, we have worked with these notes, a painstaking task. For this, a protest was defined as “a popular mobilisation in support of a collective grievance”. Rather than limiting ourselves to overall numbers of protests, we also investigated the grievances and the actors (those mobilised).
Largely as a consequence of student mobilisations there was a bulge in protest action in 2015 and 2016. The increase in 2019 is much steeper, reaching a total of 1,473 protests recorded by Acled. Of these, using our categorisation of actors, 602 involved “residents”, up from 175 the year before (which is close to the average for 2012 to 2018). In the past, we would have termed these “community protests”. Most were about service delivery.
The decline in the number of weekly protests that occurred in March is dramatic, but that is partly because the peak in February was exceptional. There were 75 protests in January, quite a low number but not uncommonly so ...
