South African wine
Sir,—Bert Walker is probably correct about wages for “blacks” (more likely Coloureds) in Stellen-bosch-an area with a traditionally liberal “colour bar,” but he misses the point about the “tot.” I once spent several nights helping the accountant (a Coloured schoolmaster) for a retail merchant supplying a large area of Western Cape farms. Accounts were paid annually, and farm employees, mostly pitifully impoverished sharecroppers, black through poor white, booked their needs on the farmers’ invoices. A free tobacco allowance supplemented a £2O annual cash wage, while the farmers’ coarse Boer wine called “vaaljape” (“yellow Johnny”) was the generous “tot” to the labourers. I saw whole families, including infants, happy and drunk. Most exceeded their “cash” wage at the store, so were in debt for life, brought back to their shacks by the police if they absconded.—Yours, etc.,
VARIAN J. WILSON. May 10, 1984.
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Press, 11 May 1984, Page 12
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145South African wine Press, 11 May 1984, Page 12
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