Practising Empowerment in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Wine, Ethics and Development

Agatha Herman

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781472476036
• eBook ISBN: 9781317076445
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Despite the promise and optimism surrounding the post-apartheid transition, South African society continues to be highly racialised in its discourses, identities and practices, even within the very strategies that aim to change power relations and heal racialised divisions. Renowned for its brutal past practices, the wine industry in South Africa has long been associated with white power and black exploitation, and remains dogged by continuing allegations of poor working conditions and labour abuses.

Through in-depth, longitudinal fieldwork, this book considers how different ethics interact and draws attention to the positive changes and continuing development challenges faced in South Africa. Situating practice at its heart, it brings a novel, everyday and micro-scale dimension to understandings of empowerment in the post-apartheid South African wine industry. It develops a critical analysis of the interplay between practice, as scaled and inherently spatial, and discourse to conceptualise how 'big' concepts such as empowerment are articulated, materialised and experienced at the ground level. Through this, it gives voices to the marginalised who experience 'empowerment', setting these within the context of their relations with the other stakeholders who shape this engagement. This book contributes to broader critical social science debates around ethical development and questions of power and empowerment in development interventions. This is critical to reducing the disconnection between policy aims and realities within development and empowerment initiatives, as well as enabling (ethical) commodities to be strategic in retaining their appeal throughout their networks.

1 Introduction

Conceptualising power, practice and empowerment through South Africa

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road

(Mandela 1995: 751)

It has been more than 20 years since South Africa began its long walk towards a democratic, reconciled and equal society. Yet, despite the promise and optimism surrounding the post-apartheid transition, South Africa continues to face significant social, economic and political challenges with high crime rates, endemic HIV/Aids, social unrest, violent repression, allegations of political corruption and cronyism and a ‘continuing racialisation of spaces and inequalities’ (Bhana and Pattman 2010: 305). Positive changes have taken place but, as Mandela recognised, the road towards a new South Africa is a long and difficult one, given the structural and coercive segregation that had fractured society for so long and left a legacy of privilege, mistrust and alienation through:

… the impact of apartheid which stripped people of their assets, especially land, distorted economic markets and social institutions through racial discrimination, and resulted in violence and destabilisation, the undermining of the asset base of individuals, households and communities through ill health, over-crowding, environmental degradation, the mismatch of resources and opportunities, race and gender discrimination and social isolation. The impact of a disabling state, which included the behaviour and attitudes of government officials, the absence of information on rights, roles and responsibilities, and the lack of accountability by all levels of government …

(Ruhiiga 2013: 11)

It has taken time, and will take much more, to bring about the necessary transformation; South African society continues to be highly racialised in its discourses, identities and practices, even within the very strategies that aim to change power relations and heal these divisions. Given the historic disenfranchisement of the majority of the population, proactive government interventions ‘to break through the wall of whiteness’ (Tangri and Southall 2008: 699) are understandable. In 1994, the incoming African National Congress (ANC) government identified the economy as a key arena that needed to be de-racialised in order to reduce social and racial tension and inequality (Ponte et al. 2007, Tangri and Southall 2008, Arya and Bassi 2011), with Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) identified as one key instrument through which this could be achieved.

‘Empowerment’ has become increasingly mainstream in global development rhetoric since 2000 with the ‘soothing promise’ and ‘warmly persuasive’ nature of this concept (Cornwall and Brock 2005, Gacoin 2014) making it universally appealing to a disparate range of agents, from national governments to NGOs and multilateral institutions (Moore 2001). The multiple, confused and contradictory definitions that have arisen as a consequence of this have established empowerment as an ambiguous, but politically expedient, ‘fuzzword’ (Cornwall and Brock 2005). This deploys a combination of seeming pragmatism and moral authority to justify interventions and particular world-making practices, which, it is clear, are never neutral (ibid). We must remember that power can both enable social change or sustain the status quo (Eyben et al. 2008); the rising appeal, and multiple definitions, of empowerment have meant that it can be utilised to strengthen existing conditions, obscure exploitative relations and dress up ‘business as usual’ through the respectability of its positive and liberatory discourse (Pease 2002, Cornwall and Brock 2005, Cattaneo et al. 2014). As MacKenzie (2009: 203) reflects ‘over the last decade perhaps no term has been as generously employed and woefully ill-defined as empowerment’. However, to give up on it as fundamentally contaminated by such mainstreaming would be to lose a concept that, for decades, has been critical in animating struggles for equality and rights (Cornwall and Brock 2005), and which remains ‘an important orienting concept for those focused on social justice’ (Cattaneo et al. 2014: 433). Indeed, ‘though it is true that empowerment is neither a panacea nor, unfortunately, the solution for all problems, it is a catalyst for change’ (San Pedro 2007: 2).

Since the 1990s post-development and post-colonial theorists have criticised classical and neoliberal development theories as essentialising, universalising and homogenising; furthermore, they have dismissed the latter’s incarnation of empowerment as reductionist and individualistic (Woodall et al. 2012). Instead they argue for the acknowledgement that development is a ‘particular contestable geopolitical project embedded in space and time’ (McGregor 2009: 1692), and so enforce a critical approach to the very notion of development. In their efforts to expose the inclusions and exclusions, the silences and marginalisation, they foreground the active agency of the subaltern, and re-imagine empowerment as a more radical demand for structural change (Mohan and Stokke 2000). While acknowledging the critiques, I find this positioning as an emancipatory and contextual process useful as, in the words of Esteva (1992), it empowers one to ‘dream one’s own dreams’ and so ensures a focus on power. Nonetheless, the general focus on losses and dismissal of the diversity of development is limiting, and so I prefer to adopt Gibson-Graham’s (2008) more hopeful approach, trying to re-imagine places in terms of their capacities and opportunities.

As McGregor (2009) notes, localism has become the new development orthodoxy but, if we recognise the local not as a discrete object but as a site performed through relations and flows, we avoid some of the dangers articulated by Mohan and Stokke (2000) who were concerned that the local was being viewed in isolation and that local inequalities and power relations were being downplayed. The world is entangled, hybridised and interdependent, and so it is critical to understand the interconnections between the scales (Makki 2015). Such debates in development studies over the scale and the nature of development are longstanding (Murphy 2011) since, ‘from its inception, the idea of development contained its own peculiar if productive ambiguities’ (Makki 2015: 472); these have also resulted in a contested multiplicity of development interventions. Recent debates in development studies have foregrounded the need for ‘deeper histories of encounter’ (Silvey and Rankin 2011: 701) through engagements that ‘are context-specific and more in tune with the socio-cultural dynamics of the people ‘development’ targets’ (Andrews and Bawa 2014: 933). Murphy (2011) notes that understandings of intended ‘beneficiaries’, and the politics surrounding them, remain partial at best, a challenge supported by Ballard (2012: 564) who argues that ‘those who seek to achieve a sense of development sometimes do so by ejecting, bypassing or wishing away the very people we usually take to be the primary objects of development’. Development is therefore one of the key themes of this book, which contributes to these calls for greater knowledge and engagement through investigating the on-the-ground realities of the key development discourse of empowerment, and analysing the co-constitutive interactions between the micro- and macro-scales that this entails.

To date, studies on empowerment have either focused on theoretical engagements or explored it from a policy perspective (see, for example, Pease 2002, Hill 2003, Eyben and Napier-Moore 2009, Ansari et al. 2012, Hennink et al. 2012) but analysis is critically needed of how empowerment is experienced and practised by the socially, politically and economically marginalised communities that it targets in order to ensure its relevance and effectiveness. So far, I have painted a rather gloomy impression of South Africa’s post-apartheid achievements although it is true that, notwithstanding the clear social and political progress that has been made in terms of the franchise, labour regulations, health, education and welfare since 1994, questions of socio-economic equality, equity and empowerment remain critical, pertinent and ongoing challenges. ‘Transformation’ is a key national discourse that, for me, is closely entangled with empowerment; however, like empowerment, there is a conceptual plurality that leaves it at risk of being devoid of meaning and easily co-opted (Feola 2015). Nonetheless, there is consensus that transformation represents a major, fundamental and structural change, although what exactly makes change transformation remains contested. Despite the use of the discourse of transformation in South African politics, the need for this major structural change is still evident as highlighted by de Vos (2010). He argues that the potential for radical transformation as encapsulated in the constitution has not come to pass, with it becoming just another empty signifier used to maintain the status quo and prevent the fundamental changes that are the enemy of an increasingly non-racialised elite. Feola (2015: 377) notes the dangers inherent in such a use of transformation, arguing that ‘when powerful metaphors become fashionable buzzwords, there is the risk that diversity is accompanied by vagueness … [which] may also hinder the development of understandings of the social processes and mechanisms involved in transformational change’. Harvey (2008) elaborates further on this darker side, reflecting on the ‘creative destruction’ experienced in the name of transformation by the poor, underprivileged and those marginalised from political power that can result in environmental, infrastructural or socio-cultural losses.

Given Shove et al.’s (2012: 1) contention that ‘theories of practice have as yet untapped potential for understanding change’, I adopt a social practice approach to transformation which positions it as a reconfiguration of practices (Feola 2015), and so acknowledges the importance of the freedom to make, and remake, the self (Harvey 2008) and the capability to choose (Sen 2001); this also makes space for the unexpected and the colonisation, hybridisation and contestation of social change (Shove et al. 2012). By exploring the impacts at a micro-scale that is always grounded within society as a whole, I explore how empowerment is understood, practised and experienced by all those engaging in its projects, and so conceptualise how this macro-scale, national discourse impacts on the everyday, micro-geographies of its intended beneficiaries. Through a critical analysis of some of the spaces, subjects and power relations in the South African wine industry, I therefore contribute to current debates around when change is transformation.

Renowned for its brutal past practices, and still almost exclusively white-owned, the wine industry in South Africa has long been associated with white power and black exploitation, and remains dogged by continuing allegations of poor working conditions and labour abuses (Bek et al. 2007, Du Toit et al. 2008, Human Rights Watch 2011). While the governing white elite are ‘renowned for circumnavigating legislative and voluntary initiatives in order to maintain the status quo’ (McEwan and Bek 2009a: 735), a number of wineries – recognising the increasing political pressure, potential market opportunities and, in some cases, a moral obligation – are engaging voluntarily in empowerment and transformation projects. The wine industry therefore presents an effective lens through which to explore the socio-economic challenges faced by South Africa more broadly (McEwan and Bek 2009a); through it we can see that questions of empowerment and transformation remain highly topical, contentious and, I argue, inextricably intertwined.

Before outlining the contents of this book, I first conceptualise and position the key theoretical terms of ‘empowerment’ and ‘practice’ around which it is structured, drawing on the literatures and discussing them through brief examples from South Africa. These begin to open out this context, the spaces and histories which shape the discourses, practices and experiences within this place, the broader landscape that may, or may not, support its citizens’ struggles but outside of which they cannot exist (Cattaneo et al. 2014, Gacoin 2014). As Bundy (2014a: 18) argues:

Of course people have agency: they bring their experiences, energies, ideas and imaginations to bear on the present. They act individually and collectively, creatively and destructively – but they cannot wish a different present into being. Their agency is exercised within a particular present, at a specific time and place; people can only act within the constraints that constitute the Here and Now.

1.1 Thinking through power and empowerment

We, the people of South Africa,

Recognise the injustices of our past;

Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land;

Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and

Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.

Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996: preamble)

On 10 December 1996, the constitution of the new democratic, post-apartheid state of South Africa was signed into law with the express aims of healing the divisions of the past, improving quality of life, enabling the participation of all citizens and building a united and democratic nation grounded in principles of equality and openness. This represented only one in the multitude of steps involved in challenging, resisting and, ultimately, deconstructing the apartheid state’s structures and relations of power, which used both legislation and violent repression to tie individuals to particular racist identities and so constrain their movements, interactions, bodies and opportunities. The constitution presents a key, but not end, point in the long-running struggle against the regime of apartheid knowledges that defined the white South African self and its ‘other’ in particular ways, and which continue to be embedded within the spaces, relations and practices of South African society today.

To Michel Foucault knowledge is the actualisation of power, stabilising and promoting particular relations and interests through normalising the discourses that support them, and so making them appear natural. In turn, these shape our identities for, as Foucault (1982: 777, emphasis added) comments, ‘human beings are made subjects’, with hegemonic social discourses acting to shape who we are or want to be, how society perceives us and what are considered to be acceptable behaviours through a combination of internal and external structures and processes. However, it must be remembered that while such discourses – for example, the racial segregation of apartheid, the decriminalising of homosexuality or the banning of smoking in public places – may appear as normalised social relations, they are historical, grounded in the context of their times and so are not fixed; discourses can therefore be challenged and re-problematised (Haugaard 2012) as occurred through the anti-apartheid struggle that took place both in South Africa and around the world.

I therefore conceptualise power as something that emerges in the relations between actants, which works simultaneously on, and through, subjects – not a property but a relational effect of social interactions (Allen 2003); ‘there is no such thing as power … power exists only as exercised by some on others, only when it is put into action …’ (Foucault 2000: 340). As Cahill (2008: 298) notes power is ‘not some static capacity but constantly shifts across time and space’, it is always in context, enacted, experienced and exercised through particular places (Deveaux 1994, Allen 2003, Cahill 2008) such as the public transport, public toilets, beaches or any of the other myriad spaces designated for particular races in apartheid South Africa under the Reservation of Separate Amenities Act 1953. The status of these particular spaces had to be continually performed through, for example, signage and police enforcement in order to coerce and dominate the population into acting as obedient, racialised bodies. This highlights the dynamism and performativity of power relations, reminding us both that they are more process than endpoint (Eyben et al. 2008) and that they always perpetuate and ‘legitimate a particular economy of inclusion and exclusion’ (Haugaard 2012: 45). Allen (2003) warns us not to conflate resources with power, with the former simply the media through which power is exercised; for example, particular interests can be perpetuated by maintaining resources in a certain structure. While admittedly some individuals or organisations ‘do possess a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• 1. Introduction: Conceptualising power, practice and empowerment through South Africa
• 2. The South African wine industry: Conflict and continuity
• 3. Local practices of empowerment in South Africa’s wine industry: Difference and dilemmas
• 4. Practising empowerment as development in South African Fairtrade
• 5. Strategic practices: Interactive relations and the role of the market in ethical trade
• 6. Whose empowerment?: Materiality and the marginalised in the South African wine industry
• 7. Conclusions: Practising empowerment and empowering practices in South Africa
• References
• Index