This article indicates that though few studies exists on youth and service delivery protest in South Africa, it appears not many has addressed the role of the youth and their perception about protests associated with service delivery particularly in Mpumalanga, a province noted for high incidence of service delivery protests in the past few years. To fill this gap, this study examines the perceptions of young men and women based in Wesselton and Siyathemba townships (Mpumalanga Province) on service delivery violence. The study starts by acknowledging various theoretical explanations for violent protests and thereafter utilized content-analysis of questionnaires sent to a sample of 151 young respondents (18-35 years) to describe the reasons for protesting, obtained explanations as to why certain protests turned violent. Further, the study extracted the youth perception about the causes of poor service delivery-that largely led to viol