According to this article in 2019, in South Africa, there were 218 recorded service delivery protests. This is a reduction from the 237 experienced in 2018 .
While this represents a decline between 2019 and 2018 it still represents a service delivery protest being experienced at almost a rate of one every second day. For those of you living outside of South Africa a service delivery protest is when communities take to the streets in protest over government‘s inability to deliver basic services to them. This includes but is not limited to the inability to provide clean potable water, accommodation or electricity. These protests are so frequent that it seems there is a perverse incentive to make yours get noticed by the authorities. As a result many of them involve destruction of public property and the disruption of traffic or schools in that area.
To use a South African colloquialism, these communities are gatvol. They have had enough and feel like taking to the streets is the only way to get their grievances heard. This did, however, make me think about my own life and what would make me take to the streets in protest. I have never been part of any protest peaceful or otherwise. As a matter of fact I can only remember signing two petitions in my life. One was in support of Olympian Caster Semenya. I cannot even remember what the other one was about.
What is the reason that I have not been part of any protest? Is it that my circumstances are very comfortable? Or is it pure apathy about things happening around me in society? Or is it something else? What would make you leave your home and physically protest? What is it in the world that you feel this strongly about? Surely the answer to this last question cannot be “nothing”. Have we become armchair critics content to vent on Twitter about all that we see wrong in society, but unwilling to do anything about it?
Almost every society that has been liberated from some sort of oppression relied on individuals from various walks of life to care enough to do something about it. I think of my parents and grandparents generations. They fought in whatever way they could to topple oppressive racist or colonial regimes in Africa. Many people’s parents did not make it. Many still carry the scars physically, emotionally and mentally today. Why is it that I have not found a single cause in my life important enough to make me leave my house and go and protest…in the street?!
All this makes me wonder if we are reaching an era of peak apathy. Outraged by a lot we see in society. Unwilling to organise. Unwilling to do something about it. Very willing to tweet about it.
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