Winemaking was a profession that most South African parents could never have imagined for their children.

But black South Africans today are breaking down multiple barriers into the prestigious industry and transforming a landscape that was historically white.

Paul Siguqa, 41, bought the farm Klein Goederust (Afrikaans for “a little good rest”) after 15 years of saving.

His mother had worked on a farm in South Africa’s Cape Winelands for 37 years under the apartheid regime of the white minority.

“When you grow up on a farm as the children of peasants — black peasants — you are raised to be the next labor force for that farmer,” Siguqa said.

In 2019 he finally bought the “rundown” farm, renovated it and opened it last year.

“If we want to see change in an industry, we have to be the change,” he told AFP after inspecting his thriving grape crop at the farm in Franschhoek (French corner), a region with centuries-old vineyards.

The rise of black entrepreneurs has been slow and still faces serious obstacles, including lack of access to land and capital. As a result, the industry is underway to try to accelerate the pace of change.

“No one moves slowly,” said Wendy Petersen, manager of the SA Wine Industry Transformation Unit, which organizes grants and internships for startups. The resources are often insufficient and have to be spread thinly among the candidates.

To help them grow, the organization has opened the Wine Arc tasting room in South Africa’s wine production hub of Stellenbosch to nurture emerging producers.

Brands featured there include Carmen Stevens Wines, which became South Africa’s first fully black-owned winery when it was founded in 2011 and released its first vintage in 2014.

“The hard part of making wine is selling that product, bringing that product to someone’s table, and someone comes back and says, ‘I want more,'” Stevens said.

The 51-year-old is an unusual winemaker who grew up in the Cape Flats – an area marked by poverty and gangsters.

Her mother, a factory worker, bought her Mills & Boon novels, many of which were set in vineyards and involved wine.

South Africa was still under the racially segregated apartheid regime when Stevens made her first attempt to study viticulture in 1991. After being rejected repeatedly, she was accepted into a college in 1993.

Your perseverance has paid off. That year she took home three gold medals at a South African Wine and Spirits Awards for her Sauvignon Blanc and newly released Rose, named after her mother Julie.

But like many black brands, it sources its grapes from farmers in the region who don’t yet have their own land to grow.

Access to land is “the biggest barrier for black people working in the wine industry,” says Siguqa.

“It’s very political,” because historically, the majority of blacks, who make up about 80 percent of the population, have no access to land.

Blacks “compete with old intergenerational white border” as well as foreign buyers buying prime land… They compete with the US dollar, with the pound and with the euro,” Siguqa said.

The first vineyards were planted by French Huguenots in the 1600s.

Since then, the land has been passed down through the generations, and when sales did occur, it often went to neighbors, leaving little opportunity for newcomers to enter the market, said Maryna Calow of industry group Wines of South Africa.

But for the non-white operators who have broken through the barriers in the industry, it’s been a bittersweet journey so far — taking so long to achieve and once under pressure not to fail.

“We’ve been free for 28 years and one would have liked to see a lot more black people participating in the industry,” Siguqa said, bottles of wine lined up on a table next to him.

Originally founded in 1905, his farm received an award in Cape Town this month for offering an authentic South African experience.

Of the hundreds of winemakers in the country, Africa’s top wine producer, just a little over 80 brands are owned by blacks, according to Petersen.