Arresting Dissent: State Repression and Post-Apartheid Social Movements.

Source: (2005) Research report. Johannesburg and Cape Town: Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. Downloaded 21 October 2005.

According to Dale McKinley and Ahmed Veriava, the Violence and Transition Project was initiated to survey the nature and extent of violence during two periods. The first period or phase was South Africa’s transition from the rule of apartheid to democracy – that is, 1999 to 2002. The second period or phase is within the new democracy itself – that is, from 2003 to the present. The aim of the two investigations is to help prevent violence through examination of transitional justice, victim empowerment, peace building and reconciliation, human rights, and crime prevention. Specifically in this paper, McKinley and Veriava look at violence in the post-apartheid period, within the emerging democracy itself. Even more particularly, they focus on new community or social movements arising in three urban areas, the state repression of these social movements, and the role of social movements in relation to democracy in South Africa’s transition.