No Whining about Wining

Just an hour’s drive from Cape Town is the Cape Wineland district, where a majority of South Africa’s wine industry is based. Lynn very much wanted to do some wine tastings. I agreed, but didn’t look forward to it much. Wine is for snobs, I thought. Me, I’m a beer drinker. I don’t even like the taste of wine.


Thank goodness Lynn wanted to go, because I fell in love with touring wineries. First of all, they were beautiful. We stayed in Franschoek, a small, touristy town nestled in a lush green valley between a craggy mountain. Everywhere we turned, there was another beautiful vista. Many of the wineries themselves were built on impressive estates, with ornate gates and immaculately manicured lawns.

Each had a distinctly different personality. Cabriere Estate, which made sparkling wine (a.k.a. Champagne), was high-class with a hint of whimsy. There we took a cellar tour, to see the bubbly aging in row after of French-made casks. Once out of the cellar, we tried the wines – which were just blah – and looked at the ginormous elephant bone which had a map of the valley carved on it.


One of my favorite wineries was Fairview Estates, which both had the best-tasting affordable wines and a great sense of whimsy. Approaching the main building, the first thing we saw was a jungle gym-like tower for goats. Inside, we got a good deal: try seven wines, plus a cheese tasting, for just US$2. This wine tasting thing was starting to look like a good deal.


We tried several wines just because we liked their names, such as “Goats Do Roam,” which is a pun on a type of wine called Côtes du Rhome, and “The Goatfather,” which pictured an old billy goat as a mafia Don. Ultimately I liked a non-punny wine, the 2005 Fairview Shiraz, and bought two bottles. I’m curious how much this wine would cost in the U.S., so if anybody sees it, please let me know. In South Africa, at the winery, it was under US$9.

One question that kept nagging at me while we toured the wine areas was, “Where are all the black people?” The town we stayed in was decidedly touristy, and although all the service staff were black or coloured, there was no way they could afford to live in town. So where did all the staff come from? Finally, I got my answer when I went out for a long run before our second day of tasting. About three miles down the main road out of Franschoek, behind a copse of trees, a small road led off to the right. Here, the houses were decidedly down-market, although they weren’t the shantytowns that we had seen in Cape Town. The population was entirely nonwhite. There was a grocery store, but I doubt it was as well stocked as the one in town. So that’s what happened to the blacks: just as in other parts of South Africa, they were shunted out of sight, to work for the whites but otherwise not to be seen or heard.

All the wineries we had toured so far were white-owned. Although they employed black workers, there were fewer black workers serving customers than there were working the fields. During the entire trip, only once did I see a black manager in a restaurant or bar. Even though South Africa now has majority rule, how will it ever correct the inequality in income and capital that are the results of apartheid? Approximately 13% of South Africa’s population is white, but they control 87% of the land and capital in the country. As long as the rule of law prevails, how will nonwhites ever come to parity with whites who hold the purse strings, farms, factories, ranches, and bank accounts?

The last winery we visited, Solms-Delta, answered this question in an interesting way. It was one of a few wineries in which the employees have become partial owners and managers of the estate. At Solms, the white owner of the estate takes 50% of the profits, and a trust to benefit the employees takes the other 50%. The trust has been used to build good accommodation for workers, to provide health care, and to pay school and university fees for workers’ children.

Out of more than 100 wineries in the region, there are perhaps half a dozen that have schemes similar to this one. It’s a promising start, but the scale is far too small to bring about a substantial shift in capital ownership from whites to nonwhites. How South Africa can achieve any sort of income parity between whites and blacks is a critical question that remains to be answered. If it allows the invisible hand of the market to lead the way, generations may pass with little change. If it takes white farms and wineries and redistributes them to poor blacks who have little knowledge of farming or capital, as Zimbabwe is doing, South Africa will no longer be an economic success story. What is the middle ground that preserves South Africa’s economy while enabling its citizens to share in its wealth?

These are all important questions for South Africa, but after three wine tastings this day, Lynn and I were in no condition to answer them!

Robben Island

Robben’s Island was another ‘must see.’ It was once the prison where Nelson Mandela and many other anti-apartheid activists were jailed. Now, it has become a national monument to which tourists and school children pay homage.

After a 45-minute boat ride from Cape Town, we debarked on the island and turned right towards the main gate. When I first saw the forbidding entrance gates to the prison, they were emblazoned with a slogan that momentarily reminded me of the gates of Auchwitz. I worried that the curators of the Island would portray the political incarceration there in a similar light. As bad as apartheid was, it cannot match the 12 million souls exterminated in the Holocaust. Fortunately, the curators chose instead to emphasize the Island’s role in the struggle for majority rule in South Africa. While they mentioned the hardships and cruelty inflicted upon inmates, the focus was squarely on how the island served as an incubator for anti-apartheid thought and action.


Physically, the island is a small, flat rocky piece of land about 7½ miles from Cape Town. There are few tall trees, and very little shelter from the winds that come across Table Bay. From the southern and eastern sides of the island, Cape Town is easily visible as symbol of freedom that was just out of reach of the prisoners. There is also a large cell block complex, a quarry, and pleasant accomodation for the wardens, guards, and their families.


The Island began to be used for political prisoners in the 1960s, when nonwhites reacted against the newly instated apartheid laws. Prior to its use for political prisoners, it was a regular prison for criminals. When Mandela arrived in 1962, he shared space with the criminals, who were urged by wardens to abuse the political inmates.

Our tour guide – who had been a political prisoner on the island himself – drove us to a a large quarry used for hard labor. In the quarry was a small cave that had been used as a toilet. Unbeknownst to most of the guards, inmates also used that cave as a makeshift classroom. They taught each other everything from basic literacy to revolutionary tactics and philosophy. Our guide told us that a few illiterate guards even learned to read from the inmates!

South African authorities used a variety of techniques to try to break inmates’ spirits. Just being housed on the island, with the freedom of Cape Town in view, must have been demoralizing. In the early years, inmates were only allowed one visit and one letter per year. The authorities also tried to divide and conquer, by giving different privileges to different racial classifications. Asians and ‘coloureds’ got slightly more food than blacks, for example.


Some inmates, like Mandela, were placed in single cells. On the tour we saw his cell, which had blankets for sleeping, a table for writing, and a bucket for a toilet. It was small, but my first room in NYC was actually smaller. The cells would have been quite cold in winter as there was no heat and temperatures could plunge below freezing. Our guide told us that inmates were issued four blankets when they arrived, and normally they slept on two and under two. But when it got really cold, they had to decide whether to wrap up and sleep without padding, or whether to have a softer but colder bed.


Other inmates were housed in dormitory units. In the dorms, inmates were graded by different letters, according to how compliant they had been. ‘D’ inmates were allowed the fewest letters and visits, and received no extra rations. ‘C’ inmates received some extra rations, ‘B’ prisoners, received even more, etc. Each prisoner started as a ‘D,’ but with good behavior he could move up the ladder. The intention was to reward good behavior, but also to set the inmates against each other by creating a hierarchy that wily prisoners could exploit. However, the activists found a solution. The men in each dorm decided that all the extra rations were to be shared equally. In this way, as in many other small examples, Robben’s Island served as an incubator for the revolutionary unity.

Ultimately, seeing Robben Island was interesting in an intellectual way. Fortunately – both for me and for all of South Africa – it didn't pack the emotional punch of that prison it first reminded me of. But the island does serve as a continuing symbol of the cruelty of apartheid, of the inmates’ inspiring response to their captivity, and as a light of hope for South Africa’s future.

Heading South for the Holidays

At the end of the first term, we had a three week holiday from school. My friend Lynn and I planned to meet in Cape Town, South Africa. Even though she was coming from New York and I was just coming from Namibia, it took me longer to get there. First, I had to get from Outapi to Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, 500 miles away.

To begin, I took a shared taxi from Outapi to Oshakati, the major city in the north. From Oshakati it is possible to hitchhike for free, but that's more successful if you're a pretty female volunteer which, alas, I am not. The other way is to take a combi (a passenger van, usually made by VW, seating about 14-18) or small minibus (seating 20-30).

Finding a minibus or combi is easy, but getting the vehicle to leave the hike point is hard. When I arrived, about a dozen men surrounded me shouting, “Windhoek? Walvis? Tsumeb?” Each of these guys was working for a different minibus. You can haggle with these guys a little bit, but price is less important than getting a good look inside the van to see how full it is. See, the buses only leave when they are full. Once you are sitting in a combi, it might be an hour or three before it actually leaves. One friend got in a combi at 8:30am and didn’t leave until 12:30pm. Sometimes, the combi drivers even pay people to sit inside to make it look full!

In my case, I was pretty lucky. We drove around the hike point for awhile, collecting a few more passengers. One guy kept jumping out to buy things at the nearby open market. After only an hour, our driver decided it was time to go, and we were not overcrowded like usual. Then we headed south on the one tar road toward Windhoek. You can see the route on the map below.


Heading south, what I was surprised by how ‘big’ the towns of Tsumeb, Otavi, and Otjiwarongo were. When we first drove north after training, they seemed like small towns, the sort that make you slow down for two minutes when driving on a two-lane country road. Compared to the north, however, these towns were well-developed metropolitan areas with large stores, paved side streets, and irrigated crops in the surrounding countryside. Unlike the cement box houses of the north, there were a few buildings with interesting architectural elements, like curves or arches. Another thing that surprised me was how, between the towns, there was nothing. Nada. Shrubs, small trees, & fences. Once or twice, we drove for 30 or 40 minutes without passing any small villages. In the north, there are small clusters of cuca shops and houses dotting the landscape. During a 10 mile run, I can pass by four different villages.

From Windhoek, I caught a ride all the way to Cape Town with a Peace Corps friend and his colleague, Mr. Galand. Mr. Galand is a non-white South African who teaches with Jason. During our drive, he showed a characteristic African endurance of discomfort and hunger. On the second day of our drive, he drove for 12 hours straight on a packet of crackers.

The road south from Windhoek was nearly 1,000 miles straight to Cape Town. South of Windhoek, the landscape turned bleaker. Grasses and small trees gave way to sparse, scrubby bushes on a wide, flat plain. Sun-baked hills rose in the distance. The few towns were based around natural springs, because there is never enough rain to have permanent rivers. Physically, this area looked as desolate and arid as southern Utah or Nevada.


The towns were different than those in the north, because the southern part of Namibia more fully experienced the ravages of apartheid. Each city that we passed had both a “town” and a “location.” These euphemisms refer to white and non-white areas, respectively. Often, the main road divided the two. The towns were situated on the better land with more trees, and there were paved roads, many shops, and nice houses. The locations were just the opposite: few trees to provide shade from unrelenting sun, sand roads, and houses that were small boxes made from cement bricks or cobbled together with pieces of corrugated metal. Seeing the stark divisions between rich and poor in the areas affected by apartheid, I appreciated Ovamboland much more.


Once we crossed the border, the first several hundred miles of South Africa looked just Namibia: dry, mountainous, and desolate, with little human or animal habitation. Then, as we neared a perennial river in a mountain valley, suddenly there was green everywhere! Using irrigation, the Afrikaners have grown a wealth of fruits and other crops. This shock of green freshened our eyes and the air after 1000 miles of arid, scrubby pastureland. Officially, the southeastern edge of South Africa has what is called a “Mediterranean climate.” It’s not lush like a rain forest, but it has enough rainfall to create rivers and irrigate crops. As a result, citrus farming and wine cultivation are both huge industries. For me, however, just seeing all the green made me feel at ease!