Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The Congress of South African Trade Unions, the country’s biggest labor federation, said the government’s economic policies had perpetuated apartheid-era inequalities.

“We adopted inappropriate macroeconomic policies,” Cosatu General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said in a copy of a speech to the South African Municipal Workers Union in the northern town of Bela Bela yesterday. “The chickens are now coming home to roost.”

Rising unemployment amid South Africa’s first recession in 17 years has spurred violent protests against poverty and a lack of public services in a country where 49 percent of the population live on less than 524 rand ($67.63) a month. The jobless rate jumped to 24.5 percent in the third quarter, from 23.6 percent in the previous three months, Statistics South Africa said on Oct. 29.

South Africa’s Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, was little changed at 0.666 in 2008 from 0.665 in 1994 when the country held its first democratic elections after the end of apartheid. A gini reading of 1 reflects complete inequality while zero represents equality. Brazil’s Gini coefficient, which used to be level with South Africa, is 0.526.

South Africa has been “sitting on a ticking bomb since the 1994 democratic breakthrough,” said Vavi.

The crisis “ravaging working class communities” couldn’t be blamed on the global recession, he added. It was the “mistaken policies” adopted by the government between 1996 and 2004, including tariff reductions, the sale of state-owned assets and “conservative fiscal and monetary policies,” that were at fault, he said.

“Colonial growth paths, based on the extraction of mineral resources to build industrial power in the northern countries, is one of the most fundamental mistakes which most of post- colonial Africa has made,” Vavi said. “We have done little to tamper with this apartheid growth path.”

Cosatu, which backed President Jacob Zuma’s rise to power, has lobbied for the country’s mines to be nationalized, increased government spending and for inflation targeting to be scrapped.

To contact the reporter on this story: Garth Theunissen in Johannesburg gtheunissen@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 4, 2009 05:21 EST