A Day in the Boland

“Modern sophisticated African”, is how Moyo describes itself, and it certainly is a stylish establishment, situated as it is on the Spier wine estate outside of Stellenbosch. It is a real wonderland, with eating platforms built into the trees, fairy lights strung around, and beautiful African women helping you feel at home by painting pseudo-Xhosa dots on your face.

But what African could ever afford to eat here? Maybe those in power who are currently fleecing people, selling our beloved continent off as if it belonged to them, and pocketing the commission. So while many African people are dying of poverty, Aids and all the sundry miseries brought on by kleptocratic leaders and neocolonialists, those getting rich off the blood of the workers – including the hip, new Black elite – can assure themselves that they are part of the African Renaissance, by dining ‘African’ style.

But what about those left out of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE)? They’re not even allowed to beg for scraps from the master’s table, as the security guards see to that.

Deciding to enjoy the setting without breaking the bank, we opted for a bottle of wine.

Our waiter was a snooty bastard. “One bottle’s not going to last very long”, he said as we ordered a Pinotage. “Shouldn’t I just bring two?”

Cheeky, I thought, at 178 bucks a bottle – which is what an average worker on a wine farm earns in a week.

We demurred, and he brought us the bill before bringing the wine – obviously hoping we’d clear out of his section and be replaced by foreigners with deeper pockets.
Good wine though, from the Laibach estate.

Despite obviously being an Afrikaans-speaking boerseun, and being addressed in that language, our waiter insisted on a posh mid-Atlantic English, feigning incomprehension when addressed in his mother tongue, and not condescending even to use South African English.

Earlier that day we’d been at La Courronne in Franschhoek – by no means a downmarket venue. It had a touch too much of the faux European style that annoys me so much about the Cape, but the setting was beautiful, and the staff – local people not trying to hide their origins – pleasant enough to make it a worthwhile stop. I enjoyed a single malt whiskey from their fine selection, which, although not cheap, was affordable as a treat. Later, I noticed the same whiskey on the menu at Moyo for exactly R20 more per tot.

So while I tried my best to enjoy the wine and the fine evening and not seethe with class hatred, I still can’t accept that a person can spend more on one meal than some live on in a month, or that a bottle of wine can cost a worker on a wine farm’s weekly wage.

In some ways, it perfectly sums up the way Africa is being marketed, dished and served to the wealthy. This is the whole Foreign Direct Investment economic model in stark microcosm. We are creating a country of beautiful enclaves for the super rich, with foreign money, for foreigners. We are being colonised all over again. And because a few bossboys make a buck along the way, it is called BEE.

And we haven’t even recovered from the first attempt at colonisation yet.
So if you really do have more money than sense, and you want to fool yourself that the New South Africa is a consumer paradise with lovely Nouveau African styling, then Moyo is the place for you. Enjoy, and please be good enough to drink a toast to the land’s indigenous inhabitants, who picked and crushed the grapes to make the wine, and who will probably never see the inside of Moyo.

If, on the other hand, you actually care about the continent, I suggest you save the money a meal for you and your friends would cost and give it to some one who is actually doing something. Let them plant some trees in a township, or a food garden, or buy a computer for an independent media centre. Better yet, do something yourself.
Until our people are healthy, happy and secure, we have no business promoting this sort of development – all built on the sweat of workers on wine farms, who get paid next to nothing. Let’s first see to our own people’s needs, before bowing obsequiously to the power of the Dollar, Yen and Euro.

And yet just down the road is Lynedoch ecovillage, an example of another kind of development altogether. But that’s another story.