Drueplukkere i Sydafrika slider for en dagløn på ca. 45 kr.

The strikers, mainly non-unionized farm workers in the wine and fruit producing province of the Western Cape, are demanding a more than doubling of their day rate to 150 Rand (ca. 95 DKR).

The minimum daily wage established by the ruling ANC government’s labour department for farmworkers is 69 Rand (ca. 45 DKR).

The official 2012 inflation rate is about six percent – a figure generally used as a yardstick (ledetråd) for annual pay increases.

But recently cooking oil (madolie), meat and sugar prices have been rising by an annualized rate of more than 10 percent, according to the latest survey by the University of South Africa’s Bureau of Market Research.

The price of the staple maize meal in 2012 increased by between 41,3- 63,9 percent, according to the survey, which also found that among the country’s poorest households (with annual earnings of up to the equivalent of 6.130 US dollar – ca. 35.500 DKR) expenditure was 21,4 percent higher than incomes – the gap being bridged by unsecured loans.

The Dust Country informal settlement on the fringes of De Doorns, a rural town 148 km east of Cape Town, is at the epicentre of the strike, which has seen vineyards and warehouses torched (brændt ned)

Sean Yanta, a 27-year-old father of three who has been working on a De Doorns farm as a grape picker (drueplukker) for the past five years, has to take care of his three children and girlfriend on his income of 69 Rand per day.

Yanta said he works from 6 am to 6 pm (fra seks morgen til seks aften) seven days a week during the picking season, but still struggles to pay for everyday necessities.

“There are a lot of times when there is no food in the house and trying to buy clothes for a young family is very difficult. I would like to work at something else so that I can earn more money, but the only job for most people in this area is farm work,” he told IRIN.

Static wages