South Africa has been dubbed "the protest capital of the world", with one of the highest rates of public protests in the world. It is often argued that the rate of protests has been escalating since 2004, but Steven Friedman argues that the current wave of protests stretches back to the 1970s. The rate of protests "rose dramatically in the first eight months of 2012", and it was reported that there 540 protests in the province of Gauteng between 1 April and 10 May 2013. In February 2014 it was reported that there had been "nearly 3,000 protest actions in the last 90 days – more than 30 a day– involving more than a million people".