Zandspruit Service Delivery Protest

Fellow Photographer, Cornel Van Heerden ducking behind a wall while a protesters prepares to chuck a rock at the Nyala Police vehicle that rolled past.

Fellow photographers Leon Sadiki (City Press), Cornel Van Heerden (Beeld), Chris Collingridge and Daniel Born (The Times) kneeling behind a fire to get their shots.

ZANDSPRUIT SERVIVE DELIVERY PROTEST

The people of Zandspruit that lies west of Johannesburg took to the streets again after their demands for basic services and houses, that they asked for in previous protests, were not met.

The protest started out very peaceful and organised, well as organised and peacefull as a protest can be in South Africa. The residents blocked the roads with burning tyres and rocks to prevent the traffic from moving past the squatter camp that sits on the edge of Beyers Naude Ave. 

The protesters were marching up and down the road singing and waving their posters. Everything was going fine with the cops keeping their distance and not provoking the crowd. The trouble started when groups of protesters started setting tyres alight again and started kicking and pushing them into the intersections. This off course made for some dramatic images so we didn't really mind. The only problem is that this forced the cops to play their hand and they started shooting rubber bullets at the crowd that was starting to lean to the "could get out of control side". The only problem with this was that we were right in front of the crowd and obscured by smoke so we had no idea where these shots were being fired from.  

So the crowd dispersed running in all directions and we followed. Running battles ensued between the cops and residents, with Nyala's rolling up and down the street, cops shooting rubber bullets and protesters throwing rocks. This continued for a while before everything settled down again. 

We left the protest to go and file and do some other stories, but kept an eye on the situation and apparently the violence flared up again later in the day when the MEC came to speak to the protesters. Some of the protesters also looted some shops in the night and broke down palisade fences and parts of a wall of a nearby shopping mall. They used this to block parts of the road that runs parallel with squatter camp.