SOUTH AFRICA:A national strike by public servants in South Africa escalated yesterday, closing down schools and hospitals and disrupting flights to and from the country.
The industrial action, described by unions as the biggest strike in post-apartheid South Africa, is also contributing to a major split between former struggle groups that make up the country's ruling alliance.
Trade union umbrella group Cosatu, which is co-ordinating the protest, is increasingly questioning the merits of retaining its traditional, tripartite pact with the African National Congress (ANC).
The governing party is refusing to yield to the workers' demands, and left-wing affiliates to the alliance - whose third member is the South African Communist Party (SACP) - are starting to lose patience.
The SACP said it was seeking "to build working-class power on the ground" as a means of forcing the ANC to change direction, while Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi said it would meet shortly "to determine our support for the ANC, if there is any".
The ANC-controlled government has refused public sector union demands for a 12 per cent pay rise, offering just 6.5 per cent instead.
The strike, involving up to one million nurses, teachers and other civil servants (including some immigration officials at ports of entry to South Africa), began last Friday and has been marred by sporadic violence.
In Durban, police fired rubber bullets and hurled stun grenades at protesting nurses, while in Johannesburg teachers and students who crossed certain picket lines were assaulted by strikers.
There are fears of a repeat of the sort of disorder that surrounded a security guards' strike last year, which left as many as 69 people dead.
Such militancy has shattered any illusion of the ANC keeping a lid on violent protest in South Africa by itself.
The strike comes amid fresh meetings between Cosatu and the SACP about a possible break-up of the tripartite alliance. Both organisations have become increasingly critical of what they perceive as the ANC's pro-business stance.
Several branches of the SACP have called on the party's leadership to run its own list of candidates in elections beginning in 2009.
The proposal is due to be put to an annual meeting of the SACP next month.
Meanwhile, relations between Mr Vavi and President Thabo Mbeki's have dipped to a new low following the union leader's description of government reports of an economic boom in South Africa as "propaganda similar to that of Hitler's Nazi Germany".
Mr Mbeki has hit back, accusing the Cosatu leadership of behaving like "thugs and counter-revolutionaries".
The South African economy has been growing by 5 per cent a year but half the population still lives on less than €1.50 a day.
Public servants say they have benefited little from the country's economic development, pointing out that they have not had a pay rise since they last went on strike in 2004.
Passions have been inflamed by a government-appointed body's recent recommendation that Mr Mbeki and cabinet ministers be awarded pay rises of up to 57 per cent.