Policing Protests (RIOTS): An Investigation and Analysis of Crowd Management Strategies (original) (raw)
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Service Delivery Protest, Crowd Management, and Policing in South Africa
2013
"Service Delivery, Crowd Management, and Policing in South Africa Introduction This research work discern the criteria in which police responded to a service delivery protesters in an ideal municipality in South Africa. The research is more qualitative and it explores the methods of the police used in crowd control and management during municipal service delivery protest. Subsequent to this, the author makes an attempt to reveal the causes of service delivery protest and the resultatnt violence, looting and destroying of public and private infrastructure and properties. Furthermore, since the study revolves around municipal service delivery protest, the overview of municipalities function , importance, challenge and suggested way outs are pinpoints. At last tentative recommendations have made to the improvements of service delivery and the handling of the crowd that staged in the street to protest against local municipalities. Key Words: Civil Riot, Crowd Management, Crowd Control, Service Delivery Protest, Municipal Protests, Police Brutality. For More Information Click here http://yitaybinyam.blogspot.com/ "
An analysis of the policing of service delivery protests in the Free State
2016
The study investigated the policing of service delivery protests in South Africa with specific reference to Free State province. Failure by local governments to provide basic services to the previously disadvantaged South Africans has led to a number of service delivery protests taking place. The manner in which these protests are managed by the police in South Africa more especially the Public Order Police who are specialists in this field, raises concerns. One would perceive that the police are losing the battle in dealing with protest action for they are criticised for their brutal tactics in quelling the violence. This brutal handling of protesters dates back to the apartheid era and not much has changed contrary to the expectations of a newly formed democratic country. This therefore led to the investigation as to why the police in South Africa fail to contain such protest actions. The South African Police Services (SAPS) as it is known in a democratic South Africa employed tactics from international countries in order to introduce more professionalism in the SAPS. Although better tactics have been introduced, this did not seem to improve the situation because not only are properties destroyed but many lives are also lost through police action. The researcher conducted his investigation in the central part of South Africa in the iv Free State Province concentrating in the three main areas; namely Bloemfontein, Welkom and Bethlehem where the Public Order Police units are based. The investigation resulted in the researcher arriving at the conclusion that there are a number of challenges that are experienced by the SAPS when dealing with protests and the main problem identified was that of a shortage of manpower. This problem create challenges when it came to managing the number of protests taking place and exacerbated by not allowing the police to use the tactics that they were trained in. As much as we acknowledge these challenges, there are best practices that can be learnt from international countries. The crowd psychology strategies applied by the Swedish police as well as the high tolerance level of the British police, are the good practices that can be recommended in dealing with protests in South Africa.
An Analysis of Public Order Policing in the Gauteng Province, South Africa
International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, 2021
Background: Public order policing (POP) has attracted considerable interest from the academic community due to public protests in South Africa. This is not surprising given that it represents an important component of police work. As South Africa’s democracy has been maturing, the democratic dispensation brought the promise of civil liberties and a human rights culture. Although these parallel developments brought prospects of accountability and legitimacy by the South African Police Service (SAPS), the restoration of public order, especially during public protests, has remained a challenge for the SAPS. Purpose: The objectives of this research were threefold: to explore the role of the POP unit; to explore its capacity to respond to public protests; and to determine the effectiveness of the integrated interventions of the relevant stakeholders to restore engagement and order. Methods: A qualitative research approach employing semi-structured interviews was utilised. To understand the policing of public protests, purposeful sampling was utilised to select 25 participants comprising community members, municipal officials, and POP members. These participants were selected since they are directly involved either in responding to public order or being part of protests, and it was therefore envisaged that their contribution would assist in understanding how protests are responded to. Conclusion: The findings indicate that when the POP units that are mandated to fulfil these goals are not effective, disruptions of public order are minimised and the destructive consequences of those that do occur are contained. The results illustrate that the restoration of public order necessitates regenerating public order characterised by low expectations of violence and a heightened respect for human rights. Recommendations: This article recommends that the relevant stakeholders in collaboration with the POP unit must respond adequately to the maintenance of safety and security during protests. The relevant stakeholders and the POP unit should enhance the effectiveness of the current strategies to be able to deal with anticipated public violence and disorder, improvement of the intelligence-gathering process to plan properly, adequate and proper training facilities, reviewing and updating of training manuals, and methods based on lessons learned and best practices to ensure that the training is relevant. POP members must undergo regular training and in-service training to maintain their fitness levels, standards, proficiency, and competencies.
Protest Blues: Public opinion on the policing of protest in South Africa
South African Crime Quarterly
The policing response to rising protest action in the country has received increased attention in the last decade. This is particularly owing to concerns over confrontations during which protesters have been arrested, injured and in some instances killed by the police. Despite the criticism voiced by various stakeholders about the manner in which the police manage crowd gatherings, relatively little is known about the views of South African adults on the policing of protest action and the factors that shape such attitudes. To provide some insight, this article draws on data from a specialised module on protest-related attitudes and behaviour that was fielded as part of the 2016 round of the Human Sciences Research Council’s South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) series. This nationally representative survey included specific questions probing the public’s overall evaluation of the performance of the police in dealing with protests, and the justifiability of the use of force i...
A Review of Public Order Policing in South Africa: Reflections and Considerable Interventions
Socioeconomica, 2015
Protests are considered an avenue for people to be heard by their governments. In South Africa protests occur quite often perhaps indicating that citizens make frequent demands. There is considerable agitation for the safety of lives during protests. Therefore, to ensure that protests are peaceful, the police are frequently called in. Sadly, during the so-called peaceful protests, lives are often lost. This research is triggered by the need to understand why many lives are lost in the hands of the police during protests in South Africa. The essence of this is to see whether there are interventions that need to be in place so as to curtail the high rate of casualties during protests. The study was qualitative adopting a documentary analysis approach. The study found among others that there is a need to review public order policing in order to eliminate the killing of protesters and or those charged with policing them. Some interventions are also discussed.
Journal of Social Sciences
This article explores the role of Tshwane Metro Police (TMP) and the South African Police Service (SAPS) during service delivery protests crimes in the Tshwane area of South Africa. To date, both the Metropolitan Police Departments (MPDs) and SAPS work under immense pressure to curb the rebellion of service delivery protests and related crimes across the eight metropolitan municipalities in South Africa. At present, the MPDs and SAPS are cautious when responding to spontaneous service delivery protests and related crimes to avoid loss of lives, human rights violations, and criticisms by civil society organisations, politicians, and media. Lack of citizen conscientisation by government, civil society organisations, and community organisations regarding the role of the police during the protests make it further difficult for the police to manage these protests. A qualitative research method was followed by the researcher to collect data. An open-ended interview was conducted with twenty-one (21) selected participants from TMP and SAPS Public Order Policing (POP). The researcher followed purposive sampling. The study highlights key factors which drive service delivery protests and related crimes in the Tshwane area, such as poverty, unemployment, rampant corruption by public servants, nepotism, lack of governance, mismanagement of state funds, political infighting and interference, public distrust of politician and office bearers and the deterioration of local government in South Africa as amongst the contributing factors to service delivery protests and related crimes in South Africa. The study found that there is an urgent need for the government, security cluster, and stakeholders to conscientise the community on the role of the MPD and SAPS during the service delivery protests and related crimes. The study recommends the importance of public conscientisation concerning the role of TMP and SAPS during service delivery protests and related crimes in the Tshwane area.
Riot porn: mediations of the right to protest in South Africa
Abstract Media headlines about protests in South Africa often convey messages of anarchy and chaos. Hardly a day goes by without media reports of yet another protest in yet another township or small town, where tyres have been burnt, roads have been barricaded, and municipal buildings have been vandalised. In some cases, councillors have been attacked and their houses burnt, and some have had to resort to personal bodyguards to protect them from attack. The huge media focus on violent service delivery protests risks creating the impression that protests are inherently violent and police action against them is warranted to protect property and public safety. The ‘violent service delivery protest’ has become a chime that feeds into a moral panic about the protests spriralling out of control. Although the South African Police Services (Saps) are under pressure for growing violence against protestors, these media discourses serve the police well. In September 2014, they argued for a doubling of public order policing capacity and the need for more militarised responses to the protests, which includes the acquisition of more military hardware. The most extreme example of this shift took place in the mining town of Marikana, where, in August 2012, scores of miners were gunned down by highly armed paramilitary units, similar to the US SWAT teams. However, in indulging in ‘riot porn’, the media are missing the broader picture of peaceful protests. In fact, police and municipal statistics point to the vast majority of protests being peaceful and uneventful. Using data gathered from municipal records, as well as depth interviews and focus groups with protestors, I will explore a picture of protests that is hardly ever seen in the media. I will also explore how persistent media misrepresentation has become a driver of increasingly disruptive protests, and the love-hate relationship that has developed between the media and protestors. What is usually missed in the media coverage is that more and more people have taken to the streets to protest because they complain that these very structures of democratic representation have failed them. These complaints have been directed against the media, too. While the vast majority of gatherings and protests that municipalities are informed of, in terms of the Regulation of Gatherings Act (RGA), take place peacefully and without incident, municipalities impose a myriad conditions on protests, or even ban protests, often in violation of the Act. In other words, the state has become increasingly lawless in responding to dissent. Much of the media coverage display signs of the ‘protest paradigm’, theorised by Todd Gitlin and others, where media coverage follows certain predictable patterns that de-legitimatise protests as a form of democratic expression and criminalise protestors as being inherently unruly. By doing so, they reproduce and reinforce system-maintaining ideologies, and in South Africa’s case, a neo-liberalised social order with an increasingly authoritarian character. This paper will look at the coverage of protests in four protest sites in South Africa, and the extent to which the protest paradigm is apparent in the coverage.