Western Cape – Police fired rubber bullets to disperse hundreds of striking farm workers in South Africa’s prime grape-growing region on Wednesday after a protest for higher wages turned violent.

Scores of police clad in riot gear fired rubber bullets at the strikers, who hurled stones from behind barricades of burning tyres, according to a Reuters reporter on the scene in De Doorns.

The strike in the Western Cape, also home to the country’s multi-billion dollar wine industry, restarted on Wednesday after being suspended in December, when warehouses were set on fire and at least two workers died in clashes with police.

The farm workers, many of them seasonal workers employed to pick and pack fruit, want their minimum daily wage of R69 more than doubled to R150. – Reuters