Johannesburg - Black women in the wine business operate in an industry that has been resistant and slow to respect and recognise their full value as deserving operators who contribute a new perspective to the industry.
Nondumiso Pikashe is the founder of Ses’fikile Wines an indigenous brand developed by a dedicated team of four women in 2006.
While the brand is slowly making inroads in the domestic market on the wine lists of the Bantry Bay Suite Hotel and The President Hotel in the Western Cape, as well in the United States and United Kingdom and a “small footprint in Germany”, Pikashe said it is still generally difficult to break into the wine industry.
Pikashe is a former high school teacher, a veteran of 15 years in the classroom. That was before she stepped out of her comfort zone and into the world of wine.
“I come from a teaching background and I taught at Harry Gwala High School in Khayelitsha (Cape Town). I needed to listen to my entrepreneurial spirit which drove me into the wine industry, an industry that I have been part of and excluded from, in a sense, that I was born in Gugulethu, and the miniature Cape wineries are a stone’s throw away from my home. But I remained foreign and excluded because I knew nothing about the intricacies, the dynamics, beauty, and the heritage that surrounded me and my forebears. It is part of our heritage because it dates back to five centuries and we still know little about it and we are very much excluded,” she said.
The name Ses’Fikile which means “we have arrived” was deliberate, she said.
“We needed to break barriers, and bring the winery closer to the majority, the people of this country. We needed to open up. Ses’Fikile is celebratory, forward-looking and also aspirational.”
After looking at the whole South African wine industry value-chain from the vineyard to the cellar, the logistics involved, which include bottling and warehousing, distribution up until the final product reaches the end-consumer and gets into the market, Pikashe said she finds it intimidating and hindering that there’s a lack of land ownership by black people and her aim is to establish the brand.
“I want to bring forth the social and economic element of it. I want to break stereotypes and biases. I want to show that unconventional careers should be attractive to black people. As a teacher myself, I was never exposed to the career paths within the wine industry, that is, marketing, being a sommelier, or a lab assistant. These were foreign to me.”
Her wish is to engage with South Africans on how wine should be appreciated, and that it can complement food and be consumed healthily.
Pikashe believes the government should be made accountable for transformation in this country. What hinders them as an industry is governance, she says.
“We are not getting the support that is conducive to our development. There is no strategic plan of development from the Department of Agriculture. It always cries of scarce resources and limited funding. While we understand this, it is important to remember that they are the custodians of transformation.
“We can meet them halfway, but they have to be keen to listen to people on the ground. Let’s call a wine industry indaba where we can have a conversation on how to turn things around. How are they doing their monitoring and evaluation and what tools of measurement are they using to ensure that we have transformation happening at a fast rate?”
With the challenges she continues to face, Pikashe is adamant she will not give up and will continue making a contribution to the wine industry.
“I am one of the black women pioneers in this industry and if Ses’Fikile is not established enough to be steady so that the young black winemakers can stand on my shoulders, then we don’t have anywhere to go. I’m not giving up. I hope we can get funding, start our own co-operative as black women in the wine market,” said Pikashe.
According to Wendy Petersen, executive manager, SA Wine Industry Transformation Unit, about 75% of the small businesses on their database are women-owned enterprises from all nine provinces in South Africa.
On whether she agrees with Pikashe that transformation in the wine industry is slow, especially for black women brand owners, Petersen said a holistic focused approach was not adopted within the wine industry.
“For transformation to be effective, all organisations working in the transformation space should focus on the same goals and targets. Collectively with limited funds, this would be the only way in which funds could be leveraged and have set targets achieved,” Petersen said.
She added that one of the key challenges that these entrepreneurs face is access to funding through funding models or commercial banks.
“The commercial banks are not geared to be developmentally focused. Then a big contributor is market access, especially to local retailers and some of the key international markets.
“Small entrepreneurs do not have the available cash to take on large orders. There is no bridging capital. The producers or service providers also do not offer trading terms. This leaves the businesses cash-strapped,” said Petersen.
Another issue is that small businesses also do not own production means or manufacturing assets.
“The result is that they cannot be price competitive in a highly competitive market. There are also no economies of scale and this affects their price competitiveness in the market with larger producers that will always gain this advantage.”