South Africans strike over prices

Thousands of South Africans have staged protests against the rising costs of electricity, food and fuel. Strikes brought work and mines and other businesses to a halt on July 23, while in Johannesburg a mass rally paralyzed the city center. Carrying placards reading "Away with high food prices!" and "Down with high fuel prices!" the protesters stopped traffic in the central of the city. "The rising cost of food and electricity have continued to affect the standard of living of the poor working masses," Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the main COSATU labor federation, told the marchers. "We are angered by the cost of food. We are here to register our disgust and frustration. We are on this march to express our anger," he said outside the headquarters of the power utility Eskom. The one-day walkout and the march were part of a series of rolling strikes being held around the country, Africa's biggest economy. COSATU is planning a nationwide strike for Aug. 6. Police said that there were about 25,000 people at the rally in Johannesburg, and many of them denounced plans by Eskom to hike tariffs by 27.5 percent following widespread power cuts earlier this year. Lindiwe Mabuko, a trader in vegetables in the Hillbrow neighborhood, urged the government to intervene to lower prices. "The government is just punishing us by allowing these price increases. We are very poor and we cannot afford them," the 38-year-old mother of three said. Cosmos Luthuli, a student from Alexandra township, said he had taken the day off school to join in the protest. "I am not going to school today because this protest is important to me," he told the AFP news agency. "My parents are finding it difficult to feed us. We are a family of seven and these prices are meant to kill us." The strike shut mines and car makers, disrupted textile factories and brought business to a standstill in Gauteng, the Eastern Cape, North West and Limpopo provinces.