Gustav Thiel
SOME 1 600 invited guests turned up for the annual Nederburg Wine Auction – show-case for the industry – outside Paarl at the weekend, but only about 50 were blacks.
”We invite people to the auction that will buy the expensive wine and will be able to sell it afterwards,” explained auction manager Bennie Howard. ”There is absolutely no point in inviting someone who owns a shebeen when his customers will not buy the wine.”
The auction, which saw record sales of R4,4-million, came on the eve of a court battle between KWV and Minister of Agriculture Derek Hanekom, over the co- operative’s attempts to distribute its R2- billion asset base among its 5 000-strong, almost exclusively white membership. Hanekom argues that such a pay-out would be unacceptable, as KWV benefited from apartheid.