The struggle for housing and basic services in South Africa: a case for service delivery protests

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how struggles for housing and other basic services such as water and electricity are characterised in South Africa. There has been a shift in categorising local protests from the previously accepted “service delivery protests” to other phrases such as “local political protests” or “local protests” or “community protests.” Drawing from data gathered through in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, two townships in Cape Town, South Africa, I argue that these new concepts conceal the service delivery-related challenges faced by poor communities throughout South Africa. The paper’s focus on housing stems from the fact that a house often functions as a site where several services come together. While protests are nuanced and have varying reasons, they have a large service delivery component. As such, the study of protest in South Africa will benefit from research that spotlights service delivery problems. This also helps to highlight the prevalence of such protests throughout the country.

KEYWORDS:

• Service delivery protests
• community protests
• housing
• electricity
• water

Introduction

This paper analyses the ways in which popular protest has been conceptualised in South Africa over the years. There has been a shift in categorising local protests from the generally accepted “service delivery protests” to other phrases such “local political protests” or “local protests” or “community protests.” While proponents of the new frames of the protests point to the narrow and misleading nature of the “service delivery protest” phrase (Alexander et al. 2018), I argue that these new concepts conceal the service delivery-related challenges faced by poor communities. Although I concede that protests are complex and sometimes include other grievances which are not strictly “service related,” redefining these protests distorts the ways in which we understand them. Drawing from data gathered from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, two townships in Cape Town, South Africa, the paper focuses on struggles for housing and related services. The focus on housing is useful in showcasing the ways a house functions as a nexus where several services converge. I argue that classifying these protests as “service delivery” helps to spotlight the service delivery dimension of many of these protests. This also helps to show the prevalence of these protests throughout the country, because, although the protests are localised, similar protests for somewhat similar services are prevalent throughout South Africa.

Of late, scholars have used the term “community protest” instead of the previously accepted “service delivery protest” arguing that the term “service delivery protest” “tends to conceal the complexity of issues that communities raise, which often include criticism of South Africa’s democracy” (Alexander et al. 2018, 28). In other words, communities’ complaints go beyond mere service delivery. Others have found fault with the “service delivery” characterisation, preferring instead to call it protests for “public service” (Friedman 2009). Pithouse (2011) even argues that classifying localised protests as service delivery contestations is a myth. Indeed, protests are complex and nuanced; contestations in communities often go beyond mere service delivery issues to include a demand for jobs, safety, a new kind of relations with the government, and other issues that affect communities. Labelling all protests in communities as service delivery is wrong but so is regarding service delivery protests a myth. There are demands for the delivery of constitutionally sanctioned services. This does not mean protesters are passive recipients as Pithouse (2011) puts it; rather, protesters show that they will not passively accept the status quo in their communities. I argue that the term “service delivery protests” helps emphasise the need for basic services in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. Broad terms like “community protests” are vague and conceal the “service-related” challenges that characterise low-income communities.

A continual re-defining of the term confuses the issue. For example, Alexander (2010) defined these protests as “local political protests” or “local protests” but redefined the protests as “community protests” in 2018 (Alexander et al. 2018). While characterisations of these protests as “local protests” or “community protests” are useful in capturing the diverse reasons for protests in communities, they are too broad and conceal the service delivery dimension that is distinct to low-income communities like Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. Indeed, Alexander et al. (2018, 28) regard a “community protest” “as a protest in which collective demands are raised by a geographically defined ‘community’ that frames its demands in support and/or defence of that community.” Thus, two key aspects are prominent in “community protests” – (a) a community in a specific geographic area engages in protests and (b) the protests are for the community’s good. Such framing confuses protests in impoverished/marginalised communities and better-resourced communities as both would carry the name “community protests.” This does not mean impoverished communities are uniform, but it helps spotlight service delivery problems which feature prominently in low-income communities. Interestingly, scholars (e.g., Alexander et al. 2018) distinguish “community protests” from “labour-related” and “crime-related” protests. Why are crime-related protests not included under community protests, given that communities often raise several demands, including those related to crime? If “crime-related protests” can be separated from “community protests” (notwithstanding several calls for demands to stamp out crime in the communities), is it not helpful to separate “community protests” from “service delivery protests?”

A consideration of the localities where protests have persisted reveals the service delivery dimension of these protests. Overall, post-1994 protests in South Africa have predominantly emanated from African and Coloured areas and communities, with rare protest action in better serviced and resourced suburbs (Alexander et al. 2018; Booysen 2007; Nleya 2011). One of the principal reasons driving protests in South Africa is inadequate service delivery (Alexander 2010; Booysen 2007; Masiya, Davids, and Mangai 2019). Service delivery in local government refers to the provision of tangible or intangible public municipal goods, services, activities and benefits which enhance people’s quality of life (Reddy 2016). A municipal service regarded as basic is “necessary to ensure an acceptable and reasonable quality of life and, if not provided, would endanger public health, or safety or the environment” (Reddy and Naidu 2012, 94). Municipalities, as custodians of public funds, are mandated to utilise these funds to address basic service delivery needs of local communities such as water and sanitation, electricity, infrastructure, refuse removal and spatial development of local communities.

A service delivery protest is “galvanised by inadequate local services or tardy service delivery, the responsibility for which lies with the municipality” (Allan and Heese 2011, n.p.). Protests in low-income communities are chiefly poor people’s expression of dissatisfaction with state inadequacies in the delivery of infrastructure, houses, municipal services such as electricity, water and sanitation etc., what is often called “service delivery” (Marais et al. 2008; Mottiar and Bond 2012). In his study on Gugulethu, Staniland (2008) noted that high levels of discontent, especially with housing delivery, led to protests. Thus, classifying protests for these services as community protests conceals an important service delivery feature of these protests. In this paper, I regard these protests as service delivery protests.

Service delivery protests have become ubiquitous in South Africa, emerging and ebbing in rural towns and metropolitan centres with regularity since 1994. Although the first decade of democracy saw a decline in protests, some protests occurred. However, since 2005, when these protests took national prominence, South Africa has experienced soaring levels of dramatic protests. These protests have been depicted as chiefly urban in character (Alexander 2015; Booysen 2007; Lancaster 2018), with metropolitan areas viewed as experiencing the majority of incidents, followed by urban and then rural areas; this trend is attributed to the challenges metropolitan areas face due to “rapid urbanization, higher population density and migration” (Lancaster 2018, 38). Understandably, such growth puts pressure on inadequate basic municipal services and other socio-economic rights such as land, housing, employment, infrastructure and healthcare (Lancaster 2018). Yet, contrary to analyses that see South African protest as manifesting an important urban character, Bekker (2022, 239) finds that when “viewed per capita, … the North West, Free State and Northern Cape – provinces that could be typified as predominantly rural – present most protests.” As such, there is need to re-examine depictions of protest as characteristically urban given that “a metropole-dominant profile has been supplanted by one showing frequent protests in several rural municipalities” (Bekker 2022, 241). This paper focuses on protests in two urban townships in Cape Town which have experienced numerous protests – Gugulethu and Khayelitsha.

While Cape Town has managed to earn the label of a “world city” with state-of-the-art infrastructure due to massive upgrading, Cape Town is a divided city juxtaposed with affluent suburbs at the core of the city and in economic centres and low-income and poverty-stricken communities at the fringes of the city with poor service delivery such as housing, water, electricity and sanitation (McDonald 2008). Gugulethu and Khayelitsha are good examples of low-income communities situated in Cape Town. Gugulethu, which means “our pride” in isiXhosa, sits approximately 15 km from the Cape Town city centre. It was established in 1960 to address overcrowding in Langa, the first African residential township in the Western Cape (SAHO 2013). While Gugulethu still experiences service delivery protests, the main focus in scholarly research tends to be on Khayelitsha. Khayelitsha, which means “our new home” in isiXhosa, is situated about 35 km from Cape Town city centre – which makes it a typical apartheid area located away from affluent Cape Town areas. In 1983, the apartheid government announced a plan for a new town (now Khayelitsha) to accommodate about 250,000 Africans (Donaldson and du Plessis 2013). Khayelitsha has experienced numerous protests. This paper uses Gugulethu and Khayelitsha as case study areas to highlight the fight for houses and basic service delivery. However, owing to their divergent histories, Gugulethu and Khayelitsha have different levels of informality. Gugulethu started as a planned “high modern” suburb (at least in terms of apartheid rhetoric) while Khayelitsha has a much higher degree of informality. These differences have important implications for the ease with which the local government could upgrade informal settlements post-1994 and provide better services.

The paper deploys the Framing Processes Theory (FPT) to analyse how protesters in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha perceive their protests, identify, label and locate phenomena that affect them (Goffman 1974; Snow 2004). The FPT is a part of the Social Movement Theory (SMT). SMT attempts to explain the reasons for social mobilisation, the forms it takes and the results and consequences it brings. Scholars, including those of new social movement theory, have long underlined the importance of Framing Processes in understanding social movements (Benford and Snow 2000; Goffman 1974; Melucci 1989; Touraine 1981). Theorists of new social movement, for example, Touraine (1981) and Melucci (1989) stress the value of framing and emphasise subjective elements including identity, values and status. There are three core tasks a frame must fulfil to successfully create meaning: to (i) identify a problem and the person or group responsible for causing it (diagnostic framing), (ii) offer a solution to the problem and ways to achieve the target (prognostic framing), and (iii) detail “a call to arms or rationale for action” (motivational framing) (Snow and Benford 1988, 202).

The FPT provides the protesters’ view of their world and their reasons for protests – which should guide analysts’ description of protests. It provides an insider perspective through social movements activists themselves explaining the reasons why social movements mobilise (in this case, service delivery protesters). This is what Snow (2004) regards as movement actors’ interpretation of their own world. I use the FPT to analyse the protesters’ conscious interpretative, meaning-making and meaning-maintenance work which is geared towards building solidarity and collective action.

Frame refers to the interpretations that individuals use to identify, label and perceive occurrences/events in their immediate world and the world at large (Snow et al. 1986). Frames can also be defined as comprising of a broader interpretive definition or answer to the questions: “what is going on” or “should be going on” (Benford and Snow 2000). This process creates shared meanings which help in social movement operations. Essentially, Framing Processes theorists argue that it is not about what outsiders to a movement explain as problems, grievances, circumstances and social world, but how movement adherents and other relevant actors define and understand their world. I employ the Framing Processes to explain how protesters view themselves, their situations and the organisation of protests in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha.

The FPT has its limits. Firstly, movement members might be overly subjective. While there is a danger that social movement members’ construction and meaning-making can be overly subjective, it is important to understand how a movement defines itself and understands its moral standings to a given problem (Leach and Scoones 2007). Secondly, the FPT has a tendency of elite bias. Elite bias refers to the tendency of focusing on the framing by elites, leaders and activists “to the neglect of rank-and-file participants, potential recruits, bystanders, and others” (Benford 1997, 421). Consequently, framing analysis often tends to have a top-down bias. Such top-down bias would be self-defeating in this study that seeks to excavate meanings of both the leaders and the-rank-and-file protesters. To give voice to all my participants, I adopted a bottom-up approach to research and gave a voice to both protest leaders and rank-and-file protesters. This bottom-up approach was crucial in that it gave marginalised people a voice by excavating their knowledge and experiences, thereby deterring a top-down approach which voices over participants.

The focus of this paper is on whether protests in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha should be regarded as community protests or service delivery protests. Such a focus necessitated a qualitative methodology. Data collection involved both primary and secondary sources, with the former involving in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. Participants included protest leaders and any resident who had participated in a protest in the year of the interviews. A focus on protesters and their leaders helped uncover the reasons for initiating and participating in a protest. This helped shed light on the service delivery dimension of many of the protests. Findings from this study are drawn from a broader postgraduate study where 20 in-depth interviews and 2 focus groups were held in Gugulethu and the same number in Khayelitsha. To avoid harming my participants, I strictly adhered to laid-down ethics of research. I only went into the field after receiving permission from the university’s ethics committee. To protect the identity of the participants, I use pseudonyms throughout the study.

Having laid the foundation for the paper, the next section briefly maps protest in South Africa. Following this, I analyse the struggle for housing and basic services. This is done to show an important service delivery dimension of these protests. Finally, I conclude the paper.

Mapping protest in South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa has witnessed several protests. Karl von Holdt and Prishani Naidoo (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019) usefully deploy the concept of the movement landscape to describe four diverse episodes of protest in South Africa since 1997. They examined the ways in which these four mobilisations (a) related with the African National Congress’ (ANC) traditions and (b) organised their protest. The first movement was characterised by the emergence of “new social movements” between 1997 and 2006. New social movements emerged outside the ANC’s tradition post 1994. Several of these movements struggled for free basic services including the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) in Johannesburg, the Concerned Citizens Forum (CCF) in Durban and the Anti-Eviction Forum (AEC) in Cape Town (Ballard, Habib, and Valodia 2006; Naidoo and Veriava 2005; Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019). Nationally, however, new social movements’ demands extended beyond basic services to include free antiretrovirals, spearheaded by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), and for land and farmwork-related grievances co-ordinated by the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019). New social movements were critical of the ANC, particularly for embracing neoliberal policies. Yet, owing to a multiplicity of reasons, around 2004 many new social movements declined or collapsed.

Around this time, protests erupted outside new social movements which scholars now regard as “community protests” – formerly “service delivery protests.” These protests proffered demands raised previously by the now defunct new social movements. While these protests existed since the 1990s, from 2005, the protests increased steadily and reached sustained levels in 2009 (Alexander 2012; Runciman, Bekker, and Maggott 2019). The protests have often been directed against local municipalities, the majority governed by the ANC; grievances have an important basic services dimension including, housing, electricity, water, refuse collection among several municipal services. However, the grievances extend beyond these to include “lack of jobs, corruption over the allocation of houses and plots, or the disappearance of municipal funds and lack of responsiveness from authorities” (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019, 174). Many of these grievances have a bearing on service delivery and enjoying a dignified life. These protests employ a variety of tactics in their contestations (Chiwarawara 2023). While community grievances are real, sometimes protest leaders use these grievances for their own interests, particularly political office and access to tenders and council resources (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019). Given the dominance of the ANC, communities utilise elite (well-connected) leaders in order to be heard, recognised and addressed by ANC powerholders, the same way protest leaders appropriate protests to jostle and position themselves in the local structures (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019). This points to the dual character of protests (Langa and von Holdt 2012; Mukwedeya and Ndlovu 2017). Recently, I have argued (Chiwarawara 2022) that some of the protests could be regarded as a fight for a relationship with the government that is useful in securing basic services and other benefits for the community.

The third and fourth mobilisations of South Africa’s movement landscape focus on the Marikana massacre and student protests, respectively. The Marikana massacre happened in 2012 when the police shot and killed 34 mineworkers who were striking at Marikana (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019). The analysis shows how mineworkers rejected well established procedures and institutions. The fourth movement of the movement landscape, the student movement, reproduced common “repertoires of mass struggle” but also “gave birth to the most distinctive new symbols and discourses” of the movements discussed in the movement landscape (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019, 180); student movements managed to do this by “appropriating previously marginalized Black Consciousness traditions and transforming them with a nascent Black Feminism and a commitment to intersectionality, thus marking a sharp break with ANC traditions” (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019, 180).

Each of the mobilisations were initially rooted in the ANC; each, however, pursued diverse trajectories which moved them closer or further from the ANC constellation (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019). Whereas new social movements mobilised outside the ANC constellation, community mobilisations inclined to remain within it; contestations by labour movements after Marikana and student movements led to novel groupings mainly outside the ANC (Von Holdt and Naidoo 2019). This paper concerns itself with the second movement discussed above – the protests waged in communities for a variety of issues but with an important basic services delivery dimension.

The struggle for housing and basic service delivery

When the ANC won office in 1994, it sought to address the historic marginalisation of Black communities and neighbourhoods throughout the country which had very little access to decent houses and basic services such as water, electricity and sanitation. Indeed, the ANC came into office promising a “better life for all” (ANC 1994). To the ANC’s credit, since 1994, it has delivered approximately four million houses to South Africans (Levenson 2022). While the progress is commendable, it is not enough. Below, I analyse the struggles for houses and other basic services necessary to live a better and dignified life. I draw these analyses from in-depth and focus group discussions with protesters and protest leaders in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. The focus of this paper is on whether protests in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha should be regarded as community protests or service delivery protests?

The analysis below argues that there is merit in considering protests that have a large service delivery component as service delivery protests rather than community protests. As Alexander et al. (2018) note, the concept of community protest is broader than that of service delivery protest and is distinguished from “crime-related” protest and “labour-related” protest. The broader term community protest, while helpful in capturing the diversity of concerns communities protest about and highlighting the geographic area engaged in the protest, masks the object of one of the key elements of the protests – service delivery. If it is plausible to separate “crime-related protest” from “community protest,” perhaps there is value in distinguishing between “service delivery protest” and “community protest.” As will be argued below, protests for housing and basic services should be considered as service delivery protests. I triangulate the findings with literature from South Africa and, in some cases with broader literature on grassroots struggles from across the world.

Struggle to fast-track delivery

In Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, protests are meant to fast-track the provision of, among others, housing, water, electricity, sanitation and refuse removal. Fast-tracking is necessary in a context of the slow pace of housing, electricity, water and sanitation delivery. Most participants believed that their issues stood a better chance of being addressed through protests rather than through engagement with government officials, and, as such, residents framed protests as one of the ways to secure services. Tata Mpho, an elderly man who stays in a shack in Khayelitsha, captured the core message conveyed by other protesters: “So one of the reasons is that for the government to listen to us, we have to stand up for ourselves so that the government will be able to give us services.” Similarly, in Gugulethu, Lerumo a recent graduate, stated that people participate in protests because the government will not listen “until we stand up and show them that we are really angry now.” Likewise, a turn to radical protest tactics is premised on the belief that dramatic protests speed up the government’s response. In both Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, participants stated that more militant protest tactics were meant to fast-track the process of development. For example, Tshidi, a woman in Gugulethu who stays in a backyard room, stated that more radical protest tactics are meant to “fast-track” the process of delivery.

Findings show that protesters firmly believe that protests (over other means of engagement) will be attended to swiftly. The transition from orderly protests to more militant protests is premised on the view that more dramatic protests speed up the government’s response. There is a sense in which communities feel that radical tactics are the only language that the South African government understands (Von Holdt et al. 2011). The militant tactics are framed as a necessary evil to compel the government to deliver better services in a timelier manner. On the contrary, government officials, media outlets and the public often criticise what they call “violence” in these protests. Findings from this study give a better idea of the rationale for why protesters resort to what is often called violent protest tactics. In a recent paper, I argue for a 4-way formulation of protest (Chiwarawara 2023). I draw on Alexander et al.’s (2018) 3-way formulation of protests as “orderly,” “disruptive” and “violent” to argue that the word “violent” is too broad and should be divided into two – an attack on private and public property (vandalistic) and an attack or harm on people (violent). In the end, I advance a 4-way formulation of protest namely “orderly,” “disruptive,” “vandalistic” and “violent” protest – arguing that this is the normal route protests evolve. To avoid protests from escalating into more militant tactics, I suggest that authorities respond more quickly to protesters’ grievances (Chiwarawara 2023).

The prevalent “belief” that “disruptive” protests and other dramatic tactics fast-track the government’s response is a resource which is helpful in mobilisation. This belief has led communities to include protests as part of their repertoires for political participation (Booysen 2007). Thus, protesters use “prognostic framing” (Snow and Benford 1988) to offer a solution to a problem. In this case, protests are considered effective in pushing the government to address protesters’ grievances.

Unhappiness does not always translate into protest though. Dubbeld’s (2013) excellent ethnographic work in Glendale, a rural village in KwaZulu Natal, lays bare how unhappiness with the state’s delivery led to an eventual turn away from the state entirely, strongly believing that the government was incapable of delivering. Dubbeld’s (2013) participants felt that they were not “seen” as a community; the participants even appeared to show a desire for traditional leadership – such as chiefs – considering them as better than the democratic government mainly due to the supposed visibility and availability of the former.

For those who choose to protest, for example participants in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, protests are used to pressure the government to listen to them. The ideas in the extracts above around “standing up for themselves” and the desire to “fast-track” the process speak of protesters’ acknowledgement of their agency. de Souza (2006) captures the differentiated ways in which social movements use their agency in his article titled “Together with the state, despite the state, against the state: Social movements as ‘critical urban planning’ agents” (emphasis added). The idea of standing up for themselves suggests that protesters act “despite” and sometimes “against” the government in order to get the government to deliver. Protesting is a means through which protesters demonstrate their agency. It follows that when the government fails to respond to other means of engagement, protesters protest to be heard. Understandably, the protesters’ agency is necessary to bring about development and alleviate the harsh living conditions they experience. Interestingly, activism can engender empowerment. Indeed, insurgent citizenship is related with empowerment because insurgent action often starts with an individual’s belief in his/her own agency (Karriem and Benjamin 2016). The belief that protests fast-track the process of delivery should be understood within the context of South Africa’s often slow pace of service delivery. Slow pace of delivery is evident in housing delivery.

The struggle for housing delivery

Housing complaints have featured prominently throughout South Africa. Interestingly, every South African “has the right to have access to adequate housing” – regarded as a basic need and enshrined in the South African Constitutional Bill of Rights (Republic of South Africa 1996a) and Housing Act of 1997 (Republic of South Africa 1996b, 11; 1997). Despite these legal specifications, “waiting for state-provided homes is [a] normal, taken-for-granted, everyday, intergenerational condition” which can take decades (Oldfield and Greyling 2015, 1100). Experiences with waiting shape what the poor do on a daily basis, what Oldfield and Greyling (2015) called the “modalities of waiting.” Engaging in protests and strikes can be seen as a modality of waiting for the delivery of “promised” houses.

The contestation for formal houses is waged by those who already have formal houses as well as those who reside in informal settlements and backyard shacks. Residents find RDP houses too small to accommodate their growing families, hence they fight for additional housing, a better design of the houses and more services. In Gugulethu for example, Ndiko who stays in a backyard shack at his parent’s formal house, stated “we are not like whites, … who have 1 child or 2 children; we have many children, brothers, sisters, uncles and cousins that we stay with. This small RDP house is not enough.”

The demand for houses should be understood in the context of a conflation of services. This means the fight for houses has in it a belief that a better house would have electricity, water and toilet(s) inside the house and better sanitation. In other words, when people are fighting for formal houses, they are fighting for houses and other basic services that accompany a formal house. In Khayelitsha, Mama Mtombeni’s shack captures the conflation of issues quite well. While she has since moved to an RDP house, she recounted her experience of living in a shack:

I used to wake up early to go to work. I remember one day I peeped through a hole in my shack’s walls to see whether there was enough sunlight for me to walk to the train station. I was gripped by fear when I saw an eye peeping [a man was peeping through the same hole] into my shack as early as around 5am! You know, right, that those shacks do not have a bathroom, a toilet, running water – so I bathed [using a bucket] in the shack. I would fetch the water from the communal place during the day … After that incident it made me feel so uncomfortable to bath even in my shack … My things were stolen several times. I ended up hiding my money in the ground. The shack did not have a cemented floor, it was just soil, so I dug a hole and put my money and ID [Identity Document] in the ground, I then put a carpet on top and put a water bucket on top.

This extract reveals the precarious realities of shack dwellings. This vivid example shows the lack of services faced by some residents. Holes in the shack, an absence of a bathroom, running water, electricity and a toilet do not only pose a health risk but require shack dwellers to access most basic services outside their dwellings. Having to leave the houses to access these basic services creates perpetual fear in crime-prone townships like Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. The fight for houses should be understood in the context of the types of shelters people reside in versus the services that a formal house has. In this light, many participants lamented the slow pace of formal housing delivery. The realities of Mama Mtombeni’s housing and related basic service delivery challenges reveal the lack of dignity shack-dwelling presents. When people like Mama Mtombeni take to the streets, they recognise, as the Zapatistas in Mexico do (beginning with their famous 1994 rebellion), that although their dignity has been trampled upon, they have enough dignity left to fight against such a repudiation (Holloway 2011).

Sive, a male backyarder in Khayelitsha, stated his reasons for participating in protests thus:

We have been waiting for a house for the past 20 years, so not only [we] are waiting for the house, but other people have also been waiting, maybe for 23 years, so if you haven’t had a house for 20 years, I am going to strike this year, the other person will strike the next year for the same reason because … [the government is] not giving out the services.

Given that many people have not received the promised houses, protests for housing have become a perpetual feature in the case study areas. The slow pace of delivery means that many people wait for long periods before they receive a house. Waiting for houses for over 20 years creates what Yiftachel (2009) called “permanent temporariness” where there is no predictable “waiting period” (Auyero 2012). This creates “a tense endlessness, where something is always about to happen” and then fails to happen, “in limbo. Waiting. Not waiting. But waiting” (Ndebele 2003, 14).

In both Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, there was confusion on the way the waiting list (housing databases) works. Some scholars, like Kate Tissington et al. even argue that:

[T]here is no waiting list, whether one conceives of “the waiting list” as a mechanism which simply allocates housing to those who have waited the longest, or as a slightly more complicated device meant to take special needs and/or geographical location into account. Instead there are a range of highly differentiated, and sometimes contradictory, policies and systems in place to respond to housing need.

(Tissington et al. 2013, 80)

There seems to be no clarity on whether there is a rigid and structured process with which a person can access a house. One thing is clear, waiting is characterised by uncertainty, misunderstanding and confusion (Auyero 2012). Notwithstanding the state’s arbitrary procedures, citizens wait for the state to provide housing because waiting is one of the few ways to secure a formal house (Oldfield and Greyling 2015). I argue that desperation for a formal house, few options to access one, frustration, anger and despondency at the government’s waiting procedures make people band together to protest whilst waiting. Congruent with the Framing Processes Theory, activists should define and use these grievances in a manner that spurs collective action. Activists (protest leaders) act with tact and creativity to reproduce and reinterpret grievances differently, depending on the contexts they find themselves in and the strategies they seek to deploy (Martínez Lucio, Marino, and Connolly 2017). Such strategies may work for or against the protesters.

Struggles for housing are waged via protest action and direct action which relates to land occupation. As a direct action, land occupation, serves as an alternative to protest because the struggle itself addresses the members’ needs (Boudreau 1996). While land occupation has the hallmarks of a protest, it differs from the normal protest (for and against something or someone) in that in land occupation, the occupiers “forcefully take the object of their struggle (land) and not merely pressure the government to deliver the services as they do in normal service delivery protests” (Chiwarawara 2022, 7). Thus, land occupation is a resource acquisition strategy. Imbued in land occupation is a desire to access all that a land affords. This means that land is occupied to build houses, access basic services including water, sanitation, toilets, electricity that some people take for granted and have a sense of dignity, privacy and ownership.

Two informal land occupations in Cape Town – Kapteinsklip and Siqalo – lay bare the struggle for land and housing in Cape Town. Both occupations occurred in Mitchells Plain township, some 25 km from Cape Town; while Kapteinsklip was an on public land, Siqalo sat on two pieces of private property. I draw heavily on Levenson’s (2022) recent account on these informal occupations to highlight how one frame and strategy succeeded and another failed. In building his argument, Levenson (2022) juxtaposes how the state dispossessed people pre-1994 and post-1994. He conceives dispossession as “the separation of people from land, housing and essential services, typically by force,” and delivery as a solution or remedy to dispossession (Levenson 2022, 40). He argues that during apartheid, the state dispossessed people by delivering houses; after apartheid, the state believes it dispossess people to enable housing delivery. He argues, however, that such dispossession does not enable delivery but reproduces the problems and drives people to occupy land.

Government officials responsible for housing delivery post-1994 tend to “reduce land occupations to criminal behaviour, describing them as intentional rather than inevitable” (Levenson 2022, 16). The officials regard those who occupy land as seeking to jump queues, i.e., on the housing waiting list. However, Levenson (2022) is right in stating that many of the land occupiers do so to satisfy a housing need and often seek to do so unnoticed by the state. Indeed, my participants in Khayelitsha stated that they do not often involve courts in the struggle for houses and basic services as court processes tend to take a long time; participants however mentioned that they often use courts in civil matters. Samuel, a male protester in Khayelitsha, stated, “It is the government which can take us to court after we have vandalised.” Despite the desire to operate unnoticed, the state invariably gets involved in land occupations. Levenson (2022) argues quite strongly that the two occupations – Kapteinsklip and Siqalo – were treated differently by the state because of how they viewed the state and how they organised themselves as a result.

Siqalo occupiers viewed the state as inhibiting, not facilitating housing delivery and, as such, as an antagonist (Levenson 2022). Drawing from their past experiences, they organised themselves under a single leadership, which proved helpful in the courts. Kapteinsklip, on the other hand, perceived the state “as a partner in realising the dream of distributive democracy” not the dispossessor, and remained atomised and did not organise themselves collectively; later, when “confronted by armed police, they organised defensively into factions to secure access to their own plots, rather than as a collective defending the entire occupation” (Levenson 2022, 37). Flowing from this, Levenson (2022, 19) argues that “how occupiers see the state … in turn shapes how the state sees them, and how this further modifies residents’ vision of the state – a continuous feedback loop of political articulation.” In Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, there is such a strong desire for housing that, in Gugulethu, participants recalled a time they wanted to occupy a gravesite in order to build houses.

Slow and inadequate housing provision (including electricity and water) is also linked to issues of race. Many participants in Gugulethu and Khayelitsha invoked race, believing that Africans are not treated fairly when it comes to housing provision. Sifso, a Gugulethu male protester in his late 30s who still stays with his mother in an old apartheid house, stated that:

We engage ourselves in these protests because the government doesn’t deliver. My mother has applied for an RDP house. I am sure it has been 20 years now [he paused and asked his mother when she applied for the RDP house] but she hasn’t received that RDP house. So now in order for the government to listen to us as Black people and to act in what we need. We have to engage ourselves in those kind of strikes.

(emphasis added)

The reference to “us as Black people” in the extract above suggests that there is a belief among many protesters (this was prevalent in most of the in-depth interviews) that Africans are treated differently from other races, which suggests that protesters compare their circumstances with others in Cape Town. The participants used the term “Black” to refer to the Black African population; distinguishable from the Coloured, White and Indian/Asian; the South African government uses the same categories in its censuses. It harks back to memories of the apartheid era when people groups were treated and rendered services according to race (Besteman 2008; Western 1996). This finding echoes my finding in Gugulethu, where protesters believe Blacks and Whites are treated differently. In line with the Framing Processes, movement actors interpret their own world, and as such it is important to understand these actors’ “subjective elements and the processes by which they define and view themselves (Ballard, Habib, and Valodia 2006; Snow 2004), in this case, as Black people. This should be understood in a context where most Whites live in neighbourhoods which are well endowed with basic services such as water, sanitation, electricity and housing. While houses in White neighbourhoods are not delivered by the government, other services such as electricity, sanitation and water are. Some Africans who do menial jobs in the White neighbourhoods witness the sharp contrasts with the services they receive.

Struggle for basic service delivery

While residents have staged numerous protests to demand houses, at other times they have illegally reconnected electricity and destroyed prepaid water metres. In both Gugulethu and Khayelitsha, backyard dwellers and many informal settlements have illegally reconnected electricity and water. In one of the backyard houses in Gugulethu where I held a focus group discussion, participants stated that although they know the dangers of electricity reconnection, it is the only option they have. Similarly, in Khayelitsha, an informal settlement resident, Sibonelo, who uses illegally connected electricity, remarked, “I know that the electric wires are dangerous to our children but what can we do? We need electricity here.” While illegal electrical connections have caused the death and injury of many people (Grobler 2020; Shozi 2018), participants recognised that these reconnections were necessary to access electricity. Alternative sources of energy such as paraffin stoves also have related challenges. There have been several deaths and displacements owing to shack fires (Kassen 2019; Tshuma 2021).

Struggles for electricity are prevalent in South Africa. Somewhat similar to the feelings of discriminations that Africans feel in the case study areas, elsewhere in South Africa, activists in Thembelihle, Gauteng, captured their feelings of discrimination in their fight for electricity (Paret 2018). As part of their protests (and in a move which can be construed as effecting equality), activists burnt electricity supply boxes which led to an electricity blackout in nearby Indian neighbourhoods. The activists explained that burning the electricity supply boxes was meant, “to keep the Indian communities in [the] dark, as we are also living in the dark” (Paret 2018, 345). Again, in 2014, Thembelihle activists rejected discrimination, declaring that: “We will not be treated as second-class citizens. Apartheid is over. If we can’t have electricity, then no one will” (Paret 2018, 345). While a newspaper article might have described the deliberate destruction of a metre box as criminal and nonsensical, the in-depth analysis revealed the rationale behind their tactic. Herein lies the strength of an in-depth qualitative study in understanding subjective reasons for protests and the repertoires employed in protests. This tactic was deemed necessary to push for electricity. Regarding this as a “community protest” would not have immediately revealed the service-related dimension of this protest.

An analysis of what residents have done in their struggles reveals the service delivery dimension of these protests. Residents have demanded free water and even destroyed water metres. Protesters in Gugulethu held hostage a White contractor who was installing water metres. The hostage situation occurred when a contractor installed new water metres in their yard. Recounting this incident, Bulelani, a protest leader in Gugulethu, stated:

A white private contractor came with his team and started installing water meters. We called each other and told the contractor that we are not going to let you go until the people who sent you to install the meters come. Some people wanted to beat him up a little, you know, to make an example out of him, but we [the leaders] said “no, let’s just destroy the meters and hold him here” … Because of this hostage, we had our water, free flow. Then we released him.

The hostage situation, which protesters celebrated widely, demonstrates people’s agency and the lengths they are willing to go to secure water. By destroying water metres, protesters use motivational framing to challenge the water restrictions imposed upon them. Elsewhere in South Africa, the APF’s struggle plumbers have bypassed prepaid water metres; likewise, communities which had been cut due to non-payment of water and electricity illegally reconnected water and electricity (Dawson 2010; Mottiar 2019).

Bulelani, like other participants, underlined the importance of water and even questioned the need to pay for it. Some of the leaders associated water with religious connotations, stating that water is from God and as such it should not be charged just as sunshine is not charged. Bulelani draws upon diagnostic framing to show the impropriety of charging for water and utilises the prognostic frame to show what should be happening – delivering water at no cost. Likewise, in Brazil, Karriem and Benjamin (2016) note that participants in the Brazilian Landless Movement drew on religious motivations to diagnose injustice while validating the right to access land. Their participant, Fabiana, stated:

God did not leave land to be sold, but to be distributed to all who live on it and this is the most loyal motive there is. It not right that they have 1,000 hectares of land while a father of 4 or 5 children does not have a piece of land to farm. Therefore, land has to be redistributed.

(Karriem and Benjamin 2016, 27)

Protesters have deployed various tactics to push for more and better services. Some of the tactics employed in service delivery protests are meant to speed up service delivery such as barricading roads, burning tyres, holding placards. Some tactics directly address the need of protesters, for example, illegal electricity and water reconnections and illegal land occupation for building houses. Regarding these protests and tactics as “community protests” – although understandable – is too broad and conceals an important service delivery dimension of these protests.

Conclusion

In post-apartheid South Africa, there is inadequate and, in some cases, non-existent service delivery to low-income communities such as Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. Poor or non-existent service delivery of housing, water, electricity and sanitation inconveniences and endangers people (Reddy and Naidu 2012), e.g., inadequate sanitation, pit latrines etc. I considered the fight for the services which improve the quality of life for example housing, electricity, sanitation and water as struggles for service delivery.

Communities fight to fast-track the process of basic service delivery. Although there is a move to redefine protests in low-income communities as “local political protests” or “local protests” or “community protests,” I argued that these categorisations are too broad and blur the service delivery problems that are distinct to low-income communities in South Africa. The broad categorisations detract scholars, policy makers and practitioners from the need for more and better services in low-income communities. This is not to say there is no merit in regarding protests in communities as community protests. Indeed, findings of this study show that protesters’ demands extend beyond basic service delivery to include, inter alia, the discrimination that protesters believe they face as well as the demand for the government to fulfil election promises and to be transparent. To be sure, South Africa’s protests involve a conflation of issues which include demanding service delivery and the daily practice of democracy such as fairness and transparency (Mottiar 2013; Paret 2018). However, many of these reasons have a bearing on service delivery. While it is true that protests are complex and include criticisms of South Africa’s democracy (Alexander et al. 2018), I argue that the term “service delivery protests” emphasises the need for housing and other basic services in low-income communities, e.g., Gugulethu and Khayelitsha. Broad terms such as community protests do not explicitly capture the lack of or poor services that low-income communities face.

Given that the “notion of “community protest is broader than “service delivery protest”’ and is distinguished from other protests such as those that are “crime-related” (Alexander et al. 2018, 28), perhaps scholars should further distinguish between “community protests” and “service delivery protests.” While framing community protests is helpful in underlining the geographic area undertaking the protest, it does not immediately specify the nature of the grievances the “communities” raise. As such, similar to “labour-related” protests and “crime-related” protests, it helps to underline the “service delivery-related” protests prevalent in low-income communities across South Africa.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kenny Chiwarawara

Kenny Chiwarawara is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the South African Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. His research interests include housing, social movements, violence, social justice and migration. In 2023, he served as a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg.