Wine estates open the books on slavery, while evicted workers ask what the history is for

At Groot Constantia, the oldest wine farm in South Africa, two plaques now carry the names of people forcibly taken from Mozambique, Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The estate draws 450,000 visitors a year, and among the old Cape vineyards it is unusual in having a museum that includes the history of slavery, run by the state body Iziko Museums. Panels record the lives of the roughly 30 enslaved people who lived on the estate at any one time from its founding in 1685 until slavery was abolished in 1834 by the British colonial government, from their work to what they ate.

The Guardian reported on this on 26 October, and the facts it sets out are worth South Africans having plainly. The plaques pay tribute to the contribution of those men, women and children to Groot Constantia’s success and acknowledge their oppression and suffering under slavery, their resilience and their courage.

“We have accepted that it’s part of our history and we are actually grateful for what they have done,” Groot Constantia chief executive Jean Naudé said. He described the estate as built on an unsound foundation, and said the least the farm can do today is build something proper on it.

There is no complete data, but historians agree only a handful of estates explicitly acknowledge their history of enslavement. The industry sold R36.3bn of wine last year. Groot Constantia is also unusual in having been owned by the South African government from 1885 to 1993 before being transferred to a not-for-profit trust.

Jan van Riebeeck established a colony for the Dutch East India Company in what is now Cape Town in 1652, and the first enslaved people were brought there within a few years to work in houses and on farms. By the 19th century the 21 most prominent wine industry families owned 3,557 enslaved people between them, according to Wayne Dooling, a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies.

“The wine industry was very dependent on enslaved labour,” said Kate Ekama, a historian at Stellenbosch University. By the 1820s, her research shows, about 80% of coerced workers were enslaved, with the remainder dispossessed Indigenous people.

Linda Mbeki, the Iziko Museums curator at Groot Constantia, gave the reason most historic wine farms carry no such memorial. “People don’t want to sully their legacy,” she said. “To acknowledge slavery history. To acknowledge culpability, if not directly, comes with privilege and generational wealth.”

That acknowledgement is where the argument now sits, because Groot Constantia still faces criticism from unions and workers’ rights groups who draw a line from slavery through colonialism and apartheid to the conditions wine farm workers live in today, many of them descended from enslaved people.

At least 10 families, mostly of former workers, have been evicted from the farm since July, according to the Trust for Community Outreach and Education and the Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union.

“You may want to claim the history of being the oldest wine farm, but at the same time those that have given their labour and that have built the sector can be easily dispensed of,” said Mercia Andrews, a director of the trust.

Naudé said evictions did not take place without a court order. He referred to comments he made about earlier evictions in 2024, when he said Groot Constantia upholds fairness and complies with all relevant laws at all times for all employees, and that its policies are implemented consistently and equitably.

Rico Basson, chief executive of the industry body South Africa Wine, acknowledged that slavery had left deep social and economic inequalities. “These are serious issues that cannot be separated from broader conversations about dignity, opportunity and fair treatment in the workplace,” he said. “Acknowledging our history and improving the circumstances of those who contribute to our industry today are both important.”

One farm that tried to do both was Solms-Delta, in Franschhoek, about 40 miles east of Cape Town. Mark Solms, a neuropsychology professor, bought the estate in 2001. “It’s not just some abstract historical principle,” he said. “You live in a big house on a farm with a whole lot of poor people, who are there as a direct result of that history and are impoverished as a direct result of that history.”

Nico Jansen is the third generation of his father’s family living on Solms-Delta, which was founded in 1690. When he was appointed estate manager in 2001 he did not initially believe Solms’s promises to renovate their houses or raise wages above those of neighbouring farms. “I wanted to exploit him as much as possible,” said Jansen, who identifies his heritage as indigenous Khoikhoi, so that the houses could not be taken back to the old days and the workers would be in a better place if Solms left.

In 2005 Solms helped the workers set up a trust and take out a loan to buy a neighbouring farm for themselves. From 2004 to 2016 the farm employed a historian, Tracey Randle, who carried out excavations, set up a history museum and helped the workers bring their musical traditions back to life.

The farm is not currently operating. According to Solms, the government stepped in to take over the workers’ shares in 2016 but did not put in the promised financial contribution, pushing the indebted estate into business rescue. A spokesperson for the department of rural development and land reform did not respond to a request for comment. A 2018 statement blamed the problems on accumulated debt and poor management at the time of the government takeover, and said the challenges had forced the department to cease continued funding of Solms-Delta in its present form.

Tommy Hall, an American technology executive, has pledged to buy back the government’s shares for the workers and invest in the business. Negotiations with the government are ongoing, Solms and Jansen said, and they hope to reopen the farm and sell wine again in about a year.

Jansen said many other wine farms were evicting workers whose families had lived on them for generations, often since the time of slavery. “We built this land with our blood and tears and sweat,” he said. “And now it’s being taken away.”

For a South African reader, the numbers carry their own weight. The 3,557 people held by 21 families, and the 80% share of coerced labour that was enslaved by the 1820s, describe an industry whose oldest names were built on ownership of human beings, and a labour force whose descendants still work the same land. The plaques at Groot Constantia are a record of that. Whether the farms that carry those names keep the families who descend from it is the question the evictions put on the table.