The fruit industry in South Africa has come together to launch the Sustainability Initiative of South Africa (SIZA) to boost the improvement of working conditions on farms throughout the country.

The launch, by Fruit South Africa, is extremely timely given the protests about worker conditions in the Western Cape reported on Freshinfo last week.

The SIZA programme will enable growers to be audited by an independent third party against a locally developed and internationally recognised standard. This means that they then have evidence of ethical compliance for stakeholders, including UK retailers, government, labour unions and campaign groups.

The formal establishment of SIZA is the culmination of four years of industry consultations, engagement with a broad range of stakeholders and development of documents and resources.

The South African farm ministry, the Confederation of South African Workers’ Union (CONSAWU) and international and local retailers have all expressed their support for the scheme’s development.

Colleen Chennells, national ethical trade co-ordinator for Fruit South Africa, said: “SIZA is a locally driven ethical programme which has aligned its social standard to South African law and benchmarked this against international requirements through a robust review process managed by the Global Social Compliance Programme.”

The SIZA programme supports growers and their employees through the implementation of the ethical standard and ongoing improvement of working conditions on farms with a training programme and self-assessment leading up to the third-party ethical audit. This audit is transparent and involves both management and workers. Chennells said: “While the audit is an important indicator of need, the focus of the programme is rather on support and development.”

SIZA will capture information from audits and provide members and the industry with data on issues requiring support and intervention as well as analyses of best practice on member farms.

Chennells added: “With the support and endorsement of all stakeholders the SIZA programme can play a critical role in the future avoidance of similar scenarios witnessed during the last two weeks.”