Winelands, Wealth and Work

Kees van der Waal

Profits made by landowners through real estate development in the Cape Winelands have social costs for workers on this land despite measures to mitigate the consequences. A group of researchers in social anthropology, history, psychology and planning, based at the University of Stellenbosch or associated with the Solms-Delta farm project has come to this conclusion in a research project they have completed on social transformation in the Stellenbosch wine-farming area[1]. The researchers argue that the financial gains of converting agricultural land into lifestyle benefits were offset by social disruption and costly adaptations experienced by the working class.

The Cape Winelands region is well known for the economic value derived from producing export wines. It is a landscape of exquisite beauty, with towering mountain ranges protected by conservation management and valleys treasured as agricultural land. Heritage is a rich resource here, evidenced by the Cape Dutch architecture of Boschendal and a recorded history going back to the 1680s. The Cape Winelands area is presently strongly associated with elite tourism and a wealthy lifestyle, embedded in viticulture and deciduous fruit production. However, the obvious visual importance of landscape and heritage hide the mundane relations of production experienced by agricultural workers. Relations between workers and owners in the wine industry were extremely exploitative during the slave era and have remained paternalistic to this day. Farm labour unrest in the Western Cape in 2012 attests to the tension generated by extreme inequalities.