inextricably bound up with larger structures of poverty and degradation and requires a broad social solution, something much more thoroughgoing than moralizing, charitable patches, or simplistic attempts to medicalize the issue.
John Platter mused wryly on some of the social ironies of the wine industry in the new South Africa, in an “assessment of prospects in a sanctions-free world” in his 1996 Guide:
For connoisseurs of such things, the piquancy of how the new black government saved the white owned wine farming industry from growing insolvency is exquisite. It took a virtual teetotaling President Nelson Mandela—and an ANC-led government with a largely non-wine drinking, beer-thirsty African constituency—to bale out wine growers, mainly Afrikaner, mainly Nationalist Party voters who supported the 27-year incarceration of the man who opened the door to a sanctions-free, export-led recovery. No signs, of course, of discomfiture among the rescued—politesse deems it uncivil to even mention it.
The issue of “transformation” (a concept immediately understood by all South Africans to have racial connotations) is complex and sensitive, and it is impossible to do more here than highlight selected points within the complexities. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that in most aspects of social relations, the wine industry is less transformed than many other sectors of South African society, despite some specific pockets of change and some broader areas of improvement. This is true at all levels, from the question of who owns land to the situation of the often unmotivated, inadequately trained people working on it.
In the absence of a radical national land agenda and because of the high value of most vineyard land and the high cost of working it, it is unsurprising that there has been virtually nothing in the way of land redistribution to alter the pattern of white ownership. A few ultrarich black individuals or black-involvement consortiums have acquired direct interest in or ownership of wineries: left-wing-politician-turned-capitalist Tokyo Sexwale, for example, some years back bought a wine farm in Franschhoek (though nothing has been heard of it or its wines since then); and a consortium he leads bought half of Constantia Uitsig. Somewhat less rich (as most people are, of course), former cabinet minister Valli Moosa now produces the Ecology range off his Bot River property, Paardenkloof; and members of the more modest Rangaka family have a vineyard in Stellenbosch and a brand, M’hudi, with the wines made at Villiera Estate.
Of rather more relevance to broader transformation, some significant “land and brand” projects have been undertaken. These are generally joint ventures between farmers and their workers, with the latter acquiring in various ways (government-sponsored or farmer-facilitated) part ownership of land and winery businesses, usually indirectly through shares or trust units. Examples of such partnerships include Thandi (vineyard ownership, with the brand part-owned by the large Company of Wine People), Tukulu (a joint venture among Distell, black entrepreneurs, and a workers’ trust), Thokozani (a brand with a 30 percent shareholding in Diemersfontein), and Solms-Delta (a passionate individual project of restitution).
Black ownership or part ownership of wine brands (without vineyard or winery), with wine sourced from established producers, is rather more common. Ses’Fikile, for example, was funded by Flagstone Winery (now part of the massive international Accolade, formerly Constellation Wines); its name, incidentally, means “we have arrived in style”! Yamme is a brand owned by a consortium of black women, as is Women in Wine. There are perhaps more than a dozen black-owned brands, aligned through the Black Vintners Association, which was founded in 2005.
This brings us closer to what has become the real focus of transformation in the wine industry: the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) program, which has evolved to mean little more than equity ownership by black shareholders (whether capitalists or workers) in wine businesses of all sizes. A process toward drawing up some sort of charter for the industry was under way in the late 2000s. Drafts indicated that access to land would be a minor component of the charter, but any redistribution of such substantial assets was not in question. Also largely absent were matters affecting the majority of black people in the industry, such as working and living conditions.
Even without the existence of a formal charter, many large wineries and companies have already embarked on BEE deals, generally involving both employees, via a trust, and, proportionately more important, black investment companies. A highly controversial deal gave a black shareholder consortium 25.1 percent of the KWV—no doubt a pleasant symbol of the new South Africa, considering the deep implication of the KWV in its previous incarnation in the old South Africa. The controversy largely involved the role of the South African Wine Industry Trust (SAWIT), which was a body charged with, among other things, facilitating social transformation in the industry. SAWIT handed over its fund to a group of black entrepreneurs and others in order for them to buy the KWV stake. The money had originally come from the KWV, as the price it paid for being allowed to convert into a company, so there are some nice ironies here too: the KWV, in the end, in this way simply funded its own claims to political respectability through its acquisition of such a fine BEE component. As a result of becoming technically insolvent, SAWIT was no longer able to do much (it had never done much, in fact) in the way of wider empowerment of the poor and powerless within the industry. Meanwhile, the BEE package put together by Distell, while rather more “politically correct,” also involved a shareholding deal with outside investors as well as its own employees.
SAWIT had failed from the start to develop the skills of farmworkers and generally somehow “empower” them as it was supposed to. Other wine industry initiatives now tend to focus their transformation efforts less on need than on simple notions of “blackness” through BEE. This is a much more comfortable and easy process than grappling with the real problems faced by the majority of those involved in the industry—permanent workers and the temporary grape-pickers of harvesttime. But in some ways at least, the situation of all agricultural workers improved after a democratically elected government came to power after 1994. Notably, for the first time such workers were included in developing basic legal provisions to protect employees (health, insurance, work hours, leave, etc.), and a mandatory minimum wage (a very modest one) was promulgated. Of course, there are a number of relatively progressive farmers and businesses whose employment practices exceed basic legal requirements, but there are undoubtedly a number of others that fall short of meeting them. The Wine and Agricultural Ethical Trade Association (known as WIETA), which has various categories of membership, conducts audits prior to full accreditation, and this experience has shown just how little it can be assumed that national employment legislation is always complied with. Furthermore, as yet only a small proportion of wineries undergo WIETA’s audits—although this should change when the new “ethical seal” initiative, described below, is launched.
In the wine industry as a whole it is also clear, however, that some of the more positive aspects of rural paternalism are breaking down (partly in response to protective legislation, ironically): providing housing to workers on farms, for example, is becoming less common. So too is permanent employment—casualization of labor is increasing, as well as the use of labor brokers, some of whom are responding usefully to the seasonal nature of vineyard work, but others are simply making exploitation of workers more efficient by sparing farmers the trouble of grappling with the consequences of employing people. There is little effective trade unionism in the wine lands; organizing farmworkers is notoriously difficult.
Something of a breakthrough, perhaps, came in 2012, as a direct consequence of the previous year’s scathing report into the fruit and wine industries of the Western Cape by the respected international monitor Human Rights Watch. That report concluded (confirming what many knew, of course) that there remained significant human-rights problems for cellar and vineyard workers in the wine industry. It particularly blamed the state for not adequately monitoring its own laws and regulations. The anecdotal nature of much of the report’s evidence and other methodological inadequacies were arguably insufficient to support the generalizations it made and made it vulnerable to defensive attack. If there were real problems, it was a question of bad apples in the barrel, ran a common countering line.
A more thoughtful,
