Workers from South Africa’s biggest labor 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.
