Near the Augrabies Falls in the Northern Cape lies one of the biggest empowerment initiatives in South Africa: a vineyard consisting of 67ha under wine grapes and 30ha under dried grapes (raisins), in which a farmworker trust, consisting of 14 farmworkers, own a 54% stake.
With such economies of scale, this should be one of the most successful empowerment initiatives in the country. But it's not. Fritz Oosthuizen, who used to own the land, says the project is drowning in debt, and he and the beneficiaries have lost faith in it.
What went wrong? Oosthuizen explains that he initiated the project in 2008, because he wanted to downscale production.
“I always dreamt of giving something substantial back to my workers for their contribution to the
