Legacy of The Dop System
The South African wine industry was also responsible for the "dop system", which involved replacing partial monetary wages for work with payments of wine. This practice is illegal since 1961, but was practised until the end of Apartheid. According to an August 2011 Human Rights Watch Report, civil society actors assert that "dop" payments continue to a limited extent, but they are having difficulties to document it, as farmworkers are reluctant to discuss it, fearing to lose the "dop" payments. The report documents two farms in the Western Cape that provide farmworkers with wine as partial compensation, and farms giving their workers free wine. The existence of the "dop system" over a long period has caused the Western Cape's grape-pickers to suffer the highest rate of Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) in the world. According to research, some 25,000 FAS children are born in South Africa every year. The wine industry does not currently carry any responsibility in terms of addressing these issues.
Read more about this topic: The South African Wine Initiative
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