By Umamah Bakharia

A new study indicates that contrary to the common belief that South Africa’s public protests are driven by service delivery discontent, the biggest driver is in fact factional political party politics.

The Government and Public Policy Think Tank study, also known as GAPP, in partnership with the Institute for Security Studies, was commissioned in September last year to look at political protests in the country between 2004 and this year.

Executive Director of GAPP and author of the study, Ivor Chipkin speaks to Radio Islam on the study’s findings.

“When we first conceptualised the project, the idea really was to see what data existed in the public domain related to the public protests to see if we could test some of the dominant hypothesis around what drives protests,” says Chipkin.

The study made use of large scale data modelling techniques to determine the ideology behind protests.

It found that between 2006/2007 there was an increase in protest activity in the country, the reason being that it rose as a ‘rebellion of the poor.’

In 2012/2013 protest activity began to stabilise with a rise and increase.

However, in 2017, protests in the country reached an all-time high some were covid related while other protests were because of the ‘revolt’ that caused the July Unrest last year.

“The stabilisation of protests coincide with the period when South Africa goes into probably the most severe crisis since the post-Apartheid period,” says Chipkin.

This includes the state capture inquiry, the Zuma administration and the economic crisis.

GAPP from its findings argues that service delivery and unemployment protests have been channelled through ANC protests.