Zuma Must Fall protests resume in South Africa, with Julius Malema addressing large crowds in Pretoria.[1]
South Africa has been dubbed "the protest capital of the world", with one of the highest rates of public protests in the world.It is often argued that the rate of protests has been escalating since 2004, but Steven Friedman argues that the current wave of protests stretches back to the 1970s. The rate of protests "rose dramatically in the first eight months of 2012", and it was reported that there 540 protests in the province of Gauteng between 1 April and 10 May 2013. In February 2014 it was reported that there had been "nearly 3,000 protest actions in the last 90 days – more than 30 a day– involving more than a million people".Since 2008, more than 2 million people have taken to the streets in protest every year. Njabulo Ndebele argued, "Widespread 'service delivery protests' may soon take on an organisational character that will start off as discrete formations and then coalesce into a full-blown movement". There has been considerable repression of popular protests. The most common reasons for protests are grievances around urban land and housing. It has been reported that "Nearly 75% of South Africans aged 20-29 did not vote in the 2011 [local government] elections" and that "South Africans in that age group were more likely to have taken part in violent street protests against the local ANC than to have voted for the ruling party".In September 2013 the police reported that they had "made more than 14,000 arrests at protests in the past four years".According to The Times "Informal settlements have been at the forefront of service delivery protests as residents demand houses and basic services".