Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.My aim in this dissertation is to explore the manner in which protest leaders in the post-apartheid
context understand themselves and their actions against the backdrop of the socio-historical,
political and economic conditions within which protests take place. The aim is to
contribute to the debate around the nature of the challenge posed by protest action to the
post-apartheid neoliberal order. The study uses an actor-oriented ethnographic methodology
to examine at close range the nature of the protest movement in working class South African
townships focusing on the so-called service delivery protests. In the quest to understand the
action, forms of organisation and ideologies characteristic of the protests, and their significance
for post-apartheid society, I use concepts and insights from the literature on social movements,
discourse theory and, in particular, Gramsci's ideas on hegemony. The latter helps me to define
and assess the threat posed by the protests to the dominant order which I characterise as
neoliberalism or neoliberal capitalism. The conclusion that I come to is that the protests are
best understood in the context of the transition from apartheid to democracy: its dynamics and
its unmet expectations. They represent a fragmented and inchoate challenge to the post apartheid
neoliberal order. Their weakness, I argue, partly derives from the effects of the
demobilisation of the working class movement during the transition to democracy. It will take
broader societal developments, including the emergence of a particular kind of leadership and
organisation, for the protests to pose a serious challenge to the present order. The experience
of the struggle against apartheid suggests the necessity of a vision of alternatives to inspire,
shape and cohere struggles around everyday issues and concerns into struggles for radical
society-wide alternatives. Protest action was linked to imagination of a different way of doing
things and organising society. Without this link, it is likely that the protest movement will be
increasingly isolated and contained with some of its energy used negatively, for example, in
populist chauvinism, xenophobic attacks, mob justice, and other forms of anti-social behavior
that are becoming a worrisome feature of post-apartheid society. Nonetheless, it provides
hope and the foundation for a different future
