Journal
JOURNAL OF MAPS
Volume 19, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/17445647.2022.2064778
Keywords
Protest; unrest; social movements; general propensity; South Africa
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Public protest serves as an important means of sanctioning rulers and institutions. In South Africa, protest is a common phenomenon and a defining element of post-apartheid political life. By visualizing protest data, we can gain a better understanding of protest activities in different regions of South Africa. The analysis shows that rural areas have a higher proportion of protests, while municipalities hosting major industries and provincial government seats exhibit the highest propensity for protest.
Public protest represents an important sanction on rulers and institutions. Protest is a quotidian phenomenon in South Africa; perhaps the defining element of post-apartheid political life. Geographic representations of protest abound - typically dot distribution maps - but these merely confirm that more protests occur where there are more people. Visualisations of protest per capita and protestors per capita (or 'general propensity'), which are best rendered as choropleth maps, are well-placed to overcome this limitation. The South African Police Services' database of protest is the largest publicly-available single-country protest event database. Having used machine learning to classify 89,000 protest events, I locate each within one of the country's 234 municipalities, and depict these events using counts, count per capita, and the general propensity. This reveals a proportionally high number of rural protests, and that municipalities hosting major industries, along with provincial seats of government, present the highest propensity for protest.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available