Unions target Zuma in anti-graft strike

Bloomberg

Workers from South Africa’s biggest labour group joined a one-day strike in cities across the nation’s nine provinces to protest against corruption that it says is thriving under President Jacob Zuma’s administration. The Wednesday shutdown marks a new low in relations between Zuma and the 1.7-million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions, which helped him win control of the ruling African National Congress in 2007 and then turned against him after he fired Pravin Gordhan as finance minister in March. That move prompted S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings Ltd. to downgrade the nation’s credit assessment to junk.
About 1,500 people gathered in Cape Town, while several thousand more joined marches in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and other cities, many of them carrying posters calling for Zuma to resign or be fired.
“We will have mobilised 100,000 workers to march against corruption today,” Andre Kriel, the secretary-general of the Cosatu-affiliated South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union, told protesters in Cape Town. “We are tired
of corruption.”
The president has been implicated in a succession of scandals, including allegations that he allowed wealthy businessmen to influence government appointments and the issuing of state contracts—a practice known locally as “state capture.” The scandal has affected global companies such as accountants KPMG LLP and consultancy McKinsey & Co.