Vernon Henn remembers Christmas Day growing up on a Western Cape farm. His parents and five siblings had to make do with a loaf of bread and a can of pilchards.
”I have some horrible memories,” he recalls. ”We had to survive on my father’s salary and it was meagre.”
Henn’s parents could not afford to send him to university so he took a job as an office cleaner. But then he discovered a passion for wine. Henn (40), who is black, steadily worked his way up in one of South Africa’s most conspicuously white-dominated industries.
He will soon reach a new milestone when Thandi, where he is general manager, becomes the first wine brand in the world entirely owned and run by a black collective. In a deal unimaginable to Henn’s parents during apartheid, later this year 250 families will manage all aspects of the business and eventually assume full ownership.
It is a significant moment because the wine trade, one of South Africa’s calling cards around the world, contains one of its most stubborn legacies of segregation. Vineyards have been passed down through generations of white owners, where workers are still invariably black or coloured.
Thandi was started in 1995 and was the world’s first Fairtrade-certified wine in 2003. It sells cabernet sauvignon, merlot, pinot noir, sauvignon blanc, semillon, chardonnay and chenin blanc and is one of a handful of South African wine companies led by black entrepreneurs.
Henn said: ”The whole of the industry has been changing slowly. We can now up the pace of transformation. There’s still a misconception that anything from black-owned manufacturing has to be inferior. We have always focused on quality and tried to redress misconceptions about black-owned labels.”
Thandi is currently joint-owned by the farming communities of Nietbegin, Lebanon and Paardenkloof and the Company of Wine People (CWP), one of South Africa’s biggest exporters. From October 1, the farmworkers will take over production and export of the wines from the CWP.
The workers, who own a 55% share in the business, will see this rise to 100% over the next five years.
Henn, based near Stellenbosch, Western Cape, added: ”We are now ready to take hold of the reins ourselves, a move that will empower our farmworkers and ensure that they take full ownership of the profits generated by sales of the wines worldwide. I believe we will be the first Fairtrade brand to empower our workers in this way.”
He will also appoint a qualified black winegrower, of whom he estimates there are still only about 10 in South Africa.
Divisions remain between white owners and black workers, despite a series of initiatives. The Wine Industry Transformation Charter was adopted in 2007 to promote diversity, using a scorecard to quantify the progress of individual firms in meeting black economic empowerment goals.
Black-owned labels include M’hudi, Ses’fikile, led by three former township schoolteachers, and Seven Sisters — the brainchild, not surprisingly, of seven sisters.
Vivian Kleynhans (43) of the African Vintners’ Alliance, which comprises eight companies, said: ”We are a tiny minority but we are here to stay, so they will just have to accept us.”
There are some incentives for farmers, usually white and male, to surrender their land. The onset of a ”mini-Zimbabwe” is a common fear.
Marilyn Cooper, managing director of the Cape Wine Academy, said: ”I’d like to see the face of the industry change. But it’s not possible because the land is owned by white farmers who grow the grapes and sell the wine. What are you going to do, sell the land just to be politically correct?”
South Africa’s rising black middle class may be able to afford farms, but usually have other priorities. Cooper added: ”The black diamonds are not going to invest in that and wait four or five years for a return, when they could get a much quicker return from other industries.” -—