S Africa police use rubber bullets to end protest

JOHANNESBURG, July 14 (Reuters) South African police fired rubber bullets today to break up crowds protesting against a lack of municipal services in the country's biggest black township Soweto, a police spokesman said.

Residents of hostels set up for migrant workers under apartheid had blocked roads with burning tyres and rocks since early today in protest against the slow provision of services and housing, police said.

''It is still tense, we needed to fire rubber bullets to disperse the crowd. They were throwing stones at passing cars and police officers,'' said Johannesburg police spokesman Wayne Minnaar.

Several people were also arrested in Johannesburg's Alexandra township where hostel residents also protested against the slow progress of housing delivery, independent Talk Radio 702 reported.

Today's protests were the latest in a string of often violent clashes between residents and police in black townships around Johannesburg and in the central Free State province.

In the worst incident, a rioting crowd hacked a local leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to death earlier this month in a Free State township.

Residents are demanding better housing, faster access to electricity, clean drinking water and sewage facilities.

Two years of violent protests have raised the stakes for President Thabo Mbeki's government and the ANC preparing to elect a new leader later in 2007.

Despite faster economic growth the rapid rise of a black middle class, wealth is still not trickling down to the poor, prompting action to uplift a ''second economy'' characterised by sprawling city slums and poverty that is fuelling some of the highest rates of crime in the world.

REUTERS CS MIR KP1601