(Guardian) - Outside the tiny public library, a dozen striking grape pickers wait for a meeting called by their employer. "He wants to force us back to work,'' says one woman. "We are hungry but we will wait for a better wage,'' says another employee of Keurboschkloof farm. After trouble in South African labour relations last year led to a two-month violent standoff in the mining sector, the country's economy is now under pressure from a stop-start farm labourers' strike in the £850m-a-year fruit and wine sector. Since November, low-skilled workers demanding a pay increase to 150 rand a day (£10.65) have clashed with police and been arrested in their hundreds. Amid allegations of excessive police force, three have died.