On 9 May 2017, residents of six neighborhoods across South Africa’s richest province, Gauteng, protested about lack of basic services, housing and employment. A local TV news crew captured the frustrations of a resident from Ennerdale, one of the affected neighborhoods: “When voting is over, we don’t exist anymore. … We have been protesting for the past four years, asking, making the same pleas … How long are we supposed to plead? How long are they going to come here and take us for a ride? We don’t love doing what we’re doing.”

From the notes of despair and frustration in her voice, it is evident this was not only about service delivery but also about being seen, heard, and recognized as a citizen.

The spate of protests in Gauteng province were the latest manifestations of what has become a daily occurrence in South Africa over the past 15 years. Figures vary and are often in dispute, depending on whether media reports or different types of police incident records are consulted. What is clear, is that South Africa is increasingly a “country defined by its protests,” –  a protest nation.

Protesters use disruption of traffic, occupation of buildings and burning barricades to make their voices heard. A community leader participating in one of these protests suggests, “We had to close the main road because it’s the only thing that gets the attention of the authorities.” Similar strategies are regularly used elsewhere in Africa, whether during the bread riots in Mozambique, anti-government protests in Guinea or struggles over land in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. Damage to property, disruptions and highly visible demonstrations are often used by activists as communicative tools to get politicians or the mainstream media to notice them. As the poor are making use of the only means at their disposal to get the ear of those in positions of power, these protests are often inchoate and disconnected compared with the more orchestrated and targeted lobbying campaigns by elites. The result is that the public sphere, which is also served and supported by the mainstream media, mirrors the inequality of post-colonial African states.

This raises questions: If the mainstream media claims to be a tool for deepening democracy and development in Africa, why is it necessary for protesters to resort to burning and barricading? How does the relationship between media and protest impact on the role that the mainstream media can play in the African public sphere? What are the implications for African democratic processes if protesters prefer direct action to ‘rational’, deliberative debate on media platforms? And, moreover, how do we research the role of social media in African societies?

In many African countries, the mainstream print and broadcast media are either captured by the state or by elites. This means that protests are likely to be presented as threatening to the political or economic status quo. If we consider protests to be legitimate expressions of democratic dissent, this problematic relationship between the mainstream media and protests prompts us to revisit the assumption that there is inherently a direct link between media, democratisation and civic participation in African contexts.