Wines of South Africa has released a series of videos celebrating the twentieth anniversary of democracy in South Africa. They call it The Democracy Series. I’ve inserted the first of the eight short films above, but I recommend watching them all.

Wine and Democracy: The Thandi Project

What do freedom, equality and democracy have to do with wine?  I don’t have a general theory yet, but I can tell you that they are very closely linked when it comes to South Africa. The birth of democracy coincided with the end of apartheid’s long years of isolation for the country and its wine industry. To a certain extent, the country and its wine industry were both reborn two decades ago.

As a reader noted in a comment to a previous article in this series, once upon a time not so long ago many people shunned South African wines and investments, etc. because of the lack of equal rights in that country. Things are much different twenty years on and The Democracy Series is a good way to make the point. Now, as I will try to explain below, a person with ethical concerns  might well seek out South African wines rather than boycott them.

Thandi Wines, the subject of the first video in the series, is a good example of how wine and democracy can mix. Thandi, which means nurturing love in the Xhosi language, was started in 1995 on the initiative of Paul Cluver. A partnership that includes more than 250 farm worker families in Elgin, it was the first black economic empowerment project in the agriculture sector and is today one of the most successful of them. In 2003 it became the first Fairtrade certified winery in the world! Thandi’s success has been contagious: South Africa now leads the world in Fairtrade wine.

My South African friends point out  that not all black economic empowerment initiatives in the wine industry have been as successful as Thandi or the other examples shown in the video — much is left to do, they say — and more resources are needed. South Africa’s social and economic problems are very large and I think it is important that wine — one of the country’s most visible global industries — is part of the solution.

The One Diaper Theory of Development

My good friend Aaron, who works on economic and social development projects around the world, once told me that he aimed to change the world one diaper at a time. His point was that while a lot of attention is focused on big money projects, micro-initiatives that change living conditions for even just a few families can have great value when replicated and compounded over time and space. If enough people take small actions and together change enough diapers for a long enough period of time, the theory goes, pretty soon they will have changed the world.

I think of Thandi as a model of the one diaper theory put into practice for wine and when we visited Paul Cluver and his family we saw that there is actually more to it than the winery. We attended a children’s theater performance at the Hope@Paul Cluver outdoor theater, which is set in a eucalyptus grove on the Cluver farm. The profits from the theater’s programs support local efforts to deal with HIV, TB and terminal diseases and to care for the children of the stricken.  This is just one of several local initiatives that Cluver supports. Do you see the one diaper connection? We saw many other examples during our visit.

Moving Up The Ladder

Even though it is the largest South African export brand in the U.S., for example, there is no way that the de Wet family of Excelsior Wine Estate can by themselves solve all the economic and social problems in the Robertson region where they are located. So they take small but important steps: resisting mechanization, for example, to preserve farm jobs in a region with high unemployment and making a serious effort to promote workers into jobs with more responsibility, moving them up the ladder.

We saw this moving up notion at work when we visited Gary and Kathy Jordan at the Jordan Wine Estate in Stellenbosch. Attention to workers and their conditions was a founding principle at Jordan, where worker housing was built before the owners’ own home in the early years.  Jordan has encouraged farm workers to move up by sponsoring education, including advanced WSET classes in some cases. Jancis Robinson recently wrote about another innovative Jordan program to provide “South Africa Women in Wine” internships.

Education is obviously a key element of any one diaper program and we saw winery worker education  initiatives in many places. One of the most striking was at Durbanville Hills, which is a  partnership between drinks giant Distell and a group of local farmers. Social justice has been a goal from the start for this winery, which formally includes workers in the profit structure and on the managing board. Albert and Martin took us to a pre-school that the winery runs to get the children of farm workers off to a strong start. The winery support for education, paying school fees and so forth, continues as far as a child can go in school.

While South Africa’s economic and social (and health and environmental) problems remain daunting, the wine industry it taking a stand, which is symbolized by a seal that you will find on almost all South African wine.

The Democracy Series videos show us what is possible. There is much left to do, of course, and an understandable debate on when, what and how to move forward. Sometimes it seems like common commitment about what needs to be done is forgotten in disagreements about strategy and tactics. What’s important is that  debate does not become too divisive and that inertia continues to build and change takes place.

Because change is what’s important. Even if it comes one diaper at a time.

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Thanks to the De Wet brothers, Gary and Kathy, Albert and Martin, and Annette.  Special thanks to Aaron.