This week’s clashes between workers and police in townships across South Africa reinforce the need for some fast rethinking on policy and practice by President Jacob Zuma’s team. The protests were fiercest in the informal settlements where some 8 million of the country’s 49 mn. people live. In a hopeful State of the Nation address in June, Zuma promised his government would create half a million jobs in his first year in office, violent crime would be cut by 7-10%, 80% of those who needed anti-retrovirals would get them by 2011, and everyone would get a holiday on Mandela Day every 18 July. With an annual 21.6% fall in manufacturing and mining companies laying off workers, the job creation promise looks especially far-fetched. Although union leaders celebrated the comradely Zuma’s accession to power, the grassroots membership demur. Zuma now faces a more formidable wave of strikes than anything under Thabo Mbeki’s presidency: gold, plantinum and coal miners are threatening action; paper and chemical workers started strikes this week; and rail workers and workers at the state broadcaster also speak of disruption. Protesters lambasted corruption within the ANC and government mismanagement as a direct cause of poor services and the downturn. Just three months after Zuma’s victory, the ANC’s core supporters are unconvinced by his response to growing hardship. His impressive economic team have their work cut out.