OPINION: How portrayal of protests in South Africa denigrates poor people
Poor people in South Africa often feel that the only way they can be heard is to protest. The past few days have shown that not even this gets them a hearing.
The effect is, not for the first time, to denigrate poor people by offering a distorted picture of their lives and to keep alive spurious claims about protest which hail back to the era when the apartheid system governed the country. This was prompted, no doubt, by hopes that democracy had ended the need to protest. So, what the media really mean when they announce a “wave” of protest is not that there are more protests, but that they have noticed them more.
All protest is organised. So are cake sales and shopping expeditions – any activity in which human beings cooperate needs organising. But that doesn’t mean, as those who mention organisation claim, that people are forced to protest by the organisers. Second and more important, in the areas where poor people live, many protests are organised by the ANC – including many which are directed at the ANC.
The term “service delivery” is deeply undemocratic. It implies that the role of citizens in a democracy is to wait while those in government who know better “deliver” to them.
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