Four killed in S.Africa as ‘service delivery’ protests ramp up
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Four people were killed during protests over the cost of electricity in a South African township on Monday.
Less than a day after South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa told the leadership of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) that their first priority had to be ‘fixing the party of Nelson Mandela’, the sprawling township of Thembisa, between Johannesburg and Pretoria, was brought to a halt by rioting citizens.
The protests in the low-income community of several hundred thousand people saw many vehicles torched, along with municipal buildings, and claimed at least four lives as police fired on protesters.
Major streets were blockaded with burning barricades, in one case a street light pole being pulled down and used as part of a barricade.
Behind the protests, as with so many similar actions seen with increasing frequency around the country in the several years, is deep unhappiness among the residents of this settlement over the lack of electricity and other local government services.
The protesters, who have vowed to continue their actions until their demands are met, want to speak directly to the mayor of their area, Ekurhuleni, to voice their grievances.
Late Sunday President Ramaphosa, in closing a weekend ANC policy conference – a forum at which it was planned by his opponents in the ANC, still loyal to former president Jacob Zuma, to attack Ramaphosa’s key policies to politically weaken him – that the overwhelming requirement for the ANC at this time was renewal of itself and its position of trust with the people of South Africa.
Apart from suffering widespread corruption, which was intolerable and would be rooted out, the ANC has lost the trust of South Africans because of its failures, mainly at the local government level, where the lives of millions remained desperate and difficult, Ramaphosa told his fellow ANC leaders.
In local government elections of a year ago, the ANC fell below 50 percent overall support for the first time in its post-apartheid history of contesting for power at the ballot box, a point driven home both in Ramaphosa’s opening remarks to conference delegates, and re-iterated in his closing.
Forced into alliances
The party also lost control of three major metros and was forced into alliances with other smaller parties to maintain control of some towns and rural zones.
The Thembisa protests are neither new nor isolated, with similar protests – though most not as deadly – having gripped numerous parts of the country under ANC control in recent years as local governance has gone from poor to worse.
Ramaphosa highlighted, in speaking to provincial leaders of his party and its allies the SA Communist Party and the Congress of SA Trade Unions, that it was clear the people of South Africa had lost faith in the ANC, which now had to work to restore voters’ trust – or stand to be rejected at next year’s national and provincial government elections.
Ongoing protests by dissatisfied citizens, numbering up to 13 a day prior to Covid, and the ANC’s poor showing at the polls last year, had demonstrated that there was widespread dissatisfaction with the ‘party of Nelson Mandela’, and that it was up to the current crop of leaders to redeem the ANC, said Ramaphosa.
Out on the streets of Thembisa, with the wreckage of a day of chaotic rampaging littering the empty roads, and despite a heavy police presence, there was no less anger Tuesday, with residents saying they would continue to protest until their demands for better services were met.
Helping drive the unhappiness in Thembisa, and many other similar settlements, are the general problems of a weak economy, high unemployment, rising inflation, runaway food, fuel and electricity costs, and an intensifying programme of action to remove non-paying electricity recipients from the grid.
In many such settlements, a culture of illegal connections and non-payment for electricity has helped drive up an unpaid power bill, running into the billions of dollars and owed to troubled national power producer Eskom—contributing roughly 10 percent of the firm’s total debt of over US$28 billion.
Now, with Eskom tottering from one series of blackouts to another – more such being announced by Eskom as likely, early Tuesday, as the utility battles to keep its ageing and poorly-maintained fleet of coal-fired plants operating amid high mid-winter demand – a crackdown has been implemented involving the disconnection of tens of thousands of illegal electricity recipients.
In low-income communities, and regardless of whether the authorities are ‘in the right’ legally to make disconnections, they come as yet another burden on the poorest citizens.
Combined with extremely poor service in terms of water, refuse, sewage, road and street light maintenance, among other aspects, the electricity disconnections are playing a part in driving yet deeper discontent.
Instances of looting
With numerous municipal vehicles and buildings, including municipal offices, torched during the demonstrations, and with sporadic instances of looting being reported, police were taking no chances early Tuesday, putting on a show of force to dissuade further rioting.
But community members, unhappy over the scrapping of a formerly free basic electricity allocation to each household, said that now, even if connected, they could not afford the high price of electricity.
The City of Ekurhuleni said that the subsidy had not been “completely stopped”, a comment which appeared to have no relevance to disgruntled citizens who, like many others, have resorted to violence, looting and arson to express their frustrations and obtain official attention to their demands.
