Protest is one of the staples of public expression in South Africa from as far back as the imposition of colonial rule. This means that protest in South Africa is not only over three hundred years old, but that it also has anti-colonial roots. The takeover of South Africa by colonisers, whether Dutch or English, since 1652, was met with varieties of resistance. Several wars of resistance were fought by the Xhosa and the Khoi to prevent land theft and dispossession (Marks 1972; Hutton 1994). For instance, in 1799, a combined force of 150 Xhosa and Khoisan defeated a strong burgher commando authorized by the British to expel the Xhosa across the Fish River (Penn 2005). Non-violent resistance can also be seen in the saga of Nonqqawuse, who led the Xhosa cattle killing movement of 1856-7.
The narrative of the cattle killing movement starts, like a folktale, as follows:
Two girls went out to guard the fields against birds. One was named Nongqawuse, the daughter of Mhlakaza, and the other was very young. At the river known as the place of the Strelitzia, they saw two men arriving. These men said to the girls - Give our greetings to your homes. Tell them we are So-and-so... and they told their names, those of people who had died long ago. ‘Tell them that the whole nation will rise from the dead if all the living cattle are slaughtered because these have been reared with defiled hands, since there are people who have been practising witchcraft. There should be no cultivation. Great new corn pits must be dug and new houses built. Layout great big cattle-folds, cut out new milk-sacks, and
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weave doors from buka roots, many of them. So say the chiefs, Napakade, the son of Sifuba-sibanzi. The people must abandon their witchcraft, for it will soon be revealed by diviners (Peires 1987: 43).
Unfortunately, the story of Nongqawuse is no folk tale. During the thirteen months of cattle-killing (April 1856-May 1857), about 85 per cent of all Xhosa adult men killed their cattle and destroyed their corn in obedience to Nongqawuse's prophecies (Peires 1987; 1989). It is estimated that 400 000 cattle were slaughtered and 40,000 Xhosa people died of starvation. At least another 40,000 left their homes in search of food. The dogged resistance to colonial expansion which the Xhosa had sustained for nearly eighty bitter years was abruptly broken by their own actions, and almost all their remaining lands were given away to white settlers or black clients of the Cape government (Peires1987;1989).
Non-violent protest can also be traced to early anti-colonial movements and activism against racism and white domination. The formation of the ANC as the African Native Congress in 1912, as well as the formation of other indigenous political parties and indigenous church movements (such as the Ethiopian Church), among others (Allen 2005), reflect non-violent means of organising for political representation and participation. Non-violent protest in these early forms was often led by educated black intellectuals such as Solomon Plaatje (Allen 2005) and members of the New African Movement such as Elijah Makiwane, John Tengo Jabavu, Walter Rubusana, Mangane Maake Mokone and Pambani Mzimba who agitated for political representation and voting rights through pamphlets, talks, debates in the black press, and petitions (Masilela 2003).
Protest against National Party (NP) apartheid instituted in 1948, often took forms such as mass rallies, disobedience campaigns, and such mundane actions as throwing of stones, leading to many black Africans getting incarcerated or dying during the protests (Clark & Worger 2013). Unrest started during the term of the United Party (UP) and continued to flare up sporadically in certain areas soon after the NP government assumed power in 1948 (Clark & Worger 2013). Black townships particularly on the Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vaal (PWV) area, which is the present day
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Gauteng, were involved in unrest that often turned violent. For instance, the Vaal township of Evaton experienced violent clashes with the police. In the Eastern Cape towns of East London and Port Elizabeth, unrest broke out sporadically and acted as prelude to the Defiance Campaign of 1952 (Clark & Worger 2013). This was also the case in Durban and Bloemfontein.
Unrest was sparked by a range of issues related to the increasing cost of living that was unmatched by average family incomes. Causes included increased bus, train and tram fares, intensified enforcement of pass laws, rigorous enforcement of liquor laws and increased rentals following the provision of mass housing schemes soon after World War II (Clark & Worger 2013). Famous violent protests between 1948 and 1994 include the Soweto Uprising in 1976 and the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 (Clark & Worger 2013). Part of the reason Nelson Mandela was incarcerated after the Rivonia trial was his leadership of uMkhonto WeSizwe, the armed wing of the ANC that decided to end non-violence and embrace violence instead. Mandela later justified the ANC’s resort to violence by saying that they had reluctantly revised their 50-year commitment to non-violence because whites had refused to share power (Clark & Worger 2013). Thus, violence became an inevitable option after all non-violent means had failed.
Non-violent protests took the form of marches, pass-burnings, petitions, strikes, boycotts, toyi-toying as well as a few campaigns. For example, in 1952, the African National Congress launched the Defiance Campaign, a programme of civil disobedience. This meant that large groups of Africans would peacefully but deliberately break the law. Their aim was to get arrested and flood the country’s prisons (Clark & Worger 2013). One other notable non-violent protest was the “campaign to make South Africa ungovernable”. This campaign was instituted by the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) in 1989 in opposition to apartheid. The campaign included several national protests against the segregation of hospitals, beaches and public transport as well as a massive worker stay away to protest the tricameral elections (Frankental & Sichone 2005).
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The purpose of this brief background has been to show that protest has a long history in South Africa; that it is by no means a post-apartheid phenomenon. It has roots in anti-colonial and anti-apartheid movements. In other words, “service delivery protests”, discussed in the next section, fit a peculiarly South African tradition of protest and speaking truth to power. There is a debate regarding whether or not “service delivery protests” are a continuation of the protest traditions of apartheid. Most scholars of “service delivery protests” tend to draw a line which characterises the current protests as a new phenomenon that originates in the 21st century (Botes et al.
2007; Booysen 2009; Alexander 2010). As noted in the first chapter, Botes et al. (2007) claim that “service delivery” is the “new struggle”, replacing the iconic anti-apartheid struggle.
I am slightly hesitant to agree with this claim that “service delivery protests” are the “new struggle”. This debate is not settled yet and I intend to use data from this study to address the question further. In particular, I will use the stories of the protesters from Freedom Park to assess the veracity of the claim that service delivery protests are “new”. In this, I follow Ngwane’s (2011) cue that “service delivery protests” may be productively seen as a continuation of the contestation repertoires of the apartheid era, since there are “similarities in the issues taken up, their framing, repertoires of resistance, songs, symbols, etc.” (Ngwane, 2011: 84).