Abstract
The proliferation of service delivery protests in South Africa, as regularly seen in the media, makes it necessary to explore the underlying relationship between the level of services delivered by local municipalities and the number of protests in the country. Can the relationship be used by policy-makers to minimise the number of protests? This paper is exploratory given data challenges, and uses principal component regression to assess the relationship between protests and available service delivery data at local municipality level. The paper finds that, to minimise the number of protests, local municipalities need to further increase the provision of basic services (e.g. housing, electricity, sewerage and sanitation, refuse removal, the number of schools, nurseries, crèches and hospitals) particularly in high population density areas. With regard to water services, focus should be placed more on actual water supply to communities rather than on the number of water accounts registered with municipalities.
Highlights
The proliferation of service delivery protests in South African local municipalities, as regularly seen in the media, make it necessary to explore the underlying relationship between the level of services delivered by local municipalities and the number of protests in the country
To resolve most service delivery protests, the findings suggest more resources be channelled toward crowded areas with signs of decreases in the provision of basic services
Can the relationship be used by policy-makers to minimise the number of protests? This paper looks at the relationship between protests and available service delivery data, e.g. housing, water, electricity, sewerage and sanitation, and refuse removal at local municipality level
Summary
The proliferation of service delivery protests in South African local municipalities, as regularly seen in the media, make it necessary to explore the underlying relationship between the level of services delivered by local municipalities and the number of protests in the country. This paper looks at the relationship between protests and available service delivery data, e.g. housing, water, electricity, sewerage and sanitation, and refuse removal at local municipality (including metropolitan areas) level. The study is limited to aggregated basic services data at local municipality level released annually by Statistics South Africa.
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