South Africa's biggest trade union, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), is staging a nationwide strike.

The union, which is expected to be backed by the youth league of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANCYL), and the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (SADTU), wants a ban on labour brokers who act as middlemen between employers and workers.

The union is also protesting against, among other things, a system of e-tolling which would see people paying to use public roads and which it says would have an acute impact on the poor.

Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa reports from Johannesburg.