Difficult questions about service delivery protests must be addressed

Service delivery protests in Buffalo City Metro have become a common occurrence.

Hardly a month passes without a protest, many of them turning violent and resulting in the damage of passing vehicles and millions worth of municipal infrastructure. Road surfaces and traffic lights are usually the easy targets for protesters.

Due to the critical nature of the damaged infrastructure, the metro is forced to fix it at a huge cost.

There are hotspots in East London where it is known protests will flare up at any time.

Earlier in the week, hundreds of residents from Scenery Park, East Bank and Egoli’s Muvhango area blockaded the Mdantsane access road, demanding houses.

For hours police tried to disperse protesters who had blocked the route linking the East London CBD to Mdantsane with rocks, dirt and tree branches.

The demands from residents are nothing new — housing and electricity.

Some residents allege that the RDP houses meant for them were allocated to other people who did not deserve them.

This is nothing new as well.

In 2019 this newspaper reported extensively on protracted clashes between law enforcement agents and residents of Vergenoeg and Fynbos. Reports indicated that 20 houses were set alight during that protest.

Housing is a basic human need and residents are justified in wanting to be heard.

However, it is time we start asking ourselves difficult questions.

Protests for houses in East London have been going on in cycles. Why is the problem not being solved once and for all?

If unknown people are occupying some RDP houses, who allowed them to do so? 

And for residents, is blocking roads and damaging infrastructure a solution?

So far it’s a strategy that has yielded few if no results beyond the usual empty political promises.

Violence begets violence and in the process a just cause is reduced to street clashes.

Some residents end up in police cells and with criminal records.

Protesters also lose the sympathy of motorists who are inconvenienced or whose cars are damaged during such protests.

Residents and municipal authorities must find a way of engaging to help solve the housing problems.

Both sides must play open cards. Issues of alleged corruption in the housing allocations must be addressed.

Politicians must stop politicking and giving people unrealistic promises.

Community leaders must step forward and tell their followers nothing but the truth.

If city authorities and residents can’t find one another, a mediator should probably be engaged, but certainly cyclical protests over the same issues must come to an end.