Protests evoke apartheid era in South Africa

Protesters barricaded a major highway with rocks and burning tires Thursday, clashing with police who fired on them with rubber bullets. Youths retaliated with slingshots and threw rocks. The protest evoked images from decades earlier, when township residents took to the streets to fight apartheid. Now the issue is the government's failure to improve the lives of poor South African's since democracy replaced legal racial separation. More than 150 people have been arrested this week in protests that have spread from Standerton, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) southeast of Johannesburg, to at least four other towns in eastern South Africa. On Thursday, a police vehicle was set alight by protesters near a stadium that will be used for next year's World Cup in the provincial capital of Nelspruit, police spokeswoman Sibongile Nkosi said. And miles away in Diepsloot, a poor settlement north of Johannesburg, 19 people were injured when police fired rubber bullets at protesters.