Wine trust may be closed down 20 March 2008

Report recommends shutting Sawit

South Africa’s National Agricultural Marketing Council has recommended to the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs that the controversial and cash-strapped SA Wine Industry Trust (Sawit) be closed down and a new entity be established to ‘tackle the challenges facing the local wine industry’.

Tshililo Ramabulana, chief executive of the council, placed the recommendation to Parliament’s standing committee on agriculture and land affairs this week. The committee had previously asked serious questions about Sawit, while Scopa, Parliament’s financial oversight committee, has been trying to get Sawit to report to it without success for some time. According to Ramabulana, the report had been completed last year.

Recent years have seen Sawit, established in 1999 mainly to guide transformation, getting more and more negative publicity for its handling of especially financial matters, including a controversial ‘loan’ to Phetogo Investments to buy into KWV. The latter issue is still unresolved. Cash-strapped, Sawit has not been able to honour some commitments.

The NAMC report suggests that Sawit has failed in its objectives. Industry insiders have said this for sometime as well. A new, re-modelled structure is envisaged by the report.

WInewriter J-P Rossouw has pointed out a very good article on the story of Sawit's strange finances and politics in Farmer's Weekly – click for link to 'How wine fund was bled dry'. 

COMMENT

From Vieilles Vignes:
This is an old song with no end in sight; no one will be held accountable for this waste of money. I do find the irony bringing a wry smile to my face casting back to Bawsi's big threats of legal action over alcohol abuse in June 2007, when I responded applauding the effort but questioning the method and more importantly the 'real reason".