Twelve - Service delivery protests in South Africa: a case for community development?

Summary

Introduction

We all need to listen to the messages in the fires and the stones – and not allow ourselves to be deafened by the guns of repression. (Whisson, 2012: 17)

This chapter takes the local community landscape of South Africa as its backdrop, focusing specifically on the rolling service delivery protests that started in 2004, 10 years into the new democracy. It explores whether and how such forms of political action might inform, expand or challenge our vision and expectations of community development. Critiques of the managerial or programmatic turn in community development often point to the associated depoliticisation of its theory and practice. Against that, this chapter focuses on forms of community action, organisation or mobilisation that consciously identify as political. Highlighting the importance of local and everyday contexts for democracy, in this case South Africa's local sphere of government, it considers how communities there have begun to engage with popular protest and resistance strategies. It also considers the resources, interventions and supports that communities may require in order to sustain collective mobilisation.

Using the service delivery protests in South Africa as an illustrative example, this chapter sets out to achieve two aims. First, it seeks to provide a descriptive overview of the current upsurge in community protests in South Africa as a manifestation of civil society's response to service delivery deficiencies and the unaccountability of South Africa's young democracy. Secondly, it explains how a conceptual analysis of power and its interactions with community development could help towards imagining a potential nexus for service delivery protests and community development work.

Service delivery protests: challenging deprivation through political action

A series of local community protests (also commonly referred to as service-related or service delivery protests) erupted in a number of municipalities in South Africa during 2004 and 2005 (Botes et al, 2008a) and continue at the time of writing. Since 2004, progressively more local communities have begun to protest against the government's apparent inability to provide adequate services, including water, electricity, housing, roads and sanitation (Botes et al, 2008b; Marais et al, 2008; Matebesi and Botes, 2011). Protest takes place not only because of the perceived slow pace of service delivery, but often due to the poor quality of services and the practices of patronage and exclusion associated with their delivery.