By Annalise Kempen
Photo courtesy of Ihsaan Haffejee/GroundUp
Protest actions are not new: People who have signed up to receive safety notifications on provincial safety fora, such as those in Gauteng, are likely to receive daily warnings about protest actions somewhere in the province. Protest actions about service delivery issues have become so common that, unless you live in a specific area and form part of a community, chances are that the rest of the country does not even pay attention to such actions. In recent months, at least one citizen-led movement, called March and March, has organised demonstrations and protests against undocumented migrants (illegal foreigners) in South Africa’s major metros, including Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban, with violent, even fatal results. Their message was clear: they wanted more stringent immigration enforcement in South Africa (HRW, 2026).
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[This is only an extract of an article published in Servamus: July 2026. This article is available for purchase.]