SAPA: Police reaction ‘can fan demos’

There is a slightly longer version of this article here.

http://www.witness.co.za/index.php?showcontent&global[_id]=27501

Police reaction ‘can fan demos’
03 Sep 2009
Sapa

JOHANNESBURG — Strong-armed police officers are to blame for service
delivery protests that turn violent, researchers from the University of
Johannesburg said yesterday.

While in some cases residents resorted to violence to voice their
frustrations, the manner in which police responded to some situations
resul­ted in violent clashes between them and residents, the researchers
said in a study released yesterday.

“The cases in Balfour [Mpumalanga] and Thokoza [Gauteng] suggest that
the brutal response by the police contributed to the violence, whereas
in other areas it was the community. Police exacerbated the problem by
violent intervention,” the study revealed.

Residents from Thokoza told researcher Owen Manda that police had
randomly opened fire at protesters “without any provocation” during the
July protest, in which they called for the immediate resignation of
Ekurhuleni Mayor Ntombi Mekgwe.

Residents said Mekgwe was incompetent and that she had failed to heed
the concerns of the community.

“Local council offices are not far from the hostel and the informal
settlement, so residents said, on their way there [to hand over their
memorandum of demands], they were met by police who just opened fire
randomly, despite residents telling them that it was a peaceful
protest,” said Manda.

The research team had, however, not spoken to police about the incident.

The same had happened in Balfour where police had fired rubber bullets
randomly at residents, whether they were involved in the protests or
not.

It also found that the violent protests in all these areas had not been
fuelled by xenophobic tendencies.

“We feel the xenophobia issue has been exaggerated by politicians to
divert attention from the main issue of service delivery.

“We didn’t find any evidence that xenophobia was the prime motivator
behind the service delivery protests. While xenophobic attitudes are
widespread, these protests have been primarily directed at issues
pertaining to local government service delivery,” said Professor Peter
Alexandra, a director at the university’s centre for sociological
research.

Pakistani shop owners had attested to this, saying although their shops
were looted and vandalised, they did not feel they had been targeted for
being outsiders.

“The general feeling was that the protests were a result of bad gover­
nance and a lack of accountability, rather than xenophobia,” junior
researcher Comfort Phokela said.