SOUTH AFRICA:An outbreak of rioting in Soweto over the government's perceived failure to provide adequate housing has left one man dead and the home of a local politician burnt to the ground.
In scenes reminiscent of the apartheid era, police fired rubber bullets at demonstrators who had blockaded streets with rocks and burning tyres.
The protest is the latest in a series of demonstrations in townships across South Africa over perceived poor service delivery in areas such as housing, sanitation and healthcare.
Some government critics are warning of an "uprising" of the poor, while Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu said last year that the country was "sitting on a powder keg" because of widespread poverty.
Anu Pillay of the Johannesburg-based Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation described the riots as "a new form of violence emerging in South Africa".
She said the country needed to address, not only the grievances that motivated the protests, but also the reasons why people resorted to violence in an attempt to achieve political aims.
"We as South Africans - and not just the government - need to look at how we build the capacity of communities to engage with the government in a meaningful way," she said. "The government does consult with people, but there is a feeling that such consultation does not lead to anything meaningful - that they are being consulted so that government officials can say that they met a quota for consultation."
The city of Johannesburg, the local authority responsible for Soweto, sent a fact-finding team into the township yesterday to meet protesters.
Hundreds of people in the Soweto district of Protea South took to the streets on Monday, claiming the government had reneged on promises to provide adequate housing and electricity.
The rally quickly turned violent, with local youths throwing stones at police and attacking passersby. A delivery van which came under fire while swerving through the barricades knocked down and killed one of the protesters, and two journalists were injured when struck by rocks.
Police said yesterday that the house of a local councillor who tried to intervene in the protest was subsequently burnt down. Capt Jacqueline Mbatha said some of the residents felt the politician was "not doing enough for them".
Yesterday saw yet another service delivery protest, this time in the township of Alexandra, close to the centre of Johannesburg, where angry residents forcefully occupied more than 60 low-cost housing units currently under construction.
A further demonstration erupted yesterday in North West Province, where hundreds of residents blockaded a road to Botswana with burning tyres and rocks. The demonstrators at Ntsweletsoku village say they have been complaining for the past five years about water shortages, but to no avail.
An estimated nine million people out of a population of 46 million are in need of housing in South Africa, while close to half the population remains below the poverty line.