This article reveals a tragically high incidence of fetal alcohol in the
western Cape region of South Africa--although such public health data in
South Africa must be treated with caution.  For we historians, however, I
think the article is of particular interest in the ways that it is rooted in
and transmits popular mythologies of alcohol addiction, racial exploitation,
and race character.  Jon Crush and I addressed these issues in our book,
LIQUOR AND LABOR IN SOUTHERN AFRICA--but needless to say our author does not
appear to have consulted it!

First of all, the article suggests the "dop" system is a centuries-old
system designed consciously to addict workers to alcohol and therefore to
masters.  Even if the "dop" system can be thought to have created a class of
addicts, generation after generation, employers could hardly have
strategized to create such a class when the notion of such addiction did not
really yet exist.

More likely, that employers simply adopted existing European practice and
provided wine to vineyard workers, as both partial payment and as rations.
Evidence suggests in fact that South African workers received less wine than
their French counterparts.  In any case, employers were convinced of the
healthful attributes of the liquor provided.  Certainly, consumption of the
amount of liquor provided by the dop would not account for f.a.s.--as the
article both argues was and was not the case.

The question ought to be how a culture of binge drinking and heavy alcohol
use developed among some segments of the so-called Coloured population--by
no means confined to vineyard or rural workers.  There is a nod to Nancy
Lurie with the suggestion of comparison to Native Americans and the
possibility that drinking might represent a form of resistance.

It seems to me, however, that lurking in the voice of both the "expert"
(white of course) consulted and the reporter is an assumption that this
group of Africans at least is incapable of resisting alcohol and will drink
as much as is available to them.  This is a view with a well-established
pedigree--and one that is fascinatingly at odds with general popular
presumption that among whites, at least, alcoholism is the result of
individual inherent predisposition.  Apparently, we have different genetic
theories for different "races"--I suppose the notion that all are wrong
should be comforting.

Chuck Ambler
UT El Paso

-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Room [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, July 09, 1999 3:44 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: on the South African "dop" system


New York Times, July 9, 1999


Workers' Free Wine Ends, but South Africans Still Pay

By SUZANNE DALEY
WELLINGTON, South Africa -- Magrieta Manus and her husband, Bastiaan, have
lived and worked on the same vineyard here for more than 40 years, making do
with their nine children in two dilapidated rooms set on such a steep hill
that their rocky, slanted dirt floor is usually damp from the rain.

They work in the fields for less than $18 a week and, until two years ago,
when the farm changed hands, they were given free wine under a system
started centuries ago to addict laborers to alcohol and keeping them working
for virtually nothing.

Manus received a full bottle a day, Mrs. Manus about half that. On weekends,
they bought their own, often drinking until they passed out.

Nowadays, things are a bit tougher in their household, because they have no
free alcohol. On Fridays, Mrs. Manus is so eager for her wine that she buys
a 60-cent bottle to drink right at the liquor store down the road. Then she
makes her way home with a five-liter container that costs her one-fifth of
her week's salary. In the summer months, when she has no work as a seasonal
laborer, the money comes from her husband's salary and makes an even bigger
hole in the family's meager budget.

Keeping workers drunk with free alcohol, a system called the dop -- the
Afrikaans word for a tot -- has been illegal for decades and is now publicly
repudiated by the $1.7 billion wine industry here, which is very conscious
of its image and of past mistakes. Some surveys suggest 20 percent of the
farms in Western Cape Province still use the system. Others say the extent
is even less.

But experts say the end of the old system is ushering in a new set of
hardships, and new research shows an alarming rate of fetal alcohol syndrome
in workers' children.

Workers are buying the liquor themselves, running up debts and leaving less
money in the household for food, clothing and school fees. Often, too,
because they have little ability to travel, they pay more for the alcohol
than they should. And rather than drinking on the farms with their wives,
many men go to illegal bars, called shebeens, where knife fights are
frequent and prostitutes hover.

"You can't just stop it and expect everything to be all right," said Dr.
Dennis L. Viljoen, who heads the human genetics department at the University
of the Witwatersrand and has been studying the effects of alcohol on workers
for years. "When you talk to the workers these days, a lot of the women say
they were better off under the dop system. The men were at home then. They
didn't go off and spend all the money and get in fights."

In some ways, the damage that the dop system did is only now beginning to be
measured. In Wellington, a region of fertile fields, stately farmhouses and
run-down workers' quarters, a group of researchers from the University of
Cape Town Foundation for Alcohol Related Research has conducted a survey to
examine virtually all the children entering the first grade in the local
public schools. The researchers found that the rates of fetal alcohol
syndrome might be the highest in the world.

The study showed that 11 percent of farm workers' children were affected,
including Mrs. Manus's youngest boy, Jacob. By comparison, the United States
rate is 0.2 percent.

Dr. Viljoen said that even among groups with high levels of alcoholism like
American Indians, the rate is 2 percent.

Mrs. Manus, a tiny woman of 58 with a deeply lined face and few teeth, said
that she knew that alcohol could damage her child when she was pregnant, but
that she had never tried to stop drinking because she did not think that she
could.

On a visit, her home -- cavelike because broken window panes have been
replaced with cardboard scraps -- was as tidy as possible. Inviting guests
to a musty sofa that had shreds of fabric over its foam rubber padding, she
apologized for how cold the house was.

Pointing at the blackened rafters, she said she often took coals from the
stove and placed them on the floor in the middle of the room to try to keep
warm.

Mrs. Manus said when she realized what alcohol had done to her son -- she is
not sure how old he is -- she tried to warn her pregnant daughter, who also
lives on the hill. But without result. "It did not make any difference,"
Mrs. Manus said. "I told her what a hard time Jacob was having. But she did
not stop."

Outside her room the daughter, Magrieta Kruger, 27, was washing laundry in
buckets, cradling her fussing daughter in one arm. She proudly showed off
the baby, Jasmine. But a university researcher, Julie Croxford, said the
underweight infant, who has a tiny head, had also clearly been damaged by
alcohol abuse.

A tiny head is just one sign of fetal alcohol syndrome. Mental retardation,
abnormal facial features, problems with the central nervous system and
behavioral difficulties are others. Scientists say they believe that a
mother's binge drinking in early pregnancy is the most damaging to the
child. But many factors can contribute to the damage, including the mother's
overall health and nutrition.

Fighting alcohol abuse among the farm workers here is not easy, experts say,
because the drinking has become an integral part of the culture. Most
workers in the region are "coloreds," the descendants of blacks, whites,
Malay slaves imported in the 17th century and the Khoi-khoi and San peoples,
who were here before blacks or whites arrived. Like other nonwhites under
apartheid, coloreds were severely restricted in where they could live,
travel and go to school.

The combination of the drinking and the degradation of apartheid has been
devastating, researchers say. The drinking was not only a form of recreation
in a bleak existence, but also a form of resistance; the farmers were
excluded from their drunken world.

"It was in some ways a form of rebellion," Ms. Croxford said. "It's a very
complicated thing."

The drinking is so severe that stories abound of malnourished children being
given wine because there is nothing else. One child, for whom the
researchers are trying to find a school, was found as an infant on the side
of the road with a baby bottle full of wine. Her mother was later killed by
a car as she wandered into the road in a drunken stupor.

The baby, Monica, is now 9. But she has a head the size of a toddler and an
I.Q. that will never allow her to read or write.

"You do see drunken kids," Ms. Croxford said. "If they are hungry and there
is nothing else, the parents give them wine."

A survey published last year in the South African Medical Journal found that
in Stellenbosch, an area that produces some of South Africa's best and most
profitable wines, child malnutrition was the leading health problem.

Indeed, South Africa's wine country is a place of sharp contrasts, with
picturesque villages and white church steeples for tourists to admire and,
buried deep at the ends of dirt roads, the miserable housing provided to
workers. One survey of farm workers' conditions in 1996 Africa found that 34
percent had no running water and 27 percent did not have any toilet
facilities. Fewer than 50 percent had electricity.

Experts say conditions have not really improved since the first all-race
elections in 1994. Although a few farmers have come up with innovative
methods to use Government subsidies to help the workers own the land that
they farm, those have been the exception. In fact, some experts say, new
labor and workers' rights bills have actually made things worse for many. To
curb costs, farmers are increasingly hiring part-time workers. Many small
towns, including Wellington, have growing squatter camps, in many cases made
up of out-of-work farm laborers. In Wellington, about every 10th shack in
the squatter camp is a shebeen. Nor have most farmers been interested in
dealing with the alcohol abuse on their properties.

"It's not something that farmers have taken particularly seriously," said
Nicki Taylor, a researcher at the Center for Rural Legal Studies, a workers'
advocacy group. "Farmers have been faced with the problem for so many years
that they do not see it as a problem."

Farmers' associations are extremely touchy on the subject of the dop, which
has always been concentrated in the Western Cape, where most of the wine is
made. But it has been used on all kinds of farms. In fact, experts say it is
far more likely to be found on fruit or vegetable farms, because the wine
industry is highly sensitive about its image.

The giant wine growers' cooperative, known by its initials K.W.V., declined
to discuss the topic, referring questions to an industry supported group,
the Industry Association for Responsible Alcohol Use. The head of the group,
Dr. Chan Makan, said no cooperative members used the dop any more. He agreed
that the changes had brought new troubles.

"It is a dangerous thing to say," Dr. Makan said. "But in some ways things
are worse now."

The Western Cape Agricultural Union also declined to talk about the subject,
except to say that it had a policy against the system. "We made that
statement very clear and I don't think I can add to that," said Johan
Bothma, manager of general affairs for the group.

But some farmers are more open about the difficulties they have had. Schalk
Visser ended the dop on his farm in Stellenbosch in 1983. Some workers
simply quit. Others ran up huge tabs at shebeens. To make sure that they had
food, Visser started a workers' credit system at a food store on his farm. A
generation later, he said, 40 percent of the workers drink. When the subject
comes up with other farmers, he added, many still believe that the dop is
better.

"They say that ending it doesn't work," Visser said. "They say the workers
just get in trouble at the shebeens. But for me, that at least is the
worker's choice. At least my conscience is clean that I didn't help a mother
and father go down the drain."