A documentary by sensationalist journalist, Tom Heinemann, titled “Bitter grapes – Slavery in the vineyards”, is currently shaking-up the South African wine industry. The documentary which focused on the less-than-suitable working conditions of farm workers in South Africa has cause some Danish shops to remove South African wines from their shelves.
Heinemann documentary link-up with recent wage disputes at Robertson Winery, where unions demanded a 57% wage increase. When negotiations deadlock, unhappy workers took to the internet and ask consumers to boycott Robertson Winery wines
Most of the South African Wine Industry bodies like VinPro and WIETA condemned the documentary as biased, stating:
“Tom Heinemann’s documentary on the harsh conditions of farm workers selectively reveal conditions on a few farms. This reflects a very narrow narrative of the progress that the wine industry had made in promoting and respecting farm worker rights. The documentary has clearly been commissioned to be provocative and to create sensationalism. This form of media activism has unfortunately created a distortion of the work of WIETA and the progress that has been made in improving employment conditions and addressing critical ethical issues such as human rights, housing scarcity and the right to decent work and a fair wage in the industry.”
A Bitter Trend
Heinemann is not new to controversy and if all of this seem rather familiar, just cast your browser back to his documentary titled “The Bitter Taste of Tea”, spotlighting poor working conditions in the Tea Industry in countries like Kenya, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India.
