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63
SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
Protest Blues
Public opinion on the policing
of protest in South Africa
Benjamin James Roberts, Narnia Bohler-Muller,
Jarè Struwig, Steven Lawrence Gordon,
Ngqapheli Mchunu, Samela Mtyingizane and
Carin Runciman*
broberts@hsrc.ac.za
nbohlermuller@hsrc.ac.za
jstruwig@hsrc.ac.za
sgordon@hsrc.ac.za
nmchunu@hsrc.ac.za
smtyingizane@hsrc.ac.za
crunciman@uj.ac.za
http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2413-3108/2017/v0n62a3040
* Benjamin Roberts is a senior research manager, Narnia Bohler-Muller is executive director, and Jarè Struwig is a chief research manager in
the Democracy, Governance & Service Delivery (DGSD) Research Programme at the Human Sciences Research Council. Steven Gordon
is a post-doctoral researcher in the programme, and Ngqapheli Mchunu and Samela Mtyingizaneare Masters interns. Carin Runciman is a
senior researcher at the Social Change Research Unit at the University of Johannesburg.
The policing response to rising protest action in the country has received increased attention in the
last decade. This is particularly owing to concerns over confrontations during which protesters have
been arrested, injured and in some instances killed by the police. Despite the criticism voiced by
various stakeholders about the manner in which the police manage crowd gatherings, relatively little
is known about the views of South African adults on the policing of protest action and the factors that
shape such attitudes. To provide some insight, this article draws on data from a specialised module
on protest-related attitudes and behaviour that was fielded as part of the 2016 round of the Human
Sciences Research Council’s South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) series. This nationally
representative survey included specific questions probing the public’s overall evaluation of the
performance of the police in dealing with protests, and the justifiability of the use of force in policing
protest action. The article will present a national picture of people’s views on the policing of protest,
based on these measures, and then determine the extent to which there are distinct underlying
socio-demographic cleavages in these data. A combination of bivariate and multivariate analysis
is undertaken in order to understand how perceptions of effectiveness, acceptability and reported
participation in protest (especially disruptive and violent actions) shape people’s views regarding
policing of protest. The article concludes with a discussion that reflects on the implications of the
research for the policing of protest action in future, given the appreciable rise in the incidence of
protest since the mid-2000s and the mounting tensions between state institutions and communities
over the political, moral and constitutional arguments for and against such actions.
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64
The media and commentators have often
referred to South Africa as ‘the protest
capital of the world’.1 Indeed, the country has
experienced a considerable increase in protest
activity in the last 10 years, some of which has
been quite violent.2 The manner in which these
protests have been handled from a policing
perspective has placed law enforcement in
South Africa under appreciable public scrutiny.3
Crowd control of these protests by police and
in particular the Public Order Police (POP) units
has been called into question by academics
as well as civil society.4 The death of Andries
Tatane, who subsequently became a symbol
of inadequate policing during protests, has
regularly been cited as an example of police
failure in this area. The August 2012 Marikana
massacre also highlights the failure of policing
during protests, and the lack of response from
government.5 Despite the criticism voiced
by civil society and other stakeholders about
the manner in which the police control crowd
gatherings, relatively little is known about South
Africans’ views on the policing of protest action
and the factors that shape such attitudes. To
provide some insight, this article draws on
recent nationally representative public opinion
data to examine attitudes about the policing of
protest action.
The violent treatment of protesters at the hands
of police officers is not a recent aberration but
dates back to the apartheid era.6 The General
Law Amendment Act 37 of 1963 and the
Criminal Procedure Amendment Act 96 (180-
Day Detention Law) of 1965 gave the South
African Police (SAP) the power to arrest anyone
suspected of acting against the state and hold
them without charge for 90 days.7 These laws
were used to suppress protests and arrest
protesters. SAP officers often lacked proper
crowd control training and were deployed to
suppress public protests armed with shotguns,
bullwhips and batons.8 The result was brutal
and violent. Perhaps the most tragic example
is the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, when police
fired live rounds into a crowd of between
5 000 and 7 000 protesters, killing 69 and
injuring hundreds. Similar incidents occurred
in 1976 during the Soweto uprising as well as
in Uitenhage in 1985, when 20 people were
killed.9 During the apartheid period, the policing
of protest action ‘ensured that sustained
brutality’ was a dominant feature of a ‘black
South African experience’.10 One notable
outcome of this history of authoritarian policing
is a deep-seated lack of public confidence in
the legitimacy of the police.11
With the transition to democracy in the early
1990s, the new government sought to restore
public confidence in the authorities’ ability to
manage protests. Legislation, including the
South African Police Service Act of 1995 and
the Regulation of Gatherings Act of 1993, was
introduced to reform how the police handled
crowd control. The fragmented policing service
that apartheid spatial planning had produced
was swept away and a single, centralised South
African Police Service (SAPS) was created.
A new organisational transformation agenda
aimed to alter ‘police cultures, structure and
symbols’, and brought new emphasis on a
community policing model.12 Unlike the former
SAP, the new SAPS would no longer suppress
popular will, but would work with communities
to maintain order and law.13 POP units were
created in 1996 to ensure prudent and
judicious crowd control.14 In keeping with these
commitments, the country became a member
of the Peace and Security Council, which is an
African Union organ concerned with stability
and the resolution of conflict in Africa.15
In 2002, POP units were restructured into Area
Crime Combating Units (ACCUs), reflecting a
strategic shift in focus from crowd management
policing to crime reduction.16 POP units were
further restructured in 2006 with the number
of units cut from 43 in 2002 to 23; thereby
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SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
significantly reducing the number of dedicated
POP members.17 The restructuring of public
order policing functions coincided with an
increase in the number of crowd management
incidents the ACCUs/POP units had to
respond to, and the restructuring thus had a
negative impact on the police’s ability to deal
with protest.18 This has placed a considerable
burden on existing police resources and there
has been an attempt to strengthen POP units
by increasing the number of dedicated, trained
POP officers and the number of POP units. In
2014 the SAPS reported that POP had 28 units
and 4 175 officers, and requested R3.3 billion
for further expansion.19 The government aims
to employ 11 800 POP officers by 2020.20
The capacity of the SAPS to perform its
crowd management duties is undermined by
negative public sentiment towards the police.
A small body of scholarship has attempted
to understand antipathy towards the police
in spite of the considerable policy change
and experimentation post-1994. International
scholarship on legitimacy and procedural
justice has tended to demonstrate that
public judgments about police fairness and
effectiveness have a considerable influence
on an individual’s overall evaluations of police
legitimacy.21 A number of recent studies have
raised concern about the fairness with which
the police treat ordinary South Africans.22
Existing research suggests that trust in the
police is low, which undermines the legitimacy
of this important institution.23
Despite the widespread policing reforms since
1994, many challenges exist in relation to
police legitimacy in present-day South Africa.
The police’s role during apartheid likely weighs
heavily in evaluations of present-day policing
for many people, and the resurgence of para-
militarism in policing practices, such as the
deployment of Tactical Response Team (TRT)
units at Marikana, likely produces ambivalent
public responses. The use of excessive
and lethal force, mounting issues of police
corruption, lingering concerns over fair and
equal treatment, as well as the perception
of police incompetence in the face of high
crime rates, further complicate the picture.
This has resulted in a remarkable turn towards
various forms of non-state policing,24 including
vigilantism, which in turn is likely to inform
perceptions of police legitimacy. These factors
have resulted in increasing calls for a form
of minimalist policing in which police activity
focuses on more effectively performing core
functions such as criminal investigation and
emergency response, with non-state actors
taking strong roles in everyday policing and
crime prevention.25
From an international perspective, it was not
until the late 1980s and 1990s that the policing
of protest became a subject of substantive
interest within the social sciences, with early
survey-based and qualitative research focusing
on the repression of protest and on police
actions in maintaining public order.26 In 1998
the concept of ‘protest policing’ was formally
introduced through the influential volume
edited by Donatella della Porta and Herbert
Reiter titled Policing protest: the control of
demonstrations in Western democracies.
Defined simply as ‘the police handling of
protest events’, protest policing within
democratic societies was portrayed as involving
a fine balance between protecting public law
and order and defending individual freedoms
and the citizen right to political participation
and demonstration.27 The latter rights are
regarded as quintessential elements of liberal
democracy; consequently, the style of policing
adopted in controlling protest, which has the
potential to either polarise or win the favour of
majoritarian public opinion, has come to receive
much academic and policy scrutiny. The public
order literature has charted how approaches
to protest policing have evolved over the
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66
decades, from what was characteristically
referred to as an ‘escalated force’ model, which
predominated in the 1960s, to a ‘negotiated
management’ approach in the 1980s and
1990s. The former involved a general disregard
for the constitutional right to demonstrate
and a failure to issue protest permits,
tolerance only of ‘comfortable’ (most peaceful)
forms of protest, nominal police–protester
communication, a predisposition for forceful
arrest of perceived agitators, and the use of
force as a standard protest control method.28
By contrast, negotiated management entails
respect for civic rights, tolerance of a certain
level of disruptive behaviour, a strong emphasis
on communication, reliance on arrests as a last
resort, and adherence to minimum necessary
force.29 Although there is recognition that the
policing of protest has become less violent in
Western democracies in recent decades with
the rise of a softer, more tolerant and flexible
approach, there are rising concerns that the
pendulum may have begun to swing again
towards repressive tendencies in the face of
transnational, anti-globalisation protests and as
a mounting response to terrorist threats.30 This,
in turn, has led to renewed attention to the style
of and explanations for protest policing.
In what remains the most widely applied
theoretical model explaining styles of protest
policing, Della Porter and Reiter argue that
the prevailing approach to police handling
of protest is informed by a two-tiered set of
factors.31 At the first level, these determinants
include: (1) the organisational structure and
culture of policing, including the extent of
police discretionary powers and the protest-
related stereotypes they hold; (2) the political
context and culture of a country, including
dominant norms about the role of the state
and citizen rights; (3) public opinion and
interests expressed by various collective actors,
including government, social movements,
political parties, trade unions, interest groups,
civil society organisations and the media;
and (4) the actual experiences of interaction
between police and protesters.32 The extent
and nature of the impact of these factors
on protest policing approaches is ultimately
mediated by their level of influence, at the
second tier, on ‘police knowledge’. This
refers to the police’s perceptions of external
reality, both at the individual officer level and
collectively. What is of particular theoretical
relevance for this article is that public opinion
is acknowledged as having a potential
influence on trends in protest policing
practice. However, this influence is conditional
on such public preferences reaching and
changing the way the police view the
context into which they are sent to maintain
public order. People’s understanding of and
response to protest dynamics are also likely
to be informed by the media, which publishes
and popularises the preferences of influential
opinion leaders such as government, political
parties and lobby groups. This, taken together
with broader contextual events, may lead
to a demand for either tougher or softer
interventions in policing protest.
The next section of the article provides an
outline of the survey data and measures used
in our study. This leads into a presentation
of our findings, which is structured in three
parts. Firstly, we examine the extent to which
the public on average expresses confidence
in the way protest is being policed, and
determine the extent to which distinct socio-
demographic differences in perspective
exist. Secondly, we cast attention on the
use of force by police in managing protests
in the country, focusing in particular on the
perceived justifiability of such behaviour.
Finally, we conduct multivariate regression
analysis to discern which factors influence
individual evaluations of the policing of
protest. This analysis aims to provide an
understanding of how various elements shape
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SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
opinions regarding the policing of protest:
the role of basic socio-demographic factors,
the perceived effectiveness and acceptability
of protest, reported participation in protest,
as well as views on use of force and general
trust in the police. The article concludes with
a discussion that reflects on the implications
of the survey results for the policing of protest
action in future.
Methodology
Data
This study employs quantitative data from
the 2016 round of the SASAS, a repeat
cross-sectional survey series that has been
conducted annually since 2003 by the Human
Sciences Research Council (HSRC). Each
SASAS round has been designed to yield
a nationally representative sample of adults
aged 16 and older living in private residences.
Statistics South Africa’s 2011 Population
Census Small Area Layers (SALs) were used
as primary sampling units (PSUs). For each
round of SASAS, 500 PSUs are drawn,
with probability proportional to size, from a
sampling frame containing all of the
2011 SALs.33
In each of these drawn PSUs, 21 dwelling
units were selected and systematically
grouped into three sub-samples of seven,
each corresponding to the three SASAS
questionnaire versions that are fielded.
The relevant protest action questions were
included in only one of the three instruments,
and thus administered to seven visiting
points in each PSU.34 The sample size of the
study consisted of 3 079 interviews, which is
equivalent to an 88% response rate.
The English base version of the research
instruments was translated into the country’s
major official languages and the surveys were
administered in the preferred language of
the respondent. This was to ensure that all
respondents in different provinces understood
the questionnaire and that it was culturally
equivalent and consistent across all languages.
Pilot testing was conducted in an attempt to
ensure the validity of the research instrument.
Interviews were conducted by means of face-to-
face interviewing, using print questionnaires.35
Measures on the policing of protest
The 2016 SASAS round included a specialised
module on protest-related attitudes and
behaviour. This was designed in conjunction
with the University of Johannesburg’s Centre
for Social Change. The module included two
items that address the policing of protest action
in the country. The first measure addresses the
perceived effectiveness with which the police
are dealing with protest action. Specifically,
respondents were asked: ‘In your opinion, how
well are the police dealing with protests in South
Africa?’ Responses were captured using a four-
point scale, with the coded options labelled as
‘very well’, ‘fairly well’, ‘not very well’, and ‘not
at all well’. The second survey measure deals
with the perceived legitimacy of the use of force
by the police in responding to protests. The
question was introduced with an explanation of
use of force, followed by an example aimed to
elicit a clear response by the public on whether
they regard such police action as justifiable
or not. The specific phrasing of the question
is as follows: ‘There are different views on the
use of force by police during protest action. By
force we mean the use of rubber bullets, stun
grenades, tear gas and water cannons by the
police. Please say whether the use of force by
the police against protesters who throw stones
at them is justified in all cases, is justified in
some cases, or is never justified.’
Police performance in handling
protest action
From Figure 1 it is apparent that barely a third
(37%) of South Africans consider the police to
be performing ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ well in handling
INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES & UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN
68
protests in the country.36 By contrast, a majority
(60%) believe that the police are faring poorly
in their response to protest, with 35% stating
they are not performing very well and a further
25% saying they are not performing well at all.
The remaining 3% were uncertain as to how to
evaluate this form of policing.
To better understand whether the South African
public holds relatively uniform or discrepant
views in relation to the policing of protest
action, we examined the nature and extent
of variance in perspective, based on various
socio-demographic attributes. The findings
show that there were no statistically significant
differences in evaluation based on age, gender,
race, marital status, educational attainment,
employment status or standard of living level.
Employment status has a modest effect, with
unemployed adults providing more critical views
than pensioners and others who were labour
inactive.37 This suggests that demographic
variables do not exert much influence over how
the public views the way in which protest action
is being policed in the country, and points to a
fairly broad level of consistency in attitude.
There is, however, notable spatial variation
underlying the national average. In terms of
type of geographic location, we find that those
residing in informal urban settlements tend to
offer harsher views on police performance in
handling protests than those based in formal
urban areas, rural traditional authority areas and
on rural farms. Provincially, those in Limpopo
and the Northern Cape provide less critical
assessments of the effectiveness of the policing
of protest, although even in these instances
the public remains quite ambivalent, with
virtually equal shares adopting favourable and
unfavourable positions. At the other extreme,
the most negative evaluation comes from
residents in the North West province, where
approximately three-quarters (74%) indicated
that the police were faring poorly in dealing with
protest action. Unfortunately, given the absence
of trend data on the measure, we cannot
determine the extent to which this has been
informed by events in Marikana five years ago,
or as a result of other deaths that have occurred
during protest in the North West, such as the
water protests in Mothutlung that resulted in the
death of four people. It is, however, plausible
that these tragic events may have had an
indelible effect on attitudes towards public order
policing and the police more generally in the
province. Bivariate testing reveals that those
living in the North West, Gauteng and KwaZulu-
Natal are more negative in outlook than those in
Limpopo and the Northern Cape.38
Figure 1: Evaluation of the effectiveness of the policing of protest, 2016 (%, n=2989)
50
40
30
20
10
0
Very well Fairly well Not very well Not at all well (Do not know)
7
30 35
25
3
Source: HSRC South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) 2016.
Note: The vertical lines represent the 95% confidence intervals for each point estimate.
69
SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
Table 1: Spatial differences in the evaluations of how the police are handling protest action, 2016
(percentages and mean scores)
Percentage:
‘very’ or
‘fairly’ well
Percentage:
‘not very well’ or
‘not at all well’
Mean score
(0–3 scale)
Unweighted base
N with/without
‘don’t know’
values
National average 37 60 1.19 2 989 / 2 871
Geographic type
Urban formal 36 60 1.20 2 068 / 1 978
Informal
settlements 26 68 0.91 206 / 196
Rural traditional
authority areas 41 58 1.29 555 / 544
Rural farms 47 44 1.39 160 / 153
Province
Western Cape 35 61 1.17 393 / 373
Eastern Cape 44 56 1.24 424 / 422
Northern Cape 47 48 1.44 219 / 214
Free State 38 57 1.29 207 / 192
KwaZulu-Natal 32 66 1.13 561 / 551
North West 20 74 0.99 214 / 204
Gauteng 37 62 1.13 449 / 431
Mpumalanga 35 51 1.19 242 / 208
Limpopo 48 51 1.49 280 / 276
Source: HSRC South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) 2016.
Note: The mean scores are based on a reversed scale, where 0=’not at all well’ and 3=’very well’. ‘Do not know’ responses are not presented in the table. The unweighted
base number of observations are included in the final column based on the distributions with and without ‘don’t know’ responses included. The percentages in the table
are based on the former, and the mean scores the latter.
The justifiability of using
force in policing protest
The use of force in the context of policing
protest in the country has received increased
attention over the last decade. This has been
prompted in particular by specific high-profile
events, including the killing of Andries Tatane
and the Marikana massacre, as well as the
manner in which the #FeesMustFall protests
were handled. This raises the question as
to whether the public favours or rejects the
kinds of displays of force that have become
an increasingly common response by public
order police in cases of violent protest. In Figure
2 we present the national distribution, based
on the measure regarding public views on the
use of force in policing protest. Slightly more
than a tenth (13%) regard a forceful policing
response as unequivocally justifiable, with close
to half of South Africans seeing such action as
acceptable in certain instances. Only around
a third (35%) expressly rejected the use of
force in responding to protests, with a nominal
share remaining uncertain in their views on this
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70
matter. This is quite a disconcerting finding,
as it seems to suggest that the public has
an appetite for a strong policing response (at
least in certain contextual circumstances) in
dealing with more violent forms of protest. It
does nonetheless resonate with the public
preferences about how criminality ought to
be dealt with in general, which tends towards
a demand for punitive actions.39 It is again
important to understand how widely this
general predisposition is shared among the
adult public before we return to the issue of
how this and other factors inform confidence in
the policing of protest more broadly.
At the subgroup level, we find no significant
differences in views on the use of force based
on age, gender, educational attainment,
employment status, marital status, or standard
of living level. There are, however, notable
population group and geographic differences
that are apparent, as presented in Table 2. The
findings show that white adults and, to a lesser
extent, coloured adults are more inclined to
favour the use of force than black African and
Indian adults. The main basis of this distinction
is due to a greater tendency among white and
coloured adults to respond that the use of
force is ‘sometimes justifiable’, while the opposite
pattern is true in relation to the ‘never justifiable’
category. There is no significant variation in the
shares responding ‘always justifiable’, though
Indian adults were more likely to voice uncertainty
(15% compared to 5–8% for the rest). Despite
these differences, the predominant response in
all cases is that police use of force is viewed as
warranted in certain circumstances, even if the
degree of support for this option varies.
The observed differences with respect to type of
geographic location are only barely statistically
significant. Those residing in informal urban
settlements were less likely than formal urban
dwellers to respond that the use of force is
‘sometimes justifiable’, while conversely, those in
informal settlements were more likely to respond
that it is ‘never justifiable’ than were those in
formal urban areas. Those living on rural farms
displayed greater uncertainty than those in
informal settlements and rural traditional
authority areas.
What factors influence evaluations
of the policing of protest?
Apart from the descriptive analysis outlined
above, we also conducted regression analysis
Figure 2: Views on the use of force in policing protest action, 2016 (%, n=2989)
60
50
40
30
20
10
0(Do not know)
5
Justified in
all cases
13
Justified in
some cases
47
Never
justified
35
Source: HSRC South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) 2016.
Note: The vertical lines represent the 95% confidence intervals for each point estimate.
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SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
Table 2: Significant differences in views on the use of force in policing protest, 2016 (percentages)
Always
justifiable
Sometimes
justifiable
Never
justifiable
(Do not
know)
Total Unweighted
base N
% Always /
sometimes
National average 13 47 35 5 100 2 989 60
Population group
Black African 13 45 38 5 100 1 795 57
Coloured 11 53 28 8 100 468 64
Indian / Asian 10 45 31 14 100 353 55
White 17 59 19 5 100 373 76
Geographic type
Urban formal 13 48 32 7 100 2 067 61
Informal
settlements 14 38 45 3 100 207 52
Rural traditional
authority areas 13 47 37 2 100 554 60
Rural farms 7 50 33 10 100 161 57
Province
Western Cape 7 57 30 7 100 393 63
Eastern Cape 11 59 31 0 100 422 69
Northern Cape 18 50 25 7 100 220 68
Free State 21 41 24 14 100 206 62
KwaZulu-Natal 11 51 35 3 100 568 62
North West 9 44 37 9 100 211 54
Gauteng 14 42 40 4 100 447 56
Mpumalanga 21 31 32 16 100 242 52
Limpopo 14 40 44 2 100 280 54
Source: HSRC South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS) 2016.
to provide a clearer sense of the significant
predictors of public evaluations of the
effectiveness of the policing of protest. In so
doing, we aimed to ascertain whether the
statistically significant findings identified earlier
remained when we combined the variables
into the multivariate models. Given that the
dependent variable is an ordered categorical
measure, we used ordered logistic regression
techniques. For ease of interpretation, we
reversed the scaling of the variable, so that a
value of ‘0’ was assigned to those reporting that
the police are faring ‘not at all well’ in dealing
with protest, a score of ‘1’ to those answering
‘not very well’, ‘2’ to those ‘fairly well’, and
lastly a value of ‘3’ to those responding that the
police are doing ‘very well’. A series of models
was then generated, as presented in Table 3.
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72
We begin with a base model containing only the
socio-demographic attributes of respondents
(Model 0). This is followed by five models that
test the effect of including specific attitudinal
or behavioural measures to the base model
(Models I-V). Finally, we run a fully specified
model that includes the socio-demographic and
all the additional indictors (Model VI). In each of
these ordered logistic models, we present the
proportional Odds Ratios (OR).40
Our base model (Model 0) confirms the
earlier result that virtually none of the socio-
demographic attributes is a statistically
significant predictor of the way South Africans
assess the policing of protest. Specifically, the
model indicates that there is no evidence of an
age, gender, race, marital status, employment
status, or educational effect informing such
evaluations. Political party identification was
also included in the model. Using support
for the ruling party as the reference group,
supporting an opposition party was not
found to be a significant determinant in this
model. This finding holds true even after other
variables are added in subsequent models in
the table. Geography matters to some degree,
with residents of informal settlements more
inclined than those in formal urban areas to
report lower policing effectiveness scores. This
may partly be owing to a greater likelihood
that respondents have participated in protest
action, and by extension that they have more
exposure on average to public order policing.
Provincially, those living in Limpopo and the
Northern Cape were significantly more likely
to offer more favourable views of the manner
in which protests are being policed. The Odds
Ratio is lowest among residents of North West
province, but this narrowly misses out on being
a statistically significant finding when controlling
for other variables. The findings observed in the
base model remain largely unchanged once
other attitudinal and behavioural measures are
included in models I – VI.
In Model I, recent participation in disruptive or
violent protest is added as a variable together
with the socio-demographic attributes. This
behavioural measure is based on whether
South Africans report having engaged in one,
both or neither of the two types of protest in
the five years prior to being interviewed, and
is accordingly scaled on a 0 to 2 scale. The
results show that protest participation does not
have a significant influence on how respondents
rate the performance of the police in policing
incidents of protest. Alternate formulations
of the protest participation indicators, such
as accommodating more distant protest
behaviour, peaceful actions, and testing
out separate disruptive and violent protest
behaviour measures in the model, also failed
to produce statistically significant results. This
is an important finding, since one might have
assumed that exposure to public order policing
through direct participation in disruptive or
violent protest might lend itself towards more
critical views on the policing of protest. It
nonetheless appears that engagement in such
forms of protest does not predispose individuals
to adopt a particular outlook in their views of the
police that is characteristically distinct from that
held by the rest of the public.
We were also interested in determining whether
respondents’ views of the general image and
perceived effectiveness of disruptive and
violent protest action had any bearing on their
evaluations of the policing of protest. These
measures are more fully examined in their
own right in the article by Bohler-Muller and
colleagues in this special issue. The survey
included separate measures on whether
respondents tend to regard peaceful, disruptive
and violent protest action in a positive or
negative light, with responses captured on
a 7-point scale ranging between ‘extremely
negative’ and ‘extremely positive’. For analytical
purposes, we created an index focusing on the
image of disruptive and violent action, which
73
SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
was constructed by averaging together the
scores for the two indicators, which retains
the original 1–7 negative to positive scaling.
Similarly, the survey fielded questions on the
effectiveness of the three types of protest,
using a 7-point scale ranging from ‘extremely
unsuccessful’ to ‘extremely successful’. We
constructed an index of the effectiveness of
disruptive and violent actions by again averaging
the two constituent items, with higher scores
continuing to represent greater perceived
effectiveness of these actions. The testing of
these attitudinal measures as predictors of
evaluations of public order policing is presented
in models II and III respectively. Both the image
and perceived effectiveness of disruptive
and violent protest action are not significant
factors in explaining public assessments of
performance in policing protest, as was also
observed with participation in protest action.
In Model IV, we concentrate on the
relationship between views of the policing
of protest and the perceived acceptability
of the use of force by police in responding
to protests. In this instance, we find that the
justifiability of the use of force in policing
protest emerges as a significant predictor.
Those who view the use of force as never
or only sometimes justifiable tend to provide
the SAPS with lower performance scores in
terms of their handling of protests, compared
to those who view the use of force as always
justifiable. Even those respondents who were
unsure about their position on the use of force
tended to offer significantly lower evaluative
scores relative to those viewing such force
as always permissible when responding to
protest. This remains the strongest single
effect based on the various indicators that we
tested in our analysis.
Table 3: Ordered logistic regression of the effectiveness of the policing of protest, 2016
Model 0 Model I Model II Model III Model IV Model V Model VI
OR OR OR OR OR OR OR
Age 1.010 1.011 1.013 1.012 1.005 1.012 1.006
Age squared 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000 1.000
Female 1.157 1.168 1.152 1.151 1.115 1.185 1.134
Race (ref=Black African)
Coloured 1.141 1.150 1.143 1.001 1.087 1.072 0.949
Indian / Asian 0.863 0.878 0.791 0.800 0.891 0.906 0.792
White 1.557* 1.573* 1.537* 1.451 1.255 1.504* 1.173
Employment status
Unemployed 0.913 0.906 0.897 0.909 0.920 0.839 0.849
Pensioner 1.491 1.489 1.500 1.456 1.457 1.258 1.203
Student/learner 0.770 0.760 0.797 0.781 0.758 0.714 0.709
Labour inactive 1.187 1.182 1.223 1.201 1.048 0.999 0.920
Other 0.514* 0.515* 0.513* 0.520* 0.425** 0.392** 0.347***
Marital status
Separated, divorced or
widowed 0.936 0.936 0.947 0.940 0.970 0.963 0.983
Never married 0.939 0.936 0.943 0.954 0.876 0.973 0.908
Continued on page 74
INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES & UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN
74
Model 0 Model I Model II Model III Model IV Model V Model VI
Years of schooling 0.988 0.987 0.985 0.987 0.976 0.983 0.974
Province (ref=Western Cape)
Eastern Cape 1.308 1.304 1.330 1.172 1.100 1.136 0.945
Northern Cape 1.935** 1.929** 1.942** 1.775** 1.622* 1.799** 1.501
Free State 1.438 1.442 1.439 1.213 1.187 1.166 0.919
KwaZulu-Natal 1.068 1.053 1.104 0.961 0.996 0.919 0.844
North West 0.673 0.671 0.672 0.569* 0.682 0.679 0.615
Gauteng 1.128 1.112 1.150 1.025 1.129 1.118 1.080
Mpumalanga 1.105 1.104 1.102 0.958 0.945 0.894 0.789
Limpopo 2.064** 2.067** 2.059** 1.794* 2.279** 1.735* 1.812*
Geographic location (ref=formal urban)
Urban informal 0.572* 0.567 0.590 0.560* 0.590 0.557* 0.539*
Rural traditional authority
areas 1.181 1.191 1.187 1.170 1.158 1.048 1.059
Rural farms 1.540* 1.542* 1.442 1.471 1.715** 1.437 1.455
Party identification (ref=ANC)
Democratic Alliance 0.937 0.935 0.920 0.875 0.807 0.946 0.820
Other political parties 0.781 0.784 0.781 0.763 0.691 0.960 0.819
No party 1.227 1.194 1.124 1.106 1.118 1.325 1.158
Undeclared / undecided 1.557* 1.566* 1.561* 1.540* 1.346 1.661* 1.451*
Participation in protest in last
5 years … 1.022 … … … … 0.897
Image of disruptive & violent
action … … 0.938 … … … 1.045
Effectiveness of disruptive &
violent action … … … 0.912 … … 0.918
Use of force in policing protest
(ref=always justified)
Justified in some cases … … … … 0.498** … 0.539**
This is never justified … … … … 0.107*** … 0.133***
(Do not know) … … … … 0.236*** … 0.276***
Overall confidence in the
police … … … … … 1.853*** 1.672***
/cut1 -0.922 -0.917 -1.095 -1.379 -2.759 0.570 -1.654
/cut2 0.687 0.698 0.526 0.246 -0.919 2.352 0.331
/cut3 2.859 2.859 2.680 2.406 1.459 4.669 2.806
Pseudo R20.0214 0.0220 0.0227 0.0234 0.0893 0.0708 0.1251
Number of observations 2789 2783 2756 2728 2776 2758 2687
Note: OR = odds ratio. The dependent variable is a reversed scaled version of the performance of the policing of protest measures, with 0=‘not at all well’, 1=‘not very well’,
2=‘fairly well’ and 3=‘very well’. ‘Don’t know’ responses were omitted. Statistical significance is represented as follows: *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001.
75
SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
In approaching the study, we were keen to
examine the extent to which one’s general
confidence in the police as an authority has
a bearing on appraisals of specific areas of
performance, such as public order policing.
Our hypothesis was that those who exhibit
distrust of the police would on average tend to
voice more critical views on performance, and
vice versa. Indeed, this proves to be the case,
as demonstrated in Model V. Our measure of
overall police confidence was initially designed
as part of a European Social Survey module on
confidence in the criminal justice system, which
has been fielded in the SASAS series in recent
years. The question is phrased as follows:
‘Taking into account all the things the police
are expected to do, would you say they are
doing a good job or a bad job?’, with responses
captured using a five-point scale ranging from a
‘very good job’ to a ‘very bad job’. For modelling
purposes, we reversed the scale, so that higher
values indicate greater confidence levels. The
appeal of this item is that it is phrased in a
similar way to our policing of protest item. We
also tested the effect of an alternate police
confidence measure that explicitly asks about
levels of trust in police, using a standard five-
point trust scale. Based on this specification, the
finding remains the same.
Lastly, Model VI runs the analysis with all the
different indicators included. The findings
from the preceding models remain largely
unchanged. The socio-demographic measures
continue to be insignificant factors, with only
minor geographic effects present. Limpopo
residents continue to express higher than
average performance ratings, although a
similar pattern in the Northern Cape loses its
salience once other attitudinal and behavioural
variables are controlled for. South Africans living
in informal settlements continue to exhibit a
more disapproving stance than those in other
geographic locales on how protests are being
policed. The perceived justifiability of the use
of force, in addressing protest, in addition to
overall levels of confidence in the police retain
their positive association with protest policing
evaluations. Past participation in violent and
disruptive protest actions, together with the
image and perceived effectiveness of such
protest, continues to register no discernible
influence in appraising SAPS performance.
Discussion
Our examination of public attitudes towards
protest policing has shown that, on the whole,
performance evaluations tend to be fairly
negative. This perspective is commonly shared
across various demographic and class traits,
though appreciable geographic variation is
nonetheless apparent. These results confound
expectations of lower levels of confidence in
police crowd management activities among
more vulnerable and marginalised segments
of society, which indicates that the so-called
‘rebellion of the poor’ in protest behaviour is not
resolutely manifest in the mind of the public.41
This is an interesting finding that will require
further testing, using data on a broader set of
concepts and constructs.
In considering other factors beyond socio-
demographic markers that might help explain
the way citizens appraise protest policing,
the lack of statistical significance in relation
to measures such as recent participation in
protest action as well as support for and the
perceived effectiveness of disruptive and violent
protest actions, is particularly striking. It signifies
that one’s experience of engaging in protest
action – and by extension first-hand exposure
to the manner in which the police approach
crowd management – does not exert a sizable
influence on one’s view of police performance
in undertaking such duties. Furthermore, one’s
general predisposition towards disruptive and
violent actions also does not play a role in
structuring expressed levels of confidence in
the policing of protest action. So, an aversion
INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES & UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN
76
to more disruptive and violent forms of protest
does not automatically translate into a more
sanguine view of public order policing.
What clearly seems to matter, though, is the
public’s position in relation to the acceptability
of the use of force in maintaining public order.
The more one deems it justifiable for officers to
use violence in particular situations, the more
inclined one is to provide a positive evaluation of
the policing of protest. For approximately a third
of South Africans, the use of force by the police
in the context of protest is deemed to be wholly
unacceptable. This is associated with acutely
diminished confidence in the police’s handling
of protest. It may be that for this segment of
society, the unfairness and brutality that have
characterised the policing of protests have
violated their notion of ‘good’ policing and the
values of fair treatment, appropriate conduct
and respect that maintain a sense of legitimacy,
trust and confidence.42 By contrast, for the
smaller minority (one in eight, or 13%) that
considers the use of non-lethal physical force as
always justifiable, levels of confidence in public
order policing is more than four times higher.
This suggests, somewhat controversially, that
the use of force to control protesters may serve
to promote or reinforce police legitimacy for
some South Africans. This would imply that, for
this group, a less aggressive or violent approach
to public order policing might bring into question
the legitimacy of, and confidence in, the
police. Although our study does not provide
a comprehensive account of the attitudes
towards police use of force in protest situations,
international evidence points to aggressive
personality traits, a tendency towards right-
wing authoritarianism, and a stronger social
dominance orientation as possible factors
associated with a more accepting stance on the
excessive use of force.43 This may be due to a
desire to control social threats, promote security
and help maintain current power hierarchies.44
The dominant public response to the use of
force question remains one that regards the
violent policing of protest as justifiable in certain
circumstances. Accounting for slightly less
than half of the adult population, this position
is associated with a more ambiguous position
in respect of confidence in protest policing,
with virtually equivalent shares expressing
favourable and unfavourable views. The
circumstances under which such tactics might
be tolerable cannot be ascertained from our
data, but the calculus is likely to involve a range
of factors, from the behavioural repertoires of
the protesters to whether the police response
has firstly exhausted negotiation and all
other options involving a minimal amount of
force. The ambiguity in public order policing
confidence ratings might also partially reflect
a sense of unease about whether the police
response in managing protests falls within the
ambit of reasonable or justifiable use of force,
or not. The former group is likely to view force
as a constituent element of effective policing,
but regard the application of force in crowd
management incidents as highly conditional and
contextual. In relation to the preceding points, it
is worth noting that the definition and accepted
normative limits of ‘police violence’ may tend to
vary over time, context and ideological outlook.
Conclusion
The processes of transformation in public
order policing in South Africa since the
early 1990s have been complex and non-
linear. An initial political commitment to
professional, democratic public order policing
was subsequently followed by a period of
organisational degradation and leadership
problems. Together with the prioritisation
afforded to the fight against crime, this led to
the relative neglect of public order policing for a
number of years. However, in response to the
rising incidence of public protest in the country,
the tide has turned and public order policing
77
SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
has received renewed attention. Concerns have
nonetheless been expressed about whether this
recent development has been accompanied by
an ethos emphasising a ‘hard-edged’ approach
involving more forceful policing practices, rather
than the application of minimum force.45 The
subsequent rise in reported cases involving
excessive use of force and police fatalities
during acts of demonstration, together with the
events in Marikana, have raised fundamental
questions about the manner in which protest is
being policed in our constitutional democracy.
From a public opinion perspective, it has also
led to questions about the implications of such
developments on the perceived legitimacy of
the police.
As a response to the policing failures in dealing
with public protest, including the escalation in
the number of protesters killed by police over
the 2010-2014 period,46 there have since 2014
been signs of a distinct retreat at the senior
political and police level from the strong-arm
public order policing approach that typified the
early 2010s.47 This has involved something of
a cyclical return to the priorities of the mid-to-
late 1990s, a period characterised by deliberate
attempts to move public order policing away
from the apartheid state’s repression of
demonstration through brutally forceful policing.
Developments include the return in name of
the Public Order Policing (POP) unit with a
primary emphasis on crowd management,
a commitment to reinvesting in public order
capacity in terms of both training and numbers
of police members, and the introduction of a
National Instruction on Crowd Management
during public gatherings and demonstrations.
The latter restates the importance of a well-
trained, resourced and command-driven unit
that displays utmost restraint, and adheres to
strict guidelines governing the use of force as
a tactic of last resort and in compliance with
legislative and constitutional imperatives.48
The apparent political will that currently exists
for a new organisational model of public order
policing represents an opportune moment to
critically engage with and shape the future
approach to this specialised form of policing.49
The choices that are made in this regard will
indelibly influence the next generation of police–
citizen relations. Based on our survey results,
we contend that a continued reliance by the
police on disproportionate and excessive force,
and a tendency to resort quickly to the use of
rubber bullets and teargas as controlling tactics
in dealing with protest, may provoke a further
withdrawal of support for the use of force. This,
in turn, would further diminish overall confidence
in the ability to police protest actions. This is
of concern, since public trust and confidence
are generally recognised as a key component
of ensuring effective, democratic policing.50
Organisational transformation is a necessary
but insufficient part of promoting positive and
enduring change. It also requires an appreciation
of the socio-economic and political context in
which protest action and public order policing
are occurring.51 Rather than constraining the
right to protest and demonstrate by means of
repressive and controlling actions, the policing
approach to crowd management should aim
to assist and facilitate peaceful protest that
enables those taking to the streets to effectively
convey their message to the elites. As Tait and
Marks eloquently stated several years ago in
this journal, ‘ultimately what we want are public
order police officers who are deeply conscious
of citizens’ constitutional and other rights, are
firm and impartial, and operate in ways that
are professional. The best we can hope for is a
contextually and situationally appropriate South
African model of public order policing.’52
Study limitations
This article has contributed to our knowledge
of South African public opinion on police
performance in handling protest action.
INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES & UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN
78
However, the analysis is not without limitations.
There is currently no available trend data
on attitudes to the issues under discussion.
As a result, we do not know how stable or
variant such attitudes are, and how sensitive
these attitudes are to contextual events. In
addition, we only have single-item measures of
satisfaction with protest policing performance
and the acceptability of use of force by the
police. The use of single-item measures may
fail to capture important nuances in public
opinion on protest action. Consequently, it is not
possible to say with confidence what motivates
the observed link between attitudes towards the
use of force during protests and evaluations of
police performance in controlling protest. Other
important questions also remain unresolved.
For example, what types of force used by the
police to control protests would the public be
comfortable with? Moreover, public attitudes
towards the use of force by police may vary,
depending on the type of protesters under
consideration, for instance students versus
workers. Our use of force measure focused only
on retaliatory responses to violent protest (i.e.
protesters throwing stones at police) and we
might arrive at a different or more nuanced set
of results if a range of examples of excessive
and reasonable use of force are provided.53 The
role of the media in informing the understanding
and preferences that the public has in relation to
protest and the policing of such events has also
not been examined in the article, owing again
to the absence of relevant questions in the
survey instrument. To address these limitations,
future public opinion research needs to utilise a
more comprehensive set of questions on police
performance in handling protest action, as well
as on other relevant contextual factors.
To comment on this article visit
http://www.issafrica.org/sacq.php
Notes
1 Peter Alexander, A massive rebellion of the poor, Mail &
Guardian, 13 April 2012, https://mg.co.za/article/2012-04-
13-a-massive-rebellion-of-the-poor (accessed 24 August
2017); Silvia Bianco, South Africa: the ‘protest capital of
the world’, The South African, 20 June 2013, https://www.
thesouthafrican.com/south-africa-the-protest-capital-of-the-
world/ (accessed 24 August 2017).
2 Carin Runciman et al., Counting police-recorded protests:
based on South African Police Service Data, Johannesburg:
Centre for Social Change, University of Johannesburg, 2016,
53–60.
3 David Bruce, Public order transparency: using freedom of
information laws to analyse the policing of protest, SACQ, 58,
2016, 23–33.
4 Daniel Pillay, An analysis of the policing of service delivery
protests in the Free State, September 2016, Unpublished
MTech thesis, UNISA, 2016.
5 During the massacre, the police, including but not limited to
POP units, used lethal force on the protesters, resulting in the
death of 34 miners. For further discussion of the incident, see
K Geldenhuys, Policing public violence, Servamus, 110, July
2017, 21.
6 Rob McCafferty (ed.), Murder in South Africa: a comparison of
past and present, United Christian Action, June 2003, 1–24.
7 Robert Vassen, Detentions without trial during the apartheid
era, South Africa: overcoming apartheid, building democracy,
http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/sidebar.php?id=65-258-9
(accessed 24 August 2017).
8 William R Pruitt, The progress of democratic policing in post-
apartheid South Africa, South African Journal of Criminology
and Justice Studies, 4:1, 2010, 116–140.
9 David Bruce, New wine from an old cask?: the South African
Police Service and the process of transformation, Centre for
the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), 2002, http://
www.csvr.org.za/publications/1395-new-wine-from-an-old-
cask-the-south-african-police-service-and-the-process-of-
transformation (accessed 24 November 2017).
10 Mike Brogden and Clifford Shearing, Policing for a new South
Africa, London: Routledge Press, 1993, 10.
11 Anthony Minnaar, The changing face of community policing in
South Africa, post-1994, Acta Criminologica (Special Issue),
2, 2010, 189–210; J Rauch, Transforming police–community
relations in South Africa, in C Ferguson and JO Isima (eds),
Providing security for people: enhancing security through
police, justice and intelligence reform in Africa, Shrivenham:
Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform, 2004;
J Rauch, Police transformation and the South African TRC,
Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2004.
12 Brogden and Shearing, Policing for a new South Africa, 1993.
13 Gavin Cawthra, Policing South Africa, London: Zed Books,
2003; Antony Altbeker, A country at war with itself: South
Africa’s crisis of crime, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball
Publishers, 2007.
14 Marietta van Vuuren, An evaluation of the training of police
trainees for the policing of unrest-related incidents at the
South African Police Services Mthatha Police Training College
2014, MA thesis, University of Zululand, February 2014, http://
uzspace.uzulu.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10530/1489/An+evalu
ation+of+the+training+of+police+trainees+for+the+policing+o
f+unrest+related+incidents+at+the+South+African+police+ser
vicesMthatha+Police+Training.pdf;jsessionid=5131807B910D
D6081DA183FE50D1E940?sequence=1 (accessed 24 August
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SA CRIME QUARTERLY NO. 62 • DECEMBER 2017
2017).
15 Ministry of Police, Policy & guidelines: policing of public
protests, gatherings and major events, 2013, 12.
16 Peter Alexander, Carin Runciman and Boitumelo Maruping,
The use and abuse of police data in protest analysis: South
Africa’s Incident Registration Information System, SACQ, 58,
December 2016, 12.
17 Bilkis Omar, SAPS’ costly restructuring: a review of public
order policing capacity, Institute for Security Studies (ISS),
Monograph 138, October 2007, 30; K Geldenhuys, Policing
public violence, Servamus, 110, July 2017, 21. We are grateful
to an anonymous reviewer for helpful input on the dynamics of
public order policing since the 1990s.
18 Omar, SAPS’ costly restructuring, 30.
19 Alexander, Runciman and Maruping, The use and abuse of
police data in protest analysis, 12.
20 Greg Nicolson, Marikana: what’s been done on SAPS
recommendations?, Daily Maverick, 16 August 2017, https://
www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-08-16-marikana-
whats-been-done-on-saps-recommendations/#.WalErrIjGUk
(accessed 24 November 2017).
21 Tom R Tyler, Why people obey the law, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2006; Justice Tankebe, Michael D Reisig and
Xia Wang, A multidimensional model of police legitimacy: a
cross-cultural assessment, Law and Human Behavior, 40:1,
2016, 11–22.
22 Ben Bradford et al., What price fairness when security is
at stake? Police legitimacy in South Africa, Regulation &
Governance, 8:2, 2014, 246–268.
23 Gibson Ncube, South Africa’s police versus South Africa’s
civilians, Africa Conflict Monthly Monitor, July 2014, 55.
24 Lars Buur and Steffen Jensen, Introduction: vigilantism and the
policing of everyday life in South Africa, African Studies, 63:2,
2004, 139–152; Bruce Baker, Living with non-state policing in
South Africa: the issues and dilemmas, The Journal of Modern
African Studies, 40:1, 2002, 29–53.
25 Monique Marks, Clifford Shearing and Jennifer Wood, Who
should the police be? Finding a new narrative for community
policing in South Africa, Police Practice and Research, 10:2,
2009, 145–155; Monique Marks and Deborah Bonnin,
Generating safety from below: community safety groups
and the policing nexus in Durban, South African Review of
Sociology, 41:1, 2010, 56–77; Monique Marks and Jennifer
Wood, South African policing at a crossroads: the case
for a ‘minimal’ and ‘minimalist’ public police, Theoretical
Criminology, 14:3, 2010, 311–329; Jonny Steinberg, Crime
prevention goes abroad: policy transfer and policing in post-
apartheid South Africa, Theoretical Criminology, 5:4, 2011,
349–364.
26 See, for example, Steven C Poe, C Neal Tate and Linda Camp
Keith, Repression of the human rights to personal integrity
revised: a global cross-national study covering the years
1976–1993, International Study Quarterly, 43, 1999, 291–313;
Mark Irving Lichbach, Deterrence or escalation? The puzzle of
aggregate studies of repression and dissent, Journal of Conflict
Resolution, 31, 1987, 266–97; PAJ Waddington, Liberty and
order: public order policing in a capital city, London: UCL
Press, 1994; David Waddington, Karen Jones and Chas
Critcher, Flashpoints: studies in public disorder, London:
Routledge, 1989; Chas Critcher and David Waddington
(eds), Policing public order: theoretical and practical issues,
Aldershot: Avebury, 1996.
27 Donatella della Porta and Herbert Reiter (eds), Policing protest:
the control of mass demonstrations in Western democracies,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, 1; Donatella
della Porta, Abby Peterson and Herbert Reiter (eds), The
policing of transnational protest, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing
Ltd., 2006, 3.
28 Clark McPhail, David Schweingruber and John McCarthy,
Policing protest in the United States: 1960–1995, in Della
Porta and Reiter (eds), Policing protest, 51–54; Jennifer Earl,
Sarah A Soule and John D McCarthy, Protest under fire?
Explaining the policing of protest, American Sociological
Review, 68:4, 2003, 581–606.
29 McPhail et al., Policing protest in the United States, 1998, 50-
54.
30 David Baker, Police, picket-lines and fatalities: lessons from the
past, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 7–11; Donatella
della Porta and Herbert Reiter, Introduction: the policing of
protest in Western democracies, in Della Porta and Reiter
(eds), Policing protest, 1–32.
31 Della Porta and Reiter, Introduction, 1–32.
32 Ibid.
33 The sampling frame is annually updated to coincide with
StatsSA’s mid-year population estimates in respect of the
following variables: province, gender, population group and
age group. The sample excludes special institutions (such
as hospitals, military camps, old age homes, schools and
university hostels), recreational areas, industrial areas and
vacant areas. It focuses on dwelling units or visiting points
as secondary sampling units (SSUs), which are separate
(non-vacant) residential stands, addresses, structures, flats,
homesteads and other similar structures. Three explicit
stratification variables were used in selecting SALs, namely
province, geographic type and majority population group.
34 Interviewers called at each visiting point selected and listed all
those eligible for inclusion in the sample in terms of age and
residential status criteria. The interviewer then selected one
respondent using a random selection procedure based on a
Kish grid.
35 The HSRC’s Research Ethics Committee granted ethical
approval for the instrumentation and research protocols for
each round.
36 The lower and upper 95% confidence intervals for this estimate
are 33.4% and 40.3% respectively.
37 This effect is present based on One-Way Analysis of Variance
(ANOVA) post hoc testing, but it falls away when one combines
the percentages opting for the two positive categories and
compares this with the combined two negative categories.
38 Residents in the Western Cape also provide on average less
favourable ratings of the handling of protest compared to
those in Limpopo, but this is not true of comparisons between
the Western and Northern Cape.
39 For instance, the SASAS series has found a strong demand
for the reinstatement of the death penalty in cases of murder
and broad-based tolerance of vigilantism, coupled with a
positive response to the paramilitaristic turn in policing that
characterised former police commissioner Bheki Cele’s term of
office.
40 For continuous variables in the models (e.g. age), an OR of
greater than 1 signifies that for every unit increase in these
INSTITUTE FOR SECURITY STUDIES & UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN
80
predictors is associated with greater odds of rating the
policing of protest as effective in character. Conversely, an OR
of less than 1 denotes that for every one-unit increase, the
likelihood of the policing of protest being regarded as effective
diminishes. Odds ratios that are equal to (or approximate)
1 imply that the variable has no discernible effect on the
effectiveness evaluations. For categorical or dichotomous
variables in the models (e.g. gender, race), the odds are relative
to the specified reference category. So, in the case of gender,
we are comparing the proportional odds ratio of females to
males on the effectiveness of the policing of protest, with all
other variables in the model held constant.
41 There are glimpses that such an attitudinal patterning exists,
such as the finding that significantly lower confidence ratings
are evident among residents in informal urban settlements,
although support for this hypothesis is overall fairly
circumscribed. This is confirmed by the multivariate analysis.
42 Jenna Milani, Ben Bradford and Jonathan Jackson,
Police violence, in Henry N Pontell (ed.), Oxford research
encyclopaedia of criminology and criminal justice, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017; Diarmaid Harkin, The police and
punishment: understanding the pains of policing, Theoretical
Criminology, 19:1, 2015, 48.
43 Monica Gerber and Jonathan Jackson, Justifying violence:
legitimacy, ideology and public support for police use of force,
Psychology, Crime and Law, 23:1, 2017, 79–95; Nathan
P Kalmoe, From fistfights to firefights: trait aggression and
support for state violence, Political Behavior, 35:2, 2013,
311–330.
44 Gerber and Jackson, Justifying violence, 84.
45 Monique Marks and David Bruce, Groundhog day?
Public order policing twenty years into democracy, Acta
Criminologica, 27:3, 2014, 372–373.
46 Wikipedia, Political repression in post-apartheid South Africa,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_post-
apartheid_South_Africa (accessed 1 September 2017).
47 Marks and Bruce, Groundhog Day?, 366; Julia Hornberger,
We need a complicit police! Political policing then and now,
SACQ, 48, 2014, 17–24.
48 This would include adherence to the philosophy, principles
and guidelines contained in the SAPS National Instruction 4 of
2014.
49 The convening of a SAPS research colloquium on suitable
policing models in February 2017 is symbolically important of
this. See SAPS, Research colloquium, https://www.saps.gov.
za/resource_centre/publications/research_colloquium.php
(accessed 24 November 2017).
50 Geneva Centre for the Control of Armed Forces, International
police standards: guidebook on democratic policing, 2009.
51 Marks and Bruce, Groundhog day?, 371; Trevor Ngwane,
‘Decolonise the police’: policing an unequal, unruly society
within a human rights framework, paper presented at the
SAPS Research Colloquium ‘Towards an ideal and suitable
policing model for the SAPS’, 7 February 2017.
52 Sean Tait and Monique Marks, You strike a gathering, you
strike a rock, SACQ, 38, 2011, 21.
53 For a recent example of such a measurement approach, see
Gerber and Jackson, Justifying violence, 86.
