Violent Protest Persists In South Africa As Zuma Sets Poll Date

The ANC is expected to win the vote on May 7 with a comfortable majority, although anger is mounting against the movement which spearheaded the fight against apartheid but now faces charges of failing to lift millions of blacks out of grinding poverty.Angry residents in largely black townships across the country have over the past month, barricaded roads and set buildings and cars on fire in protests against poor services from the government, in power since the end of white minority rule in 1994.

In Hebron, a township outside Pretoria, residents on Friday (February 7) demanded to see their province Premier complaining they lacked basic services like water and sanitation.

"We gonna march, we gonna demonstrates until Thandi Modise, our Premier, come here with respect and resolve our matters," said Robert Marima.

"We need water, we don't have water, you know this place is very poor, I don't know why our mayor is treating us so badly, and at the end of the day we must go and vote for Zuma. No more Zuma at least, yes, we are crying tears just have a look right now, our kids couldn't even go to school, because we need a real thing from the ANC, why our Madiba, Tata died," said Francina Mokhine.

South Africans say many senior officials in the ANC, which won nearly two thirds of the vote in the last elections in 2009, have abused their government positions to line their personal pockets.

Parties such as radical populist Julius Malema's Economic Freedom Fighters are tapping into the simmering discontent to advocate for nationalisation of mines and the seizure of white-owned land.