CAPE TOWN, Jan 8: South African fruit farm workers will go back on strike until they get a “decent offer” of higher wages, a regional union boss said on Tuesday.

“The workers have said they are embarking on the strike again until the farmers come to the negotiating table and put (down) a decent offer,” said Tony Ehrenreich, regional secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

Seeking an increase of their daily minimum wage from 69 rand (six euros, $8) to 150 rand, they say they will launch a new strike from Wednesday, just weeks after two people died in unprecedented farm unrest in the picturesque Western Cape farmlands. Authorities warned that the fresh stoppages threatened South Africa’s standing as a fruit exporter.

“Our reputation is at stake as a region that can deliver quality and quantity on a reliable basis,” said Western Cape Department of Agriculture spokesman Wouter Kriel. “It could definitely be a threat (to exports) because other southern hemisphere countries that produce the same crops, at the same time as we do, could very easily see this is as an opportunity to step in and say, ‘Look, we have got a stable labour environment and can guarantee products’.”

The labour troubles on farms followed violent unrest in the mining and transport sector in mid-2012 that claimed more than 50 lives, Kriel said.—AFP