Fairtrade goods are now an integral part of our everyday shopping experience. Since the Dutch first imported fair-trade Mexican coffee in 1988, fair-trade products such as coffee, tea and chocolate have been available on our supermarket shelves.
And it’s a great thing, with £157 million of fair-trade coffee being sold in the UK in 2009 alone, helping farming communities in developing nations receive a fair wage for their work and healthy, safe and comfortable living conditions for themselves and their families. It is fair to say that fair-trade has revolutionised farming, business and retail across the world over the last decade.
There is however, more to fair-trade than tea and bananas, and fair-trade policies and ethics touch products we, as consumers, would not imagine could be effected by exploitation and human rights issues. Wine is one of these products.
Whether it is because wine is perceived as a luxury item, a middle class hobby or whether it is because when conjuring images of vineyards we see sweeping vistas of endless rows of perfect canopies, ancient chateaux atop hillsides and images of the rural idyll; these imaginings are often false and serve to draw a vale over the true hardships of rural communities in all wine producing regions especially those which still find themselves classed as ‘developing countries’.
South Africa in particular, can claim to be one of these ‘developing countries’ and despite its recent success of being the first African nation to host the World Cup and celebrating nearly twenty years since the abolition of apartheid, the same issues effect the farm workers on the vineyards in Stellenbosch as affect the local workers in Mexico’s coffee plantations.
South Africa is the world’s eighth largest wine producing country and exports 32% of its overall production to the UK, making the British the biggest drinkers of South African wines in the world. Indeed, who can blame us with the quality of wines and multitude of choice which is produced in this beautiful country? There is however, a dark side to the history of the South African wine industry that would leave a bad taste in the mouth of the most stalwart South African drinker – the legacy of the ‘dop’ system.
The ‘dop’ system, ‘dop’ being the Afrikaans for ‘alcoholic drink’, was introduced in the early days of colonial rule in South Africa and is the practise of paying native farm workers either fully or partially in alcohol instead of a living wage. This system was practised widely and was officially legislated in 1928 by the South African government and so became officially entrenched in agricultural culture. The ‘dop’ system was a way for colonial vineyard owners to secure and retain local workers for poverty level wages and considerably substandard living conditions. The ‘dop’ was usually a sweet wine, administered up to six times throughout the working day from breakfast ‘dop’ through until evening ‘dop’. A whole bottle would be distributed to each man at the end of a working day and more at weekends. It is estimated that each adult worker would receive between 4500-6750ml of wine per week, the equivalent of up to 9 bottles per week on top of the ‘dop’ served during the working day.
The high sugar levels and alcohol in the wine kept the workers energetic and productive but, long term, the terrible impact of ‘dop’ system and the subsequent alcohol abuse devastated rural communities leading to alcohol dependency and health problems that were rarely seen elsewhere in farming. With the majority of all earnings being paid in alcohol there was little money to spend on food and other amenities such as education and health care. The ramifications of persistent alcohol consumption amongst these communities lead to high instances of alcohol related trauma, social and domestic violence on a disturbing scale, adult and child malnutrition, unusually high rates of TB, and instances of FAS (Foetal Alcohol Syndrome) that were almost epidemic.
FAS is brought about by women drinking alcohol excessively during pregnancy and can cause severe learning disabilities and growth deficiencies in later life. This pre natal exposure to alcohol results in neurological problems such as epilepsy impaired motor skills and hearing loss amongst many other conditions. A study conducted by The National Institutes of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse in 2003 showed that FAS was more prevalent amongst the children of the wine growing regions of South Africa than any other group in the world.
The ‘dop’ system became illegal in 1961 but continued to be practised wide scale until; post Apartheid saw South Africa’s human rights issues addressed and a better way of life become available to local black workers. During this time, the instances of ‘dop’ as a system of payment decreased slowly and in 1994 DopStop, a non governmental agency was set up to educate farm workers about the impact of alcoholism on themselves, their families and their communities.
This is unfortunately, not the end of the story and it appears that workers exploitation has outlasted apartheid as it is estimated that up to 20% of vineyard workers in South Africa are still employed partially under the ‘dop’ system, despite its official prohibition.
The AETI (Agricultural Ethical Trading Initiative) concluded that in many cases, workers were living in substandard accommodation, they were at risk from poor working practises such as inadequate protection when handling chemicals and they were verbally and physically abused in the workplace.These adverse conditions under which they live and leave themselves and their families under great risk and the restraints of their alcohol addiction combined with poverty makes changing their lives almost impossible.
There are steps we can all take as consumers to abolish this out dated and pernicious abuse of local vineyard workers as, thankfully, abuse and control is giving way to new concepts such as ethical trading and social empowerment. Cooperation between large companies and smaller enterprises to empower local workers and communities to change the way they work have sprung up in South Africa’s wine regions. Thandi is one of these companies.
Thandi, meaning ‘nurturing love’ in the rural language of Xhosa, spoken by the majority of vineyard workers, is a certified fair-trade winery which is promoting ethical values in its wine making. It sees itself as an ‘empowerment brand’ and its vineyard workers are also shareholders in the company. Allowing workers to share in the successes and profits of the farms on which they work has gone some way to rehabilitating the devastated communities left in the wake of the ‘dop’system and working alongside AETI are succeeding in overcoming the racial and gender discrimination and terrible poverty which is still prevalent in some areas of the winelands.
Training and education is also a vital part of the rehabilitation of rural districts affected by a legacy of abuse. Fairhills, an estate working with Origins, an international distributor and Du Tiotskloof Winery, encompasses 22 vineyards and have, as part of their ‘social enhancement’ programmes, created education and day centres for the children of the vineyard workers. They were accredited fair-trade status five years ago.
Tukulu is also a winery that believes that education is the best way out of poverty and supported by Distel, its cooperative of black entrepreneurs is employing and educating the local community in vital viticulture and winemaking skills.
In South Africa, Fair trade production has risen by 37% to around 6,000 tonnes per year and even more through non-fairtrade affiliated vineyards under social empowerment schemes, but this is still a very small percentage compared with the estimated one million tonnes of wine grapes produced in South Africa every year.
With the support of the UK wine drinker, South Africa can continue to grow its ethical viticultural techniques and dig itself out of the legacy of the ‘dop’ system. As such a large consumer of these wines, we have the power to change conditions for the people who produce our luxuries by purchasing such ‘social empowerment’ brands and by considering the human cost of wine production, only then can we ensure that everyone receives the respect, support and esteem to which we are all entitled.
