Johannesburg metro police fired rubber bullets at Soweto hostel dwellers protesting on Saturday against a lack of service delivery.
”We had to use rubber bullets to get them off the roads,” said Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar.
He said rubber bullets were fired at protesting residents of the Dobsonville and Nancefield hostels. They took to the streets at 4.30am on Saturday along with Jabavu hostel dwellers, blockading roads with stones.
The hostels were set up for migrant workers under apartheid.
Train services between Soweto and Johannesburg ground to a halt on Saturday morning after protesters damaged sections of the railway track.
Police said they had since restored order at the Intlanzane, Merafe and Dube railway stations and Metrorail told the South African Broadcasting Corporation some rail services had been restored.
Soweto police Captain Phillemon Khorombi said protesters had gathered at the Jabulani hostel for an address by a Gauteng housing department representative.
”The situation is tense but under control,” he said.
There were similar demonstrations at hostels in Alexandra and Denver on Saturday. Captain Bheki Mavundla said the situation at the Denver hostel, south of Johannesburg, was ”under control”. He said protesters were preparing to march.
Several people were arrested in Alexandra, Talk Radio 702 reported.
Police could not confirm that the protesters had thrown petrol at cars on the M2 highway.
Saturday’s protests were the latest in a string of often violent clashes between residents and police in townships around Johannesburg and in the Free State. In the worst incident, a rioting crowd hacked a local leader of the ruling African National Congress to death earlier this month in a Free State township.
Residents are demanding better housing, faster access to electricity, clean drinking water and sewage facilities.
Two years of violent protests have raised the stakes for President Thabo Mbeki’s government and the ANC preparing to elect a new leader later in 2007.
Despite faster economic growth the rapid rise of a black middle class, wealth is still not trickling down to the poor, prompting action to uplift a ”second economy” characterised by sprawling slums and poverty that is fuelling some of the highest rates of crime in the world. — Sapa, Reuters