The Believer

It is a chilly September morning--spring here in South Africa. Clutching a thin raincoat around her shoulders, Selena Cuffe addresses the 10 black and mixed-race vintners she has invited to a drab meeting room behind the Cape Winelands Municipality building in verdant Stellenbosch. The walls are bare, save for an imposing sign headed "Summary of the Employment Equity Act," which is ubiquitous in this understandably self-conscious land. Bottles of mango and guava juice rest by the speaker's elbow, but attendees sip red wine from tumblers.

Most of these vintners are new to the wine business--new, in fact, to business. All own, at minimum, large stakes in small companies, something that would have been impossible 14 years ago, when apartheid banished black commerce to impoverished homelands. But empowerment--in South Africa, a word with a pulse--still inches along. Many of the vintners lack secondary schooling. Some are inexperienced in 101's like meeting customer deadlines. Cuffe's own start-up, a Los Angeles-based importer called Heritage Link Brands, depends upon these people for survival; this training session is meant to help them help her sell their wine in the United States. Cuffe, who at 31 is probably the youngest person in the room, has only a few hours to shore up her fitful supply chain with expertise and ideas she has accrued at the Harvard Business School, Stanford, United Airlines, and Procter & Gamble. Strategy is on the agenda. Marketing and distribution. Negotiation styles.

Cuffe has brought along two case studies to share with the group, and corporate-style printouts of her presentation. But there the trappings of Western pedagogy end. The blue-chip pedigree that opens doors for this CEO in the United States makes little impression here, just a mile from the tin-roof shacks and dirt roads of Kayamandi Township. Yes, it matters that she has much to teach these nascent entrepreneurs. But it matters more that she seems like one of them. What sets Cuffe apart from most Westerners doing business in Africa is the extent to which, in heart and mind as well as ethnicity, she makes sense in both worlds. "I envision all of you as my brothers and sisters, and being able to share your story is like sharing my own story," Cuffe tells her audience, making explicit the connection she implies in every conversation. "There's a feeling of home, a feeling of family. So that's what motivates me--the feeling that I'm doing something with my family every day.

"You guys sitting around this table are building the future wine industry of South Africa!" Cuffe says, with optimism so intense she makes Tony Robbins sound like Eeyore. "You are changing history!" Wide-eyed and smiling with her whole face, she delivers the clincher: "And you know what? We are all going to make a whole lot of money!"

There are murmurs of assent, interjections of "Yes, we are!" The vintners, some of whom Cuffe had characterized to me earlier as fractious, inconsistent, or disengaged, appear united by confidence in this sweetly shrewd first-time entrepreneur. More important to Cuffe, they seem braced by confidence in themselves.

Matched against a centuries-long history of oppression, however, motivational speeches lose some of their potency. Soon, doubt steals back into the room. An icebreaking exercise in which Cuffe asks the vintners to envision what they would do if they suddenly found 7 million rand (about a million dollars) in their bank accounts gives way to tales of indignity and discrimination. One vintner talks about an American focus group that insulted her company's packaging and a supplier that provided her with product that was literally from the bottom of the barrel. Another recounts how a white mentor gave her incomplete information about export requirements, causing the rejection of a large shipment. Libby Petersen, the outspoken CEO of Lindiwe Wines, describes what she considers duplicity by South Africa's wine industry association. "We had a meeting with them where we were saying that the U.S. market is a market we would like to go into," says Petersen. "We were told no, that is not a market to go into. Then the next week they took a delegation to the American embassy. They will go there. But they will only take the white-owned companies."

Vivian Kleynhans, managing director of African Roots Wine Brands, jumps in. "When they were making arrangements for South Africa to exhibit at the London mega-tasting, they were reluctant to take us with them," says Kleynhans. "They said, 'We are very proud of this industry. Don't you guys come and embarrass us.' This kind of derogatory, patronizing talk."

Because I am a Westerner with a Westerner's simplistic view of history, I expect those rumbles of discontent to mass into thunderous calls to buck the system. But no one talks about revolution. Instead the conversation turns to business strategies for coping in a domestic market where the majority population doesn't drink wine and the minority population doesn't drink black wine. Beverly Farmer, CEO of Women in Wine, a collective of 200 agricultural workers, voices the reservations of her peers. "I am always wary of positioning our business as a black-owned company because of that perception of having an inferior product," she says in clipped tones. "A below-standard product. All those negative things. Yes, we are black. But is that a position we can take to the market?"

I know the answer to that one. I have heard Cuffe give it repeatedly the past three days during visits to farms and offices around the Western Cape, where she has been holding one-on-one meetings with current and potential suppliers. "Glad you asked that" implicit in her voice, she launches into a treatise on the psychology of that distinctly Western species, the Socially Conscious Consumer. "In the United States, our target customers will pay more for something they can feel good about," says Cuffe, who sells exclusively black African wines through specialty supermarkets, boutique liquor stores, and restaurants, and through a website both to consumers and direct to trade. "They care about the stories behind their purchases. Talk about who you are, what you've been through. People will feel so inspired that they'll want to buy the wine."