Less than three months after his inauguration as president of South Africa, Jacob Zuma is facing a sustained challenge from some of the same people -- the urban poor and the unions -- who helped loft him to power. With strikes and protests in the shanties that fringe South Africa's wealthy cities, the images streaming out of the nation -- to the embarrassment of the authorities -- have sometimes reverted to the same visions of police clashing with young men that became familiar during the township protests of the 1980s over apartheid."We would call this his first big test, and the one which will give us a sense of how we will look at the next five years," Mandy Rossouw, a South African reporter who has covered some of the unrest, said in a telephone interview. "Zuma wants to come out of this as the unifying leader, but also as the one who can get things done."
With strikes and protests in the shanties that fringe South Africa's wealthy cities, the images streaming out of the nation -- to the embarrassment of the authorities -- have sometimes reverted to the same visions of police clashing with young men that became familiar during the township protests of the 1980s over apartheid.
"We would call this his first big test, and the one which will give us a sense of how we will look at the next five years," Mandy Rossouw, a South African reporter who has covered some of the unrest, said in a telephone interview. "Zuma wants to come out of this as the unifying leader, but also as the one who can get things done."
The five-day strike by South Africa's municipal workers is over, the South African Municipal Workers' Union (Samwu) and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade Union (Imatu) said on Friday. "It's over ... we signed an agreement this [Friday] afternoon," Samwu general secretary Mthandeki Nhlapo said. "Our workers will return to their posts on Monday," he said. The union agreed to a revised offer from the South African Local Government Association (Salga) of a 13% wage hike, he said. Samwu's members had initially demanded a 15% increase. Imatu's regional manager, Shadow Shongwe, said his union had also signed the wage agreement. "The wage dispute has finally been resolved and the agreement that is now in place has been endorsed by the unions."
Foreign media reports portraying South Africa as a country "seized with unrest" because of the past fortnight's service delivery protests were unfounded, President Jacob Zuma said on Friday. "This clearly is not the case," he wrote in his weekly newsletter. "We should not claim these events to be more than they are. At the same time, it would be unwise to dismiss them because they do raise important issues and they do pose particular challenges for the count." Zuma denounced violence, looting and intimidation that often accompanied the protests, but said the government's response to it must be more than a reminder to respect the law. "If people want to exercise their democratic rights, they must be prepared to respect the democratic rights of others ... Where the law is broken, perpetrators must be brought to book. "As the African National Congress, however, we cannot hope to adequately respond to these events by simply calling for the law to be upheld. We need to look at the circumstances that gave rise to these protests, and work to address them."
