The destruction of shacks in Hammanskraal burning of schools in Vuwani have once more focused South Africa\u2019s attention on so-called \u201cservice delivery protests\u201d.<\/p>\n
Most recently, the South African Broadcasting Corporation\u00a0decided<\/a>\u00a0not to show footage of people burning public institutions like schools in any of its news bulletins. This sparked\u00a0a formal complaint<\/a>\u00a0against the \u201cban\u201d.<\/p> But just how many protests take place daily in South Africa?<\/p>\n A reader\u00a0asked us on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0whether there are \u201c30 service delivery protests a day as was said in parliament\u201d.<\/p> She was referring to a\u00a0question-and-answer session with President Jacob Zuma<\/a>\u00a0in May when a member of the\u00a0United Democratic Movement<\/a>\u00a0opposition party,\u00a0Mncendisi Filtane<\/a>, began a question by saying that \u201cSouth Africa records about 30 service delivery protests a day, every day\u201d.<\/p>\n Africa Check managed to trace the source of the claim to the front page of Sunday newspaper City Press on 9 February 2014.<\/p>\n Above a picture of a raging fire engulfing an election poster, a banner read:<\/p>\n \u201c2,947: the number of protests in SA in the last three months.\u201d The claim then spread quickly.<\/p>\n South African journalist and columnist Max du Preez repeated the figure two days later in an opinion piece titled \u201cOur protest culture is far from dead\u201d. \u00a0Two days after that a The New York Times article also mentioned the number\u00a0by saying that \u201cthe [South African] authorities have recorded a staggering 3,000 protest actions in the past 90 days. The unrest has become almost routine.\u201d<\/p>\n Police records ‘not a protest database’<\/strong><\/p>\n But as we\u00a0explained in a report last year<\/a>, South Africa\u2019s police service does not record \u201cservice-delivery\u201d protests.<\/p>\n When the police are called out to monitor and control crowds, the incidents are logged as “crowd-related incidents”. This category is very wide and covers situations varying from sport matches to electoral campaigns.<\/p>\n Crowd-related incidents are furthermore divided into \u201cpeaceful\u201d or \u201cunrest-related\u201d events. However, this depends on whether the police had to intervene and not on the crowd\u2019s intention or behaviour.<\/p>\n Police statistics showed that the police\u00a0recorded 14,470 crowd-related incidents in 2014\/15<\/a>, the latest data available:<\/p>\n
\n\u201c3,258: the total number of protests between January 2009 and August 2012\u201d
\n\u201c32: the number of protests a day in SA for the last three months.\u201d<\/p>\n