In their analysis of the eighteenth-century Cape economy, Pieter Van Duin and Robert Ross maintain that there was no systemic problem of overproduction, in large part because of the robust demand for wine in Cape Town.Footnote ² As we have seen, the second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the loss of export markets and the reduced significance of the city as a maritime hub. Given the expansion of production that could find no ready outlet, it must have felt very much like there was a crisis of overproduction by the 1860s. The onset of phylloxera dealt with that problem in a summary fashion, wiping out investments in vineyards and compounding the financial plight of many producers. However, farmers quickly took to replanting vineyards in the 1890s, such that the production levels at the moment when phylloxera struck had already been exceeded by 1907. This is perhaps surprising when the prospects looked so uncertain. However, this reflected a global trend, as A. I. Perold – alert to the bigger picture, as always – indicated in 1931. But Perold also put his finger on something else, which was the reality that consumption in many countries had been buffeted by the impact of global temperance. In this chapter, I consider both sides of the equation – that is, the efforts of the temperance movement to restrict wine consumption and the efforts of the KWV to increase the market for wine whilst balancing the interests of different rural constituencies. I begin this account by situating the South African story within the contentious politics that followed the ending of the phylloxera crisis in Europe. Here, I deploy France as a foil for understanding the range of possibilities that were present at the Cape.

Wine, Regulation and Temperance in Comparative Perspective

France was the first to be struck by phylloxera and here, arguably more than anywhere else, the future configuration of the wine industry was shaped by the contestation that surrounded restructuring. Under the onslaught of phylloxera, wine production dwindled, exports of wine plummeted and import of wine surged by a factor of 25 between 1870 and 1889 – all of which redounded to the benefit of Spanish and Italian producers before they too succumbed.Footnote ³ As the solution of grafting to American rootstock found favour, significant changes ensued across Europe. James Simpson observes that the costs associated with grafting, and the need for greater chemical use, led to increased barriers to (re-)entry.Footnote ⁴ Whereas those with sufficient capital could opt for the development of superior wines in favoured locations, the mass of ordinary producers had to pay close consideration to financial viability. Hence many opted to plant cultivars that guaranteed a high yield and were considered more resistant to disease. There was also an orientation towards regions where land was relatively cheap. Hence French producers faced renewed competition from Spain and Italy, where plantings and the output of wine increased significantly at the close of the nineteenth century.Footnote ⁵ At the same time, there were significant shifts in the centre of gravity within all these countries, assisted by improvements to transport infrastructure. In France, the output was heavily dominated by the Midi (south of France), where the Aramon grape – which reputedly yielded up to seven times more volume per hectare – was planted more widely than ever before.Footnote ⁶ It is telling that the total area under vines in France was significantly lower in 1905 (at 1,669,000 hectares) than it had been in 1878 (2,296,000 hectares), whereas the output of wine had climbed back to pre-phylloxera levels by 1913.Footnote ⁷

An oversupply of ordinary wines exerted downward pressure on prices. In the end, it required a measure of state intervention to square the circle. In France, there were two diagnoses of the underlying problems and two related sets of solutions. The first was that there was a veritable epidemic of fraud that greatly augmented the volume of what was being sold. This assumed the shape, firstly, of wine shipped in from further afield that was passed off as French, and secondly, it entailed various forms of adulteration. Warner cites one estimate that fraudulent wines accounted for as much as 40 per cent of French national production in 1902.Footnote ⁸ Adulteration also damaged consumer confidence which was reflected in reduced exports to the British market.Footnote ⁹ Part of the difficulty was that the issue divided constituencies within France. Producers in the Midi presented themselves as the hapless victims of unscrupulous négociants who adulterated wines with imports from neighbouring countries, as well as Algeria.Footnote ¹⁰ This came to a head in the much memorialized revolt of the Midi in 1907. Meanwhile, vignerons in Champagne complained that their own reputation was being sullied by inferior wine from the Midi being passed off as their own.Footnote ¹¹ A priority was to define practices that were blatantly fraudulent and to introduce legal sanctions. As important was the sanctioning of discrete territorial appellations, following the passage of a framework law in 1905. Demarcating the boundaries could be a fraught exercise, as the protests in Champagne in 1911 amply demonstrated, but it was fundamental to the campaign against fraud.Footnote ¹²

The second diagnosis was that vignerons were simply producing too much ordinary wine for a saturated market.Footnote ¹³ Here, the solution was to push for an improvement in the quality of wines from designated appellations, while imposing limits on fresh plantings and promoting shy-yielding varieties. Under the rules sanctioned by the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) system, farmers could only plant designated cultivars, were required to restrict yields and had to respect certain winemaking rules. In regions where more bulk wine was produced, smaller producers were encouraged to join cooperatives that could draw on concessionary loans to invest in the cellars and equipment that would enable better wine to be made. Progress was slow, but by 1914, there were 79 wine cooperatives in France.Footnote ¹⁴ In 1944, a separate category of Vin Delimité de Qualité Supérieur (VDQ) was created to meet the needs of the cooperative sector. At the same time, the Statut de la Viticulture which was ‘promulgated by the government, between 1931 and 1935 and modified by various decrees since’ addressed the root causes of overproduction.Footnote ¹⁵ The Statut imposed restrictions on fresh plantings and established subsidies for uprooting vines, with financial penalties for farmers who allowed yields to rise above a specified level. It also provided for the enforced distillation of surplus wine and the blockage of wine sales when prices fell below a specified point.Footnote ¹⁶ The surplus had to be surrendered to a government agency that distilled it and found other inventive uses for the wine.Footnote ¹⁷

France threw up its own version of the temperance movement, but as Joseph Bohling demonstrates, the defenders of quality wine and temperance advocates ultimately found common cause in the assault on spirits – with wine being marketed to the public as a healthy alternative.Footnote ¹⁸ The French model was therefore one that recognized the necessity of embracing a spectrum from premier cru Burgundies and top-growth Bordeaux at one end, to table wines at the other. Whereas much of the premium wine would continue to be exported, the expectation was that vin ordinaires would be consumed by ordinary French men and women as part of their daily diet. The premise was that a high level of export and domestic production would together address overproduction and guarantee everyone’s livelihoods.

At the Cape, the issues were posed rather differently around the turn of the century. Imports of wine were negligible, and the question of fraud did not really arise – except in the shape of Cape wines that were blended into French wines. At the Cape, three main issues were at stake. The first was the indifferent quality, which had been a stock complaint since the nineteenth century. By all accounts, Cape wines tasted different by the time they were reached Europe, but even at home the vast majority were deemed to be lacking in character. The diagnosis remained largely the same: namely that farmers who lacked modern pressing facilities allowed stalks and foreign matter to enter the must, while the resulting wines were often described as being overly alcoholic. In parallel with France, the solution was sought in the promotion of cooperative wineries that could bear the cost of installing modern production facilities. In 1905, following the establishment of a Commission of Enquiry, the Cape government made concessionary loans available to cooperative wineries. These initially struggled to become viable and, by 1913, after the government was forced to write off the original advances, the number had fallen from nine to five in total. But some of these became well-established and steadily cemented a reputation for producing wines of dependable quality.Footnote ¹⁹

There was also a question about whether the varietals that were planted were conducive to achieving superior quality. Von Babo was of the view that Semillon, Chenin Blanc, Pontac and Muscadel were all eminently capable of making delicate and aromatic wines, provided the highest standards of vinification were observed.Footnote ²⁰ Groendruif/Semillon had been the dominant grape in the nineteenth century. In 1823, William Bird reckoned that there were 11 types of grape that were grown at the Cape. He estimated that out of a total of 25.2 million vines, Semillon – ‘the common green grape’ which in practice was often reddish in colour because of genetic mutationFootnote ²¹ – accounted for no fewer than 21 million vines.Footnote ²² This was the grape from which Cape Madeira was produced. The second most planted cultivar was Muscadel, which was the source of sweet wines and accounted for 525,000 vines, presumably including both the white and the red, mutated version. Pontac, a dark red varietal that Bird (half wrongly) associated with Cote Rôtie and the Douro, ranked third with 270,000 vines.Footnote ²³ Bird noted that Chenin Blanc, ‘which gives the full-bodied steen wine, so-called from the same grape of the Rhine and which is well-adapted for wine, but not productive’,Footnote ²⁴ accounted for 180,000 vines. The remainder was made up of Hanepoot, or Muscat d’Alexandrie, grapes that were considered unsuitable for wine production, and some lesser varietals. Unfortunately, there seem to be no reliable profiles for the decades that followed. But anticipating the possible arrival of phylloxera, the Vine Diseases Commission of 1881 conducted a census and provided highly incomplete figures for the areas planted with each of the main varietals. From the indicative figures in Table 1.1, it can be seen that Semillon remained dominant but faced greater competition than before. Hanepoot placed a distant second and Steen/Chenin Blanc came in third. Of the red varietals, only Pontac featured in the list.

Following the replanting of the vineyards after phylloxera, the vineyard profile shifted. The data in Table 1.2 is expressed in terms of production levels rather than numbers of vines, but it reveals the relative importance of particular cultivars by 1909. It can be seen that Semillon remained the most significant of the cultivars, accounting for 39.5 per cent of production. But what is striking is that the second most important cultivar was now Chenin Blanc, which accounted for 5,473 leaguers (31,633 hl.), or 20.1 per cent of wine produced. An even more striking transformation is that a red cultivar came in a close third, namely Hermitage/Cinsault, which contributed as much as 17.5 per cent of production. Palomino and red Muscadel were the only other varieties of real significance. Unlike in parts of France, it would be difficult to argue that there had been a downgrading in the quality of the cultivars. Indeed, the opposite is probably the case.Footnote ²⁵ It is true that of the so-called noble varieties, only Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc made the list. Nevertheless, Chenin Blanc was capable of producing exceptional wine – with Cyrus Redding noting that some of it ‘is really excellent when about seven years old’ and Baron von Babo crediting it as ‘a most delicate wine’.Footnote ²⁶ The replacement of Pontac by Cinsault as the red grape of choice was probably an improvement if the intention was to create table wines.Footnote ²⁷ Some of the most distinctive wines in South Africa today are made from Cinsault as well as from Chenin Blanc. Hence it was much less a question of the intrinsic attributes of the cultivars than the attention paid to viticulture and winemaking. However, by 1909, much of the grape production was channelled into the production of brandy. Some of the brandy was made from wine spirit and some from the whole grapes, while a coarser version was distilled from the husks. Brandy could be distilled from any of these grapes but was most likely to be made from Semillon and Palomino. Where farms were geared to brandy production, high yields were privileged and much less attention was paid to the quality of the grapes. Conversely, it was in the areas where grapes were destined for wine production that more rigorous tending of the vines was likely to result in better wine from the cultivars that were available at the start of the twentieth century.

The second set of issues turned on the volume of wine that was produced. During the VOC years, one of the barriers to the extension of the vine had been entirely physical. It was relatively easy to transport wines from Stellenbosch, Wellington, Paarl and Franschhoek to Cape Town by waggon, but the high chain of mountains that lay beyond placed practical limits on further expansion. But in the nineteenth century, the construction of mountain passes altered the spectrum of possibilities. The Bain’s Kloof Pass, which afforded a direct connection between Wellington and the Breede River Valley around 1849, initially catered to horse-drawn waggons and subsequently to motorized traffic. Moreover, a railway from Cape Town was routed through Worcester and Matjiesfontein in the direction of Beaufort West – the first leg of which was opened in 1877. This imparted greater economic potential to the valley and the expanse of the Karoo to the east. However, it was by no means certain that this was an area best suited to the vine. The Breede River Valley is naturally arid because the rains mostly fall on the other side of the mountains, and it experiences a very high rate of water loss through evaporation.Footnote ²⁸ Most of the seasonal rain and snow falls in the mountains and the water then runs off through a multiplicity of streams that feed into the Breede River. In the nineteenth century, the river would overflow its banks during the winter months, creating a substantial floodplain, while in the summer it effectively dried up. The attraction of the valley initially resided in the access to pasturage for cattle and horses. With the ostrich boom of the later nineteenth century, driven by the fashion for feathers in Europe, many turned to rearing or produced lucerne as fodder. Lucerne makes heavy demands on water, and this placed a greater premium on management of the river. Farmers planted vines on the mountain slopes where numerous springs ensured a supply of water during the dry months.Footnote ²⁹ By the 1860s, some had begun to cut irrigation furrows that diverted the waters of the Breede River. The figures presented by the Commission of Enquiry into the Economic Conditions of the Wine Districts (Table 1.2) revealed that Worcester could already lay claim to having the third largest area of land under vines by 1909, behind Paarl and Stellenbosch.Footnote ³⁰ The Commission believed the total number of vines was probably more in the region of 100 million rather than the 52 million that was reported. This would have represented a tripling of plantings since the 1820s, which seems highly unlikely. What these rather notional statistics do reveal is that vineyards were planted across a very wide area including the Karoo, but also stretching to Willowmore, Prince Albert and Graaf-Reinet in the eastern Cape and as far north as Calvinia.

Inevitably, concerns were expressed about the likely impact on overall production if vineyard planting accelerated. The same Commission concluded that in the Stellenbosch, Paarl and Wellington districts, ‘there are no crops or subsidiary industries which would give the farmer in these districts the same return from a limited area as the vine does under normal conditions, nor are there any other agricultural pursuits capable of maintaining on a similar area of land so dense a population as the viticultural industry …’.Footnote ³¹ But it maintained that there were encouraging signs of diversification on the other side of the mountain, where the vine was being abandoned in favour of lucerne and ostrich farming.

This assessment proved to be less than prescient because in 1914 the second ostrich boom collapsed, and with it the viability of lucerne production. The crash culminated in a retreat of farmers from the Karoo into the Breede River Valley, many of whom turned to planting vines, benefiting initially from the enhanced soil fertility bestowed by lucerne.Footnote ³² More significantly, thoughts turned to the possibilities for irrigation. After the Boer War, an individual initiative to settle former soldiers and immigrants on an irrigation scheme at what is now Bonnievale had been a qualified success because of the low water levels in the summer months, and associated salinity.Footnote ³³ The solution was to construct a freshwater dam that could supply water during the dry months. The Zanddrift Irrigation Board raised the bank loan that eventually enabled the Brandvlei Dam (or Lake Marais) to be completed near Worcester in 1922. This investment, along with subsequent improvements, transformed the valley. As might have been predicted, the option to irrigate led to a marked increase in vineyard plantings, along with substantially higher yields, in Worcester and Robertson.

The third set of issues turned on the thorny issue of consumption. As has already been indicated, rural Afrikaners were not great imbibers of the wine they produced. In Cape Town and its surrounds, it was often claimed that the merchants had killed their own market. Through tied houses, they were able to keep prices artificially high and so, it was said, deterred people from drinking more wine. But an even greater threat resided in the temperance movement whose societal influence was second to none at the end of the nineteenth century.Footnote ³⁴ The Temperance International, as we might reasonably call it, was a worthy successor to anti-slavery in the mid-nineteenth century. Temperance spawned a dense network of associations that spanned continents, linking the United States and Britain;Footnote ³⁵ colonies of White settlements such as Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Natal and the Cape, but also encompassing India, British West Africa, South America and East Asia. The leading organization was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which had its origins in the ‘women’s crusade’ in Ohio in 1874, but went global shortly after its formation.Footnote ³⁶ The International Order of Good Templars (IOGT), founded in the United States in the 1850s, was less prolific, but also managed to spread well beyond its original heartlands.Footnote ³⁷ Finally, in the years after the First World War, a renewed international campaign was launched by the World League Against Alcoholism (WLAA), which agreed a platform for cooperation with the WCTU.Footnote ³⁸

The IOGT commenced operations at the Cape in 1873, and by the end of the 1890s it was reputed to have 10,000 members, with more than 12,000 additional members subscribing to the International Order of True Templars (IOTT), which had been created for a specifically ‘non-white’ membership.Footnote ³⁹ The IOTT became a powerful force in the Eastern Cape, campaigning strongly against utywala (so called ‘kaffir beer’), whilst advancing the claim that European drinks threatened a weakening of the bonds of African society. At the same time, the IOTT provided an important vehicle for African nationalists who were keen to shed the paternalism of the White leadership.Footnote ⁴⁰ The IOGT/IOTT remained formally distinct from the WCTU whose arrival at the Cape dates from a visit by Mary Leavitt during her world tour on behalf of the World Union in 1889.Footnote ⁴¹ The first affiliates were established here, as well as in Natal and the Orange River Colony that same year, followed by the Transvaal two years later. After the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, these separate chapters merged into one national body.Footnote ⁴² The latter remained in close touch with the World WCTU through the receipt of literature and visiting speakers and participation in the regular cycle of conventions in the USA.Footnote ⁴³ The final body that is worthy of specific mention is the South African Temperance Alliance (SATA) that was established in 1893. SATA positioned itself as an umbrella body seeking to coordinate the efforts of the IOGT/IOTT, the WCTU and a multiplicity of church-based groupings – Methodist, Anglican, Baptist and Presbyterian.Footnote ⁴⁴ The relationship between the White leadership of these bodies was close. The leading light in the IOGT, Theophilus Schreiner, became a vice-president of SATA, while as a Member of Parliament (MP)Footnote ⁴⁵ he counted on the vocal support of the WCTU. All three bodies attempted to keep their members abreast of global developments. The list of invited luminaries included no less a figure than William ‘Pussyfoot’ Johnson of the Anti-Saloon League who took time out from his campaign on behalf of the WLAA, in Europe and India, to tour Southern Africa with Rev. A. J. Cook in Reference Cook1924.Footnote ⁴⁶ Another was Bishop Cannon of the WLAA, who accepted an invitation from Cook and SATA to lend his weight to the campaign for Local Option.Footnote ⁴⁷ At the same time, South African campaigners made their own temperance pilgrimages. Cook, for example, covered a swathe of the United States in 1920 to study the progress of Prohibition, and in 1928 he visited Britain on behalf of SATA.Footnote ⁴⁸

The internationalism of the temperance movement contrasted with the more limited horizons of the farming community. Very few farmers had any direct experience of the wider world, although they kept abreast of developments in the European wine regions through the local press.Footnote ⁴⁹ The topography of the winelands and generations of intermarriage meant that the perspective of many farmers focused on a particular valley or district.Footnote ⁵⁰ Following the creation of the Afrikaner Bond in 1883, the interests of the wine farmers found a political outlet. But party structures were poorly institutionalized and MPs, who tended to be drawn from an urban elite, conducted themselves with patrician independence.Footnote ⁵¹ Whereas the temperance movement (with the notable exception of IOTT in the Eastern Cape) tended to be urban, largely female and English-speaking, the wine farming communities were dominated by Afrikaner men who were mostly staunch adherents of one or other iteration of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC). SATA purported to embrace an ecumenical vision, seeking to enlist not just Afrikaners, but also Muslims and Jews. But while SATA boasted Dr. Abdullah Abdurahman as one of its vice-presidents, it was patently a vehicle for English-speaking Protestants.Footnote ⁵² Although a solid body of the DRC was opposed to alcohol, there was lingering sensitivity about Anglophone domination that was reflected more broadly in campaigns to redress the marginalization of the Afrikaans language. Moreover, the fact that WCTU campaigned for a qualified but non-racial and gender-equal franchise, was not likely to endear it to many farmers.Footnote ⁵³ But, by far, the greatest source of concern was its relentless targeting of the dop system. The temperance movement in South Africa could never have gone down the French route of strategic accommodation because the worst cases of chronic alcoholism emanated from the wine districts, where farmworkers were dependent on wine rather than brandy. The defence of the farmers was typically to fall back on the logic of paternalism – insisting that they had always exercised a moral responsibility for the welfare of their Coloured wards,Footnote ⁵⁴ which included regulating daily access to liquor. In what follows, I now work through the three-way struggle for supremacy between the temperance movement, farmers and merchants.

A Glass Half-Empty or Half-Full?

Liquor Control Redux: Temperance Campaigning and the 1928 Liquor Act

In the early 1920s, the triumph of Prohibition in the United States following the passage of the Volstead Act, brought liquor to the forefront of public debate. Although few imagined that South Africa would suddenly ‘turn dry’, the temperance movement turned its attention to Local Option as a halfway house towards outright prohibition. The pre-eminent Parliamentary champion was Dr. D. F. Malan, the future prime minister of South Africa. Malan’s father had been the owner of the Allesverloren wine farm in the Swartland, but hardly any wine or brandy was consumed there.Footnote ¹¹³ Ownership ultimately passed to his brother, S. F. Malan, in part because his father did not consider that he possessed the necessary business acumen. D. F. Malan instead studied theology and became a dominee, or DRC minister, before turning his hand to journalism and politics. He later recalled that his conversion to the temperance cause came during his duties tendering to the flock in rural Montagu when he witnessed the devastation wrought by drink on the Coloured population.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Malan introduced a Local Option Bill in 1923 that was opposed by many MPs as a slippery slope to prohibition. Morris Alexander, for example, pointed out that the law already provided for a version of Local Option, given that licensing courts were required to withhold licences if two-thirds of the ratepayers objected. The Bill was narrowly defeated, as it was in the following year when Malan re-introduced it.Footnote ¹¹⁵ These near-misses brought home the importance of mobilizing public support so that wavering MPs would be more inclined to back the Bill when it resurfaced.

It was partly in response to the Parliamentary debates that SATA sponsored a conference on ‘The Drink Problem in South Africa’ in Cradock – historically a prominent temperance town – the aim of which was to advance the case for Local Option. Papers were read that dealt with the experience of local option in far-flung realms of the Empire like Scotland, Canada and New Zealand, as well as with the record of Prohibition in the United States. This underlines the extent to which the South African activists imagined themselves as marching in step with a global movement. Hence Rev. A. J. Cook rather optimistically claimed that South Africa ‘had caught the spirit of the age’ and was destined to become a global leader in the fight for temperance.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Rev. A. W. Eckard acknowledged that ‘the wine farmers are, without exception, opposed to Local Option’, which he attributed to fears concerning the loss of their livelihood. But since the American experience demonstrated that there were paying alternatives to wine, he argued, there was a realistic basis for cooperation.Footnote ¹¹⁷ The president of the WCTU, Emilie Solomon, spoke on the effects of alcohol on the home and on infant mortality, and finished with a remarkable flourish concerning the effects upon racial vitality.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Rev. W. J. Naude of the DRC contrived to find the hand of God working through medical research, which demonstrated the devastating effects of alcohol on the human body:

He also claimed that the Bible had been mistranslated and that references to the drinking of wine referred to a non-alcoholic grape syrup, in effect turning the wedding at Cana into a kind of temperance gathering. Finally, Dr. J. Van Schalkwyk offered a lengthy medical treatise, and repeated the assertion that ‘alcohol must not be regarded as an enjoyment or as a food, but as a poison or a medicine which may be prescribed to patients under proper supervision.’Footnote ¹²⁰ The congress finished by passing a number of resolutions. One advocated forging better links with the DRC. Another proposed sending a letter to farmers’ leaders expressing ‘friendly greetings’ and urging cooperation around the production of non-alcoholic beverages.Footnote ¹²¹

Much like the rival demonstrations in Cape Town in 1909, the Cradock congress galvanized the defenders of wine into staging a rival meeting in Paarl in May 1924. The formal agenda was that of promoting moderation, but the gathering was clearly intended as a broadside against the Local Option campaign. It was addressed by an impressive list of luminaries that included A. I. Perold; Louis Leipoldt, the doctor and poet; W. C. Winshaw, the merchant who went on to found the SFW; and a couple of churchmen. But while the speakers were all wine advocates, no farmers’ representatives actually spoke, possibly because the KWV was otherwise preoccupied. The closest approximation was Perold, who was by then South Africa’s pre-eminent expert.Footnote ¹²² In his contribution, Perold argued for the benefits of moderate consumption and attacked Local Option as the thin end of the wedge:

Perold recalled that when he had challenged ‘Pussyfoot’ Johnson on the record of Prohibition, pointing out that increased prices were due to the fact that Californians were making wine in their own homes, the campaigner had been unwilling to admit the truth. Perold concluded that ‘this looks uncommonly like intentionally misleading an unsuspecting public’ (emphasis in original).Footnote ¹²⁴

Professor E. E. Van Rooyen from the Theological Seminary in Stellenbosch gleefully shot holes in the assertion that Biblical wine was unfermented and maintained that the Bible was clear about the lawfulness of alcohol consumption. In his words, ‘The principle of moderation is Scriptural and therefore Christian.’Footnote ¹²⁵ Legislating against wine, he reasoned, took away the moral obligation on the individual to actively practise moderation. The same point was made even more forcefully by Rev. Harrington Johnson who, in a speech entitled ‘Why I am not a Prohibitionist’, insisted that ‘prohibition is based on a non-Christian view of the world’. This insistence on the thinking Christian subject was at least as compelling as the notion that there was a scriptural embargo, especially when the Biblical texts appeared to indicate the exact opposite. As probably the only American present at the meeting, Winshaw drew attention to the failure of Prohibition in the United States and presented South Africans with the following dire spectre:

But perhaps the most subversive refutation of the Cradock declaration came from Leipoldt, who made a case for consumption based on medical evidence:

Far from being a poison, he insisted, alcohol was wired into the very physiology of human beings. He then clinched the argument by pointing out that moderate consumption of alcohol was an aid to digestion and contained vital nutrients. He concluded by declaring that: ‘I therefore consider it our duty to encourage the use of light wines.’Footnote ¹²⁷

With these opening salvoes duly exchanged, the debate returned to the Parliament floor. In February 1924, Leslie Blackwell introduced the latest version of the Local Option Bill, having paid tribute to D. F. Malan’s previous unsuccessful efforts.Footnote ¹²⁸ He rehearsed the argument about endemic drunkenness amongst the Cape Coloured population, and added the threat to the welfare of ‘poor whites’. He also restated the supposed failings of the licensing courts. Confirming Perold’s assessment, Blackwell observed that while the time was not ripe for the introduction of prohibition, the creation of ‘a few dry patches’ would ‘set in motion a process of becoming dry’, leading eventually to the dry areas outnumbering the wet and the creation of a public mood favouring outright prohibition. He was unapologetic, stating that, ‘I am a prohibitionist and I see in this Bill the half-way house to prohibition, and I believe it will pave the way ultimately for going dry.’ Such forthrightness provoked a ferocious response from MPs representing wine-farming constituencies, who warned that they could not be expected to vote for such legislation. Tielman Roos was especially emphatic, adding that the Bill was anachronistic given that Smuts had only just introduced legislation intended to assist the wine farmers.Footnote ¹²⁹ After a passionate debate, the Bill narrowly failed to carry the necessary support, losing on this occasion by 53 to 51 votes.

Shortly thereafter, Parliament was dissolved, and Smuts took the country to a general election which he proceeded to lose. When Parliament reconvened in 1924, an alliance between the National and Labour parties commanded a majority and Smuts was consigned to the opposition benches. Within the Pact Government Roos assumed the Justice portfolio, while Malan became the Minister of Interior, Public Health and Education. It was now Roos who made the running, but in a rather different direction from Malan. In 1925, a private Local Option Bill was introduced for the fourth year in succession but it failed by a wider margin, which confounds any simple notion that Nationalists were naturally more disposed towards temperance. It now fell to Roos to table legislation that would consolidate the liquor laws, a demand that had been repeatedly made since Union in 1910. Introducing his draft Liquor Bill in September 1926, Roos went on the offensive by openly criticizing the temperance campaigners as ‘self-appointed reformers’. In particular, he singled out a public protest that had been called by the temperance lobby to oppose his Bill.Footnote ¹³⁰

The Bill conceded something to both wine-farming interests and the temperance lobby, but at the risk of alienating both. On the one hand, Roos proposed an extension of the dop system to the Transvaal, on the basis that outright prohibition for Black people had proved a singular failure and that it would help to stem the drift of labour to the cities. In addition, his Bill envisaged government canteens through which liquor could be made available to ‘non-whites’ under controlled conditions. Part of the intention was evidently to expand the market for ‘light wines’, a longstanding demand that Roos had previously championed. The Bill conspicuously omitted a Local Option clause and went further by excluding teetotallers from serving on licensing boards. This was a very direct affront to temperance campaigners. Finally, White people were to be permitted to purchase wine and beer from cafés and restaurants without complicated licensing restrictions. But to balance the ticket, the Bill was supposed to phase out licences for stand-up canteens over a five-year period. The Bill would have permitted Coloured people in the Cape to drink in licensed canteens in the interim, while banning them from purchasing off-sales alcohol, thereby addressing some of the concerns about liquor abuse over weekends in rural areas. Crucially, all Black people in the Cape were to forfeit the right to freely purchase ‘European alcohol’, regardless of whether they qualified to be on the voters’ register. Roos had already pre-empted the debate by announcing that the Bill would be referred to a Select Committee. Over the next two years, the WCTU and SATA kept up sustained pressure through petitions and public meetings, targeting aspects of the ‘Roos Bill’ that they deemed unacceptable. The draft that returned to Parliament in 1927 was shorn of its more liberal aspects and reflected much more of the temperance agenda. While Blackwell continued to oppose particular sections, the temperance lobby kept up the pressure outside Parliament. At a ‘mass meeting’ at City Hall, which was led by the Archbishop of Cape Town, speakers celebrated the withdrawal of ‘two-thirds’ of the offending articles from the Bill, notably on the composition of the licensing boards and the sale of liquor through cafés and restaurants.

By contrast, it is somewhat puzzling that the KWV failed to articulate a public case in favour of wine and spirits. In Parliament, Heatlie and J. H. H. De Waal made lengthy contributions to the debate, but given the latter’s hostility to the KWV, it is perhaps understandable that they struggled to find a unified voice. The one specific item on which these MPs mounted a defence was in relation to the dop system.Footnote ¹³¹ However, this was more about justifying established practice in the Cape than supporting an extension to the north. While Blackwell wished to exclude all Black people from the dop, Heatlie insisted that it was impractical to separate Coloured and Black farmworkers in this way. He also asserted that the dop was conducive to law and order because it kept farmworkers away from the canteens.Footnote ¹³² For defenders of the dop, the cardinal principle remained that the farmer was the best judge of the welfare of his workers. As Jeremy Martens has indicated, the debate also elicited fundamental differences of opinion as to whether the Coloured population should be treated on a par with the White one.Footnote ¹³³ While some defended the rights of Coloured people to consume on the basis of non-racialism,Footnote ¹³⁴ those who represented wine interests were conscious of the fact that they were the principal consumers of unfortified wine. At the same time, the abandonment of the right of Black voters in the Cape to drink was a further nail in the coffin of a shared citizenship.Footnote ¹³⁵ Temperance campaigners, who had formally supported the political rights of Black people in line with the traditions of Cape liberalism, had contributed to this outcome by abandoning equality before the law in the pursuit of eventual prohibition.

In 1928, the temperance movement had chalked up a significant victory over the wine farmers and the merchants alike, and in ways that were to have profound consequences for the next three decades.Footnote ¹³⁶ Under the 1928 Liquor Act, all Black people were henceforth excluded from the purchase of wine, bottled beer and spirits, which represented a significant reversal of the position in the Cape where those who qualified to vote had previously been exempted, even if permits of exemption could still be applied for in exceptional circumstances.Footnote ¹³⁷ And yet, for temperance campaigners, there were three lingering sources of discontent. The first is that they had failed to prevent the legalization of municipal beer halls selling a version of ‘kaffir beer’ on the Witwatersrand. Secondly, the dop system remained in place in the Cape and the Orange Free State, albeit subject to formal regulation. Thirdly, Coloured people in the Cape and Natal (and Asians) were still permitted to purchase alcohol from canteens and off-licences. However, the Act provided that all canteens would close within three years, except for those that were converted into hotel licences, which was likely to reduce Coloured people’s access to alcohol before very long. Also, they had failed to entrench their preferred version of Local Option. But the hours of sale were reduced, and while the wine farmer’s licence survived, it was restricted to larger volumes consumed off-premises. On balance, it was evident that Blackwell and the temperance lobby had forced Roos into a humiliating retreat through a skilful mixture of public campaigning and the application of pressure to individual MPs. As one Parliamentarian later described the outcome: ‘The Bill which Mr Roos introduced … at that time was introduced as a Liquor Bill, but it left the House as a Prohibition Act. It was introduced as a Roos Bill and went out as a Blackwell Act.’Footnote ¹³⁸ The wine farmers had avoided an even worse fate, perhaps, but the provisions that were intended to expand the market for light wines had been stripped out. What this meant was that the internal market for wine was even more precariously balanced on the consumption of White and Cape Coloured people, whose capacity to drink would also be inhibited by stricter licensing laws. The 1928 legislation was equally a defeat for the merchants who avoided a curb on ‘tied houses’ but faced greater constraints on their ability to sell wine and spirits.

Conclusion

Across the wine-producing world, as Perold rightly observed, there was a steep increase in production around the turn of the century that was not matched by a comparable rise in demand.Footnote ¹³⁹ Unlike in France, a generic problem was compounded by South African legislation that was designed to prevent a majority of the population from acquiring access to alcohol, including wine and brandy. The 1928 Liquor Act marked both the demise of a lengthy campaign to establish an exception for ‘light wine’ and victory for the temperance lobby over the wine farmers and merchants alike. It was not a total victory because White and Cape Coloured drinkers could still purchase wine. But it narrowed consumption at a time when production was surging as a consequence of the opening up of the Breede River valley to irrigated farming. The government was reluctant to intervene directly, and so it fell to the KWV to address an oversupply of basic wine destined for distillation. In the next chapter, I assess how far the KWV proved capable of fulfilling its devolved mandate after 1924, and the door to the advancement of a quality agenda remained open.