Abstract
In Protest Nation, Jane Duncan asks, ‘what does the state’s approach to the right to protest reveal about the extent of democratic space and the direction of democratic politics in South Africa?’ (8). Published during the second straight year of widespread protest at South Africa’s university campuses, Protest Nation is both timely and conspicuously untimely. On the one hand, protest and the right to protest were front and center in the national debate – debated in the media, university offices and classrooms, the sites of state power, and the streets. On the other hand, the outcome of that debate is uncertain. Have the student protests of 2015 and 2016, in their many forms, combined with securitization of universities and regularity of state repression effected a shift regarding the right to protest in South Africa? Protest Nation offers a vantage point on the eve of those events from which an analysis could begin.
South Africa, writes Jane Duncan, is a ‘country defined by its protests: a protest nation’ with a ‘rich’ historical and contemporary ‘protest culture’ (1). The South Africa Constitution protects the right to protest, which is governed through the Regulation of Gatherings Act of 1993 (RGA). Protest Nation considers the right to protest through the RGA, but with the Marxist perspective that the state is not neutral; rather the state seeks, through consent or coercion, to secure favorable conditions for the accumulation of capital (35). What does this mean for the right to protest? Duncan draws on activist experiences and on the records of nine municipalities – Nelson Mandela Bay, Lukhanji, Makana, and Blue Crane Route in the Eastern Cape; Breede Valley, Witzenberg, and Langeberg in the Western Cape; Mbombela (Mpumalanga); eThekwini (KwaZulu-Natal); and the City of Johannesburg (Gauteng) (17).
Importantly, this research controverts two misconceptions about protest in South Africa. First is the perception that most protests are about improving or obtaining delivery of services from local government. Second is that protest is all or even often violent. Both of these narratives are frequently employed by the state and media, often as the generalization, ‘violent serve-delivery protest(s)’. Often, this justifies militarization of police tactics, weaponry, and organization – and, accordingly, police violence (135; 143).
While service delivery is certainly a motivator for some protests, municipal records cite ‘key grievances’ that include ‘industrial and wage disputes (the largest category of protests), crime, corruption, land redistribution, the state of education and health services […] poor representation by public representatives […] and a large number of protests about violence against women’ (167).
The records of the South African Police Service’s Incident Registration Information System show that, for all years since 1997, the number of ‘peaceful’ crowd-management situations (both protests and gatherings) has far outnumbered the ‘unrest-related’ situations. In 2013, the last year presented in Protest Nation, the ‘peaceful’ incidents outnumbered ‘unrest-related’ 10 517 to 1 907 (137). This is even more significant given that ‘unrest-related’ incidents are not automatically violent, but rather involved the opening of a police docket, which, at times, was a result of ‘unjustifiable and unlawful restrictions on the right to protest’ and municipal requirements not recognized by the RGA (136).
For examples of these ‘unlawful restrictions’, consider practices in the City of Johannesburg: Conveners are expected to ‘provide a set of letters’ not recognized by the RGA: ‘a confirmation letter from the recipient 1 […] a “permission” letter […] from the ward councillor, a “permission” letter for the place of gathering, copies of identity documents for conveners, copies of proof of residential/work addresses for conveners, and a list of marshals’ (76). The RGA requires only notification of protests, not the seeking of permission. Excuses such as calendar conflicts were also used to unlawfully prohibit protests. In 2012, notification processing fees were introduced. When this practice was challenged, the City began to charge by the hour for police vehicles and officers (77). ‘In practice’, writes Duncan, ‘the RGA has been manipulated in various ways to censor protests’ (50). While these experiences and this conclusion may not be surprising to participants in protest action in South Africa, Duncan’s empirical research goes a long way towards affirming their experiences.
Protest Nation raises several questions. Duncan argues, ‘The available empirical research suggests that the protests have not been consciously anti-systemic in nature’ and we should be careful not to overstate their ‘insurrectionary nature’ (38). Based on the data presented in Protest Nation, there are two ways in which to read this as inconclusive.
First, municipal repression of protests is political. As Duncan shows, movements, organizations, and protests are more likely targets for repression if they are outside the ruling African National Congress alliance or are critical of local government, politicians, or authorities. In the Johannesburg Metro, the ward councilor’s ‘permission letter’ reveals conflicts of interest, since ‘the responsible officer admitted that many protests are about dissatisfaction with councilors’ (76). In Makana, ‘records pointed to a pattern of prohibition indicating that administrative repression was more likely to be directed towards non-alliance organizations … suggesting political manipulation of the municipality’s bureaucratic functions to censor political critics’ (100). This was especially true of movements that proved themselves to be sustainable (100). Evidence from multiple municipalities answers in the affirmative Duncan’s question ‘whether the political character of the protests has any impact on how the state responds to them’ (43). Does the political selectivity exercised in the repression of protests call into question Duncan’s conclusions that ‘prohibitions [of protests] remain the exception rather than the rule’ (163) and that ‘the political space is wide open (172)’?
Second is the local character of protest. In Duncan’s words, ‘The state, especially the local state, remained the focus of many grievances’ (38). As shown by Gillian Hart in Rethinking the South African Crisis (2013), since 1994 decentralization of government responsibilities and obligations to local governments is combined with a centralization of political power and resources at the national level of the state and the party. Duncan’s observation that the local state was the focus of grievances is significant following Hart’s point that ‘many popular struggles over the material conditions of life and livelihood that erupt in local arenas are simultaneously struggles over the meanings of the nation and liberation’ (2013: 9). Do the ‘understated’ ‘extent of organization’ of dissent at the local level (175) and the local character of many forms of repression suggest that ‘local’ may be the sphere and indeed the nature of anti-systemic struggle?
Protest Nation concludes with a reflection on Gramsci’s theory of ‘organic crisis’, in which increased popular action outside a hegemonic bloc cannot be contained effectively because of the decline in the capacity of the hegemonic bloc to offer concessions or mobilize repression (176–177). Duncan sees South Africa as having entered an organic crisis (179).
At the time of writing, ‘no widespread protests’ had emerged since the state repression by massacre of striking mineworkers at Marikana in 2012 (178). The student protests have changed that state of affairs. What new insights into the right to protest in South Africa are revealed through the moment of ‘Rhodes Must Fall’, ‘Fees Must Fall’, and the many local variations and movements that sprang up at South African universities in 2015 and 2016? Did the RGA function to manage the actions of students, police, and authorities? It is clear that it did not. Does widespread disregard for the RGA by all parties, combined with widespread violence by police and private security, signal a new (and ominous) phase for the right to protest in South Africa? Will more overt repression become the norm, and will this, in cyclical fashion, lead to more violent protests (Duncan, 2016: np)? Will hitherto ‘acceptable’ forms of protest continue to be tolerated? What does the emergence of nationwide, semi-coordinated student movements – and, at times, their fragmentation – mean for the ‘organic crisis’ analysis? These are the questions left unanswered in Protest Nation. We know, however, that Duncan’s focus on the right to protest as an index of the state of democracy in South Africa is not misplaced. Protest Nation is an indispensable empirical study from which to begin further reflection on the right to protest in South Africa.