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 visions of the police clashing with young men that became familiar during the township protests of the 1980s over apartheid.
“Violence and trashing are not allowed,” Mr. Zuma said after protesting municipal workers had spilled garbage that was left uncollected because of their strike onto the streets in central parts of Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban this week, the newspaper The Sowetan reported. “They must get arrested because they are interfering with the rights of other citizens.”
Mr. Zuma has appealed to people to be patient. “There must not be violence between us,” he told a rally last week in KwaZulu-Natal, his political heartland. “Let us work together.”
Source: New York Times
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