The more things change…  21 November 2006

New research suggests BEE will alter little for the wine industry’s exploited majority

A newly published research paper gives a depressing picture of what is happening – and not happening – in the long-awaited transformation of the South African wine industry. The first part of thje paper’s title encapsulates the theme: ‘De-racialising exploitation’. That is, exploitation continues: the racial category of ‘blackness’ in the theory and practice of black economic empowerment is being deployed as a way of bringing in a few new players at the rich end of the industry (the owners of land, but more especially brands), while leaving the larger poverty-stricken end (the workers, increasingly ‘outsourced’ to help employers evade labour laws) pretty much untouched.

In other words – in the academic language that unfortunately and unnecessarily will make the paper difficult to read for many people: ‘An essentialist racial discourse, pivoting on ahistorical and dislocated notions of ‘”blackness” has been used to displace the transformation agenda away from challenging the impoverishment of the many to ensuring the enrichment of the few.’

Accounting, I suppose, for the rarefied tone, the authors are two researchers from the University of the Western Cape and a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies – which publishes the 30-odd page paper as part of a series of papers on BEE in South Africa. All are available online from the Institute’s website, a democratic gesture which accords with the argument of the paper, if not its style!

The paper starts off by looking at the development of the Cape’s wine industry in the context of the history of the colony, of its early dependance on slavery, and its later shaping within apartheid. That’s depressing enough, but sadly things prove not much better when it looks as though they might start improving for the heavily exploited majority, as a result of various political and social pressures. The authors explore how ‘the BEE process has been shaped by the different agendas of “established” white industry, black business, unions, government, and NGOs representing (or claiming to represent) black workers in the industry’. This means, they argue, a move away from workers’ rights and the idea of transforming real power relations within the industry to a concern with ‘black empowerment’: finding a place for more black people among the employers and entrepreneurs.

Meaningful change for the majority of those in the wine industry – those who at present are poor and exploited – is not likely to come about soon, in the view of these authors. Certainly not as a result of the present trajectory of BEE. The land reform projects that have taken place (Sonop, Bouwland and Thandi, for example), are briefly discussed, and are not seen as offering very significant prospects for change. But even these ‘redistribution’ projects have been largely replaced by such boardroom activities as equity deals and a concern with black-owned brands rather than black-owned lands, and these presage even less meaningful alteration of the life-conditions of the impoverished majority.

This is a useful paper for those who want to increase their understanding of the reality behind the confusions of such things as the KWV empowerment deal and its relationship to the shifting structure of the SA Wine Industry Trust and the manoeuvres of various individuals. If you think that, on a socio-economic level, things are substantially improving in the Cape wine industry, you will have to come up with answers to the arguments put forward here.

• ‘De-racialising exploitation: Black economic empowerment in the South African wine sector’, by Sandra Kruger, Andries du Toit and Stefano Ponte; available online from the publisher, the Danish Institute for International Studies

– Tim James