Some 300,000 South African public servants - mainly teachers and health workers - yesterday embarked on a two-day national strike after pay talks with the government broke down, union leaders said.
Unions warned that more workers would go out on strike today, the second day of mass action for a 10 per cent pay increase.
The South African Democratic Teachers' Union (SADTU) threatened to extend its strike - which involves up to 200,000 teachers and has shut down schools - until Tuesday unless the government met this demand.
The government has refused to pay more than a 6.15 per cent increase.
The strike, called by SADTU, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union (NEHAWU) and the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU), could become the biggest the country has seen since the advent of black majority rule in 1994.
By late afternoon a NEHAWU spokesman, Mr Makoko Lekola, said some 300,000 workers had gone on strike, in the process forfeiting a day's wages. But the impact of the stay-away on the public service belied that figure.
Hospitals functioned fairly normally, while police and prison officers failed to go on strike at all, following a management warning that such action would be illegal.
Three teachers were shot dead yesterday at a school in the black township of Soweto, south-west of Johannesburg, police said. The teachers, two women and a man, were killed when a colleague burst into the staff room of Anchor High School and opened fire. He was arrested later.