Pondoland's Magwa tea brews a silent storm

There’s many an overseas visitor who I have decanted on to a homeward bound plane, clutching as parting memento not the customary carry-pack of Cape wine but instead a caddy of Pondoland tea. Not only because Magwa was the continent’s finest tea, but because the estate also was emblematic of a new South Africa’s solutions to old SA’s problems.

As the legend on the colourful tin boasted, “Your canister is a monument to freedom and free enterprise. We, the workers, have purchased our tea estate from our new democratic government. Great sacrifices have been made to do so and to ensure viable sustainability.

“With each cup of tea you make, consider it a celebration of our freedom. You are therefore now inextricably linked to us as a friend … the final link which distances us from an oppressive past.”

Emotive stuff and enough, I was pleased to find, to establish a Magwa-buying habit among some well-heeled visitors, willing to pay the premium price of the SA brand in European outlets. On one occasion I’ve even despatched some emergency supplies by post to a forlorn Brit who suddenly was unable to find his new favourite brew at his local supermarket.

It seemed a Magwa tannin-addiction could be almost as bad as the craving that can develop for Transkei Green, the other famous Wild Coast agricultural product. (Transkei Green is inhaled, of course, not sipped, and cannot with impunity be despatched by parcel post to overseas aficionados.)

Alas, the hype rarely accords, for long, with reality. Magwa has imploded and the estate — which used to turn over R65-million a season and employ 3 500 people — faces ruin after being looted and abandoned by its own workers. An enterprise that was symbolic of the new SA’s hopes has become another casualty of the challenges facing agricultural transformation.

A security guard was shot dead, a manager was attacked by a panga-wielding mob, vehicles and equipment were stolen or destroyed, permanent workers were driven from their homes by seasonal workers, and at least a year’s production has been lost. The police had to use rubber bullets and teargas to establish control, with one person arrested for murder and 48 for public violence.

Predictably, management blames the farm union, while it in turn blames unreasonable production demands. What is undisputed is that the Magwa workers were the best paid in Africa — earning five times the wage of a Malawi worker while producing less — and that the spark was management’s refusal of a 104% wage increase, instead of the 7% that had been negotiated nationally. All exports have now ended and supply contracts with China and Europe voided.

Aside from the agricultural, managerial and political reasons for this tragedy in a region where unemployment is double the national average, what is disconcerting is that despite happening in February, it has remained a secret from the public. Until South African Press Association reporter Stuart Graham stumbled upon the story while covering the recent local elections, the small matter of crippling riots, multimillion losses, murder, and arrests for public violence in a showpiece government project, had simply not come to public attention.

Not via police reports, nor through Parliament. Not through a media that largely ignores the rural areas. And on the otherwise current website of Magwa’s controlling entity, the Eastern Cape Development Corporation, the most recent “news” about Magwa dates back to 2008.

The ECDC is not returning calls but Athol Trollip, the Democratic Alliance’s Eastern Cape leader and a long-time supporter of Magwa, which he terms a “national treasure”, is unsurprised at the silence. “Magwa has gone through umpteen resuscitations and the government just doesn’t want us to know that it has failed yet again. And once the new Protection of Information Bill is enacted, such studied silences will become deliberate blackouts.”