South Africa was hit hard by the pandemic. For a long time it ranked fifth in the world for total number of cases (behind countries with higher populations). The initial lockdown was draconian. The economy, already in recession, plummeted, and real unemployment rose from just under 40% of the workforce to about 50%.
Protest action in South Africa’s lockdown resembles a miniature of Geoffrey Pleyers’s sketch of the global battlefield [1]. As the lid was lifted, demonstrations and strikes began to surface, and a general strike is now planned. Here, some numbers add colour to his outline.
This country is noted for its high level of protests, as well as its massively high level of inequality, and here we detail what happened to the scale of action. Before that, however, we provide a brief note on how we reached our conclusions, and caveats about the findings.
