'Mixed' response to SA strike

Cosatu opposes privatisation policies

The response to the strike call by the South African trades unions has been "largely positive but mixed across the country".

The Congress of South African Trades Unions (Cosatu) told BBC News Online that in some areas - like Durban, Cape Town and Gauteng - there had been a good response, but in other areas workers were not on strike.

The South African Chamber of Business said. that about 15% of workers did not show up for work.

The BBC's Milton Nkosi in Johannesburg said that tens of thousands of people had joined Cosatu demonstrations across the country - 5,000 in Pretoria and 2,000 in Cape Town.

He said the strike could neither be described as an overwhelming success nor a total failure, but many had been discouraged from striking by the certain loss of two days' pay.

Many still live in dire poverty

Cosatu is allied to the ruling African National Congress but objects strongly to the privatisation of state owned enterprises.

The strike is the latest in a series of open conflicts between the government of President Thabo Mbeki and its closest supporters in the trades unions and the communist party over privatisation and poverty alleviation.

A number of ministers in the ANC government are members of the unions or the communist party.

Cosatu has vehemently opposed the privatisation of state-owned industries and the laying off workers in those industries.

The unions have been supported by the South African Communist Party, whose members in July voted off the SACP's ruling bodies a number of government ministers who had been involved in implementing privatisation.

Too early to give numbers

Cosatu's press spokesman, Vukani Mde, told the BBC on Tuesday that the strike had spread across the whole of South Africa but union monitors had told him that the turn out had not been uniform.

He said while it was too early to give definite numbers, in Durban there had been a "very positive" response to the strike call.

Will the president see red over Cosatu strike ?

The same was true, he said, of the textile industry in Cape Town and the mines in Gauteng province. Many government employees and workers in state-owned companies had also come out on strike.

But he admitted that there had been a poor response from auto industry workers in the Eastern Cape.

Political commentators believe that incidents like the strike call are putting great strain on the alliance between the unions and President Thabo Mbeki's ANC-led government.