LISTEN: Protests on the rise

11 668 peaceful crowd-related incidents were recorded between 2013 and 2014 with 1 907 unrest-related incidents and 1 691 incidents of public violence.

 

 

IRR research analyst Gabriela Mackay says this shows that government is not spending public money on communities.

 

 

“The trend for major service delivery protests shows that there is a greater rate of occurrence in areas with high levels of fruitless and wasteful government expenditure,” she says.

 

 

 

Out of the 176 major service delivery protests in 2014, 21 percent occurred in Gauteng, 18 percent in Eastern Cape and 18 percent KwaZulu-Natal.

 

 

Mackay says these provinces had high levels of fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

 

 

“These provinces, specifically the Eastern Cape and Gauteng, had high levels of fruitless and wasteful expenditure, with avoidable costs of R768 million and R508 million respectively,” she says.

 

(Edited by Sune Du Toit)

File photo: Gallo images