Community Protests: a means to make local government listen? 27 June 2017
Speakers of this roundtable were Dr Carin Runciman, Senior Researcher at the University of Johannesburg‘s Centre for Change, and Mr Seana Nkhahle, Executive Manager at the South African Local Government Association. Dr Runciman unpacked the research she and her colleagues at the Centre for Change have been doing on the nature of political protests, focussing particularly on the frequency; the underlying causes; who are protesting; and what the political, social and economic consequences of protest are. Mr Nkhahle spoke about the SALGA’s own research and engagements they have conducted to understand so-called service delivery protests. What both speakers pointed out was that not all protests are service delivery related; the frequency is hugely overstated by the media and the causes are multi-layered and complex.
L-R: Mr Seana Nkhahle, Dr Carin Runciman, and Fr Peter-John Pearson
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