Wines of the New South Africa. Tim James
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, positive response than the industry’s outrage came in early 2012 with the announcement of a new “ethical seal” that wineries complying with certain criteria can affix to their bottles. The scheme is being implemented under the aegis of WIETA, which announced that the purpose of the seal is “to acknowledge and accredit wineries and farms that follow ethical practices and to protect them from any potential negative publicity resulting from those who flout the law.” Already some major importers—notably Systembolaget in Sweden, but even supermarkets in the United Kingdom and elsewhere—had long been making demands that producers provide some proof that the conditions of workers met basic international standards. Fairtrade Foundation accreditation had been the most important indicator of this, but the new initiative should make adequate accreditation cheaper and easier. Most of the big players in the industry supported it, as did a number of nongovernmental organizations active in the area as well as the leading farmworker trade union. There seems reason to hope that the “ethical seal” will effect some improvement in worker conditions where it is needed.
PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE
The shadows—above all, perhaps, the racially informed inequality, but also problems like still-rampant virus—dim the brightness of the new world of South African wine, but do not obscure it. With a bit of perspective gained, it has now become possible to see and understand the developments that have taken place, and also to be not so overwhelmed by the brightness as to be unaware of the challenges. The context of South African society is indeed one of them, as is the international wine market and its demands. And there are other problems and opportunities that are local, even if they are not all entirely unique to here.
The history of South African wine is a long one by new-world standards—more than 350 years—and it contains within it the story of a great wine, Constantia, which remains something of an inspiration to modern South African winemakers, not least as an affirmation that high quality is possible at the foot of Africa. This does not exactly qualify as a wider tradition of greatness, however, and in fact the tradition of the Cape vineyards and wine business is above all one of poor-quality wine, heavily dependent on exports to a metropolitan market and always tending to overproduction—and overproduction of mediocrity. Without a great tradition, the task of building a great wine industry is daunting.
All the more remarkable, then, after so many years of mediocrity, was the rapidity of improvement at all levels since 1994. The change has largely been credited to the demands of a newly interested international market and the willingness and ability of South African wine-producers to respond, but that ability and willingness bear a little interrogation.
The ability is to a great extent the actual winegrowing potential of the land and the climate. This is the fundamental aspect that we sometimes vaguely call the terroir—the infrastructure, as it were, of viticulture, which interpenetrates with the human beings without whom terroir has no meaning beyond abstract potential. A useful sign of the potential is when “style” changes and quality remains. There are, for example, undoubtedly people who think that many Rustenberg Cabernet Sauvignons of that generally dull decade for