The Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs today Friday, 4 April 2014 organised an important but crucial round-table discussion with the academia, researchers, municipalities, the South African Police Service, and NGOs, in Kempton Park, to examine in detail the causes of violent service delivery protests marches that characterizes daily life in South Africa.
“The aim of this workshop is to examine in detail the level of violence and trends in service delivery protests and discuss solutions and mechanisms to reduce or defuse the conflict,” said the Deputy Minister Andries Nel.
Delegates argued that violent protests were related to service delivery but that there were other underlying causes such as councillors not promoting community participation in local governance and not complying with the relevant legislation to hold meetings with communities every three months.
The Deputy Minister said the increase in violence should tell us that we should engage more with communities and render increased support to municipalities. He said that protest marches were not unique to South Africa as they were a world-wide occurrence in view of the recent global economic meltdown.
The Deputy Minister said there was a need to strengthen partnerships between the government, security services, civil society and communities to reduce the level of violent service delivery protests.
He also stressed that this workshop was part of a series of round table discussions planned by his Ministry going into the future.
Contact:
Tsakani Baloyi
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