By DPA,
Johannesburg : A wave of strikes and protests continued Wednesday in South Africa with police arresting 81 striking workers in the Eastern Cape province during a violent demonstration, a little over two weeks before the start of the football World Cup.
Police fired rubber bullets to disperse around 200 workers, who demonstrated as part of a pay dispute in the remote town of Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape.
A police spokesman told the SAPA news agency that the tea plantation workers had stoned passing vehicles and set fire to a building belonging to the Magwa tea company.
Three of the workers were injured by rubber bullets.
South Africa is in the throes of several strikes, which threaten to cast a pall over the World Cup if not resolved by the June 11 kickoff.
A transport workers’ strike, which began May 10 and affects the country’s ports, has crippled exports of fresh produce and strained fuel supplies.
Members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) are demanding a 15 percent wage increase.
State logistics company Transnet had offered workers 11 percent, but was said by the union to have made a new offer Wednesday. Satawu did not disclose the offer.
The strike is estimated to have cost the economy several hundred million dollars so far.
Workers at state electricity utility Eskom had also threatened to strike for better conditions, but a court granted the company an injunction preventing the workers from laying down tools.
Winters in South Africa always see a spike in protests.
But the government and business community have appealed to trade unions to refrain from striking in the run-up to or during the World Cup, which is being held for the first time in Africa between June 11 and July 11.