Jack Journal - Volume 1

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Volume 1

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Recover Start by reusing this cover. Cut out as shown.

Frame with recovered wood. Hang on your wall.

Enjoy a beautiful artwork by Penelope Jack. www.penelopejack.com

from the movie

Four Wagons West, 1970 based on Chief Seattle’s speech

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.

All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.

Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.

Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

Printed Carbon Neutral Jack Journal was printed carbon neutral on FSC certified paper.

No mean feat, there are very few printers who are able to offer this currently.

Printed by Druckstudio Gruppe, Düsseldorf, Germany. Scan the QR code for more information on their environmental print production.

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a vineyard in the fynbos These valleys with their vineyards farms, home of merlot, chenin blanc or pinotage; above them, the fold mountains always, realm of proteas, ericas, our reed grasses:No other Cape could give you this, this floral kingdom all its own.

The soils that multiplied its flowers in thousands have made our wines as various.

Through the length of summers here, shaped by trade-winds hard and dry; through winters with their clouds themselves as dark as grapes, The slopes above, the world of fynbos, have fed the farms, the world below; and these two worlds, so long adjacent, are in our wines made one.

Preserve this, keep it always in mind.

Drinking of these grapes you drink what other Capes would dream of giving: The vineyard in the realm of fynbos, The wines of the Cape floral kingdom.

- Stephen Watson

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table of contents

08 16 18 26 32 36

top six wine industry trends Richard Siddle

the hipster magnet Christian Eedes

sea change Pippa Ehrlich

trends in wine tourism Su Birch

music miracles Dr WP van Zyl

vino and vinyasa Su Birch

38 44 50 58 62 68

africa 2050 Dr Greg Mills

new trends in yacht racing Mike Clarke

what portugal teaches us Nick Breeze

new ways of art Gabrielle Raaff

74 76 80 82

new trends in western cinema Donovan Marsh

fiction: truth be told Bruce Jack

contributors

pumpover playlist

a new era in surfing Nick Robinson

south africa’s new wine frontier Bruce Jack

Editors: Bruce Jack & Su Birch Design: Rohan Etsebeth, Jenny Vleggaar, Nicole Nel, Janneke de Kock - Archival Studio 6

Jack Journal Vol. 1

editor’s letter Welcome to Jack Journal. This 100% carbonneutral annual publication is the antithesis of a tweet. This is how I prefer to absorb information and to learn. And I am very content this way of communicating is out of fashion.

In this 2020 edition, the typically eclectic topics are loosely connected by a theme – ‘New Trends’. There’s obviously lots of wine stuff, but we touch on some of my other obsessions – sailing, film, education, the short story, Africa, art, the environment, history, music, surfing, etc.

The underlying challenge we all face is the rejuvenation of our natural environment.

There are still people and policies in place that are hell-bent on destroying the earth.

We are more at risk than ever due to a minority whose stupidity and greed obscure the truth of our perilous predicament.

These people and policies must be removed.

Simultaneously we must start reversing the damage done.

When Yves Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, said that it is impossible to run a truly environmentally friendly or sustainable business along capitalist fundamentals, he was making the point that we need to think beyond environmentally friendly. Do that as consciously as you can, but also start the hard work of rejuvenation – start making good what damage has been done by

your business actions. The revitalisation and rejuvenation of the oceans is a crucial place to start, and planting trees is easy.

I am not worried about Mother Earth.

She will be fine. It is we who are threatened by climate change. Quoting Yves again: ‘Ultimately Capitalism will lose its consumers’ – this means that to sustain life, the very essence of what it means to be a business must be reinvented.

This year, most of the articles were written by friends. Indeed, two – Mike Clark and Nick Robinson – were in my class at school. The genius of the layout and all the design, plus much of the illustration, is all down to Rohan Etsebeth, clearly one of the most gifted and brilliant designers to have graced the wine industry. Jack Journal is project-managed by the unflappable, supremely organised, humble and incredibly talented Su Birch.

Welcome to the world of Bruce Jack. We had a lot of fun putting this together. Enjoy!

Bruce Jack

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top six wine industry trends Written by: Richard Siddle Illustrations: Nicole Nel

There are two ways of looking at the global wine industry. The first, which is the approach taken by the majority of those in it, is to see things very much as normal, where any new trend or major industry upheaval is driven by the ups and downs of wine harvests and the currency fluctuations that determine which countries’ grapes and wines are more affordable from one year to the next.

That’s the norm. That’s the wine industry as most people have known it and, for them, that’s all there is to it.

Then there is a very different way of looking at the international wine sector - an approach that does not even look at what is going on in wine at all, but instead is 100% focused on the trends, the changes, the disruptive influences that are dictating the way we all now live our lives.

We will only be able to start even imagining what the wine industry of the future is going to look like if we stop, forget we are working in the drinks trade, and look at ourselves as consumers. What do you do and how do you behave compared to five, 10 and 15 years ago?

Those are the influences, the factors we need to examine and start to understand how we might apply them to how we make, distribute and sell wine.

Imagine the wine industry as a saucepan of hot soup sitting on a stove. Turn the heat off and it just sits there, doing nothing.

Turn the heat on and it suddenly comes to life, bubbling away with mini eruptions all over the surface. It’s those bubbles and what lurks beneath that is causing them to erupt in the way they do that we need to get our heads round.

That’s what this article is all about. Here are six of the most important chan­ges taking place in consumer behaviour that are going to directly affect the way the wine industry does business in the future.

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Sustainability - how sustainable is the wine industry?

It’s the most obvious place to start, because

it’s the most important trend of all.

The world’s population has finally woken up to the damage we are collectively doing to our planet, and if you are a wine business that’s not equally awake to the need to change the way you behave, then your future’s as bright as our ozone layer.

For now the wine industry is largely operating in the shadows when it comes to consumer awareness of how sustainable it is.

Yes, there are huge strides being taken by producers to work in a more environmentally friendly way, but there is no hiding from the fact that the wine industry, to survive, needs to use so much of the world’s most precious resources.

Particularly water. Just how realistic is it to think that producers can continue to make wine in parts of the world where there are increasing shortages of water? The average consumer, never mind environmental activist, is currently oblivious to how much water goes into an average supermarket bottle of wine. Imagine the backlash when they find out.

Broken glass This leads neatly into the use of glass as wine’s packaging. It’s a dangerous place to 11

be if you rely almost 100% on what, to some, is seen as an increasingly unsustainable way to package and transport your product. Imagine if there were as big a move to reject glass as there has been plastic in the last 18 months.

The tipping point on plastic happened in the blink of an eye and quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. Any credible producer or retailer now has to have a policy on what it is doing to eradicate plastic from its supply chain.

A recent Accenture study of 6,000 consumers across the world found that over 80% felt that it was ‘important or extremely important’ for companies to design products in an environmentally conscious way.

What does the wine industry do if the focus switches to how carbon-friendly glass bottles are? What are the most viable alternatives? How prepared are you to switch?

Particularly when the evidence is already there that glass bottles contribute 29% of wine’s total carbon impact on the planet, according to a carbon footprint assessment that came out in 2011 of the California wine industry commissioned by its Wine Institute and sustainability consultant PE International.

This compares to the 24% that wine impacts by planting and growing grapes and 13% for then shipping it to different markets around the world, thanks to a separate study by the University of Michigan.

The wine industry should be driving the glass agenda and putting its own house in order by either universally adopting more carbon-friendly glass packaging or switching to greener alternatives before it is forced to.

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What’s your purpose in life?

As technology helps consumers become even more aware of their own impact on the world they live in, they become more demanding and exacting when it comes to the brands and companies they are willing to spend their money on.

People of all ages, but particularly younger age groups, are looking for brands and companies they can believe in, and that have a corporate purpose that goes, in wine terms, beyond just making a good-quality bottle of wine to drink.

In the UK, for example, 65% of people give a total of £10 billion a year to charity

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The wine industry should be driving the glass agenda and putting its own house in order by either universally adopting more carbonfriendly glass packaging or switching to greener alternatives before it is forced to.

or fund-raising initiatives (Charities Aid Foundation). That’s the equivalent of running the National Health Service for a month, building 20 hospitals or paying for an extra 250,000 nurses (the King’s Fund).

What is it that you stand for? What’s your purpose? Don’t just put up your company’s values on the wall in your reception area make them a fundamental part of how you do business, and talk to your target consumer. That’s what an increasing number of consumers are looking for.

More consumers are looking to go the extra mile when it comes to buying ethical and sustainable products and want to spend money on brands and with businesses that are willing to go on that journey together with them.

It’s why there has been such an interest in natural and minimum intervention winemaking and the opening of so many bars and restaurants that are appealing to a different type of drinker. These are wine lovers who are not interested in the chateau, the vintage, the appellation and all the classic, traditional pointers that signify a quality wine.

Instead they are attracted more by the attitude, the personality and the philosophy of the winemaker, in the same way they are by the non-Hollywood films they watch,

the independent music acts they listen to and the non-high street fashion labels they wear.

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Get wired to the subscription economy

If you like to listen to music then chances are you have a subscription to one of the new streamable music services like Spotify or Apple Music.

How quickly times change. When Spotify first launched in October 2008, it was very much seen as a niche product, for those with the time, inclination and wage packet to give £10 a month to listen to music they already own.

But within a few years Spotify and its like have completely transformed the global music industry.

This has not only made it possible for us to listen to any song we can think of at the click of a button, but it has given us the power to become our own DJs, create our own radio stations, with countless playlists to suit our mood and emotions at any time of the day. Now that is worth at least £10 of my monthly wage.

If Willy Wonka worked in the music business, then Spotify would be part of his magical tour.

But Spotify and others are only part of the story. Take a look at your latest bank account and just count up the number of standing orders and direct debits you have to other similar ‘platform’ retailers that are not just selling you a specific product but allow you to tap into your own private world.

We ignore the growth of these new ways of accessing everything from content and entertainment to food and drink at our peril.

This, for example, is how Jack Ma, the former head of Alibaba, China’s biggest online player, describes its primary function: ‘Amazon and eBay are e-commerce companies, [but] Alibaba is not an e-commerce company. Alibaba helps others to do e-commerce. We do not sell things.’

Instead, it provides the platform for global retailers, like Nike and Coca-Cola, to set up and operate their own e-commerce flagship stores on the Alibaba platform. Or as Chris Tung, its CMO, puts it: ‘We serve as a marketplace, a bridge between the seller and the buyer, through data.’

Alibaba, like Netflix, is also getting into the world of entertainment by funding and > Jack Journal Vol. 1

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streaming its own films, many of which have picked up the top awards at this year’s BAFTAs and Oscars.

Any new TV set you buy comes with Netflix, Amazon Prime and a host of other streamable TV platforms built in.

These subscription services are transfor­ ming the retail landscape as they allow us to personalise and pay more to access the services, content or products we are most interested in.

Yet the wine industry model still relies almost exclusively on supplying the traditional retail high street and vertical players online.

The nearest equivalent would be the classic wine club membership scheme. In fact, they were arguably one of the first successful direct-to-consumer retail models. The big difference now is how far they have been overtaken by other subscription services.

Sign up to the majority of wine clubs and they all work in the same way. The most convenient, effective and efficient way for the wine retailer to be able to gather wines together to send to you usually means you get 12 bottles delivered once a month, often at a time when you are out.

If you don’t want 12 bottles a month then, yes, you can skip a delivery or two, but you certainly can’t just get one or two bottles.

That just isn’t the way it works.

Yet sign up to any of the new meal recipe services, like Hello Fresh, and you can change your order every week, mix and match recipes, decide to take one meal or 10, or none at all. All this is decided a couple of days before through a quick and easy-to-use app. What’s more, they’re dealing with orders of fresh meat, fish and produce.

Why can they be so flexible and consumerfriendly when the majority of wine schemes are so set in stone?

Too often the services offered by wine clubs and other wine direct-to-consumer schemes are not fit for purpose when compared to the best new subscription models in the business.

The industry needs to find a way for wine to sit comfortably in the new world of platform retailing.

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Come on, hear the noise

The next wave of progress in platform retailing will be the widespread use of voice search and voice command to 14

instantly give us what we want.You don’t have to log in and type in what you are looking for - just ask Spotify or Amazon Prime and they will get it to you as quickly as you have just said it.

So even if we have forgotten the name of the latest Robert de Niro movie, or Adele’s last album, there are enough people asking for them for these platforms to train themselves to go and find what you are looking for.

But how they will cope with knowing what you mean by that Austrian or German wine you had the last time you ordered, when in fact it came from Alsace?

The world of voice search, voice assistants, and platform retailing is changing so fast that it is hard to keep up, but one way to learn is to get involved, use them yourself, test and trial and see what you think would work best when applying it to wine.

There are few people, if any, with the answers just yet, but you won’t get very far if you don’t start looking, exploring and diving into this new world of retailing.

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It’s all about me, me, me ... get up close and personal

What these platforms have also done is speed up how quickly brands and services can now personalise and individualise what they can offer you: personalised playlists, fitness regimes based on your individual genetics, meal kits with just the right amount of calories and proteins in them.

Consumers are now spoilt by the choices they have. And they like it. Social media has also given them a voice and an expectation that they can have their say, and that they have a right to be heard.

The likes of Amazon have transformed what we expect from online shopping and home delivery. It’s not enough to say that you will have to wait a week for delivery and have to stay in to sign for it. Amazon can do it in an hour.

The smartphone has transformed retailing like nothing that has come before it. It’s more than just giving you access to the internet; it’s given the average consumer all the power in any retailer or brand relationship with a customer. It’s given them the power to choose, to dictate terms.

All of which has seen the rise of the importance of ‘self ’, of personal enrichment, encapsulated in the phenomenon of the

‘selfie’. If an average person sees a world star or a famous sport figure, then they have to have their picture taken with them, for they see themselves as being just as important.

It marks a critical change in how people are now behaving. That fourth wall, if you like, between a brand and a consumer has been shattered. They want to be up close and personal with you and if you are not able to provide them with the kind of relationship they are looking for, they will move quickly on to the brand or business that can.

The next generation of online retailing is already with us: sites that allow you to discover new products that are the most relevant to you; websites you can personalise to show you only products that are relevant to you.

Sites like Thrive Market, a new US online natural grocer, will create a ‘personalised aisle’ of products that fit your taste profile based on the answers you give it. Another US grocery site, Hungryroot, works by regularly asking its shoppers questions that will then dictate what products it sends you in a weekly delivery. Answer more questions and get an even more personalised shopping basket. The more you answer the questions they ask, the more personalised the ‘digital aisle’ of goods you see. What’s been dubbed as discovery retailing is the next big threat to the traditional way of doing things.

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Here to entertain you ...

We’re no longer satisfied just going into an average store or bar and being treated as if it were 2015, never mind 2010.

We don’t just want to pick up brands off a shelf or stick to the tried and tested when going out for a drink; we want to be pampered, made to feel special, entertained, and to enjoy a unique experience all at the same time.

The brands and retailers that can deliver and provide that level of service are going to be the household names of tomorrow.

As drinks consultant, Illy Jaffar, says, we are not just making and selling drinks, ‘we’re in the entertainment industry.’ And Jaffar should know as he was the first to create the job title of ‘Head of Experiential Marketing’ during his time with Pernod Record in the early 2000s.

Up and down the high street there are great examples of how lifestyle, leisure and Jack Journal Vol. 1

Just having a bar is not enough anymore. Where’s the secret door to the private speakeasy? Where’s the pizzazz that goes with it? health and beauty brands are turning their shops into makeover centres, style boutiques where you can go and take part in a whole suite of activities. Hollywood makeovers by Oscar-winning make-up artists are just one of the services available at the new-look Harrods in London.

Flagship stores raise the bar, and create a whole new benchmark that other retailers will be judged on. The quality of service and experience offered has been lifted to a whole new degree and if you are competing in the same space, you need to respond in kind.

Alibaba, through its B2C site, Tmall, runs what it calls ‘experience centres’ in major shopping centres and retail sites across China. It invites the same major brands it works with online to then create their own pop-up shops to promote and showcase their products in an experiential way. Since starting these centres in 2017, it has already worked with over 200 brands from Bobbi Brown to Abercrombie & Fitch, Oral-B and Scotch whisky brand Ballantine’s.

It’s all part of what Tmall sees as beco­ ming a ‘destination for brand-building’ by offering ‘one-of-a-kind experiences to their consumers.’

Just having a bar is not enough any more.

Where’s the secret door to the private speakeasy? Where’s the pizzazz that goes with it?

Opportunities in wine entertainment There are, though, signs that the wine trade is listening and changing, particularly in how it is holding wine tastings and taking wine to consumers.

Andre Ribeirinho has come up with great tasting concept, the Adegga Wine Market, which has run 30 events in 10 years, mainly

in Portugal. Its key point of difference is that he personally selects which producers take part based on their ability to have fun and engage with the consumers he wants to invite.

When they arrive, each guest is given a smart glass that reads and records all the wines they taste and then provides a full breakdown for them to order directly from the producers when they get home. It’s an approach that combines new technology with an experience and is attracting non-traditional wine drinkers to give it a go.

In fact, up to a quarter have never been to a wine event before.

Ribeirinho says he was inspired by research which told him that 91% of people will now look to share what they see as a memorable experience with others on social media; 82% of consumers want brands to ‘entertain and engage’ them; 73% who took part in a brand event are more likely to buy that brand; 40% of UK and US consumers have increased their spend on ‘retail experiences’ in the last two years, which has resulted in a 38% decrease in the amount of money they are spending on new products.

In Australia, we have seen how successful events such as Game of Rhones have been, where guests get the chance to dress up as their favourite Game of Thrones character and drink great French classic wine at the same time.

In Chicago, Walter Clements of Meta Wine is creating a new drinking experience that is the craft winery equivalent of hanging out in a craft brewery. Here guests can create their own blends from the tanks of wine and then make their own labels. They can either drink it then and there or take it home. If they want, they can become a member and get sent bottles of their own personally blended wine as and when they want it.

Could this be the future of wine retailing?

It might bring winemakers out in a cold sweat, but if you can personalise and create your own Nike trainer, or have meal kits sent to your door designed to suit your genetic make-up, then being able to drink a wine that you have blended yourself from a craft winery at the end of the street feels as exciting and as disruptive as all the other new experiences we can now enjoy on our local high street.

It’s time for wine to change and have a whole lot of fun doing so.

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the hipster magnet

- myth or sustainable cult?

Whereas I’ve been drinking so-called natural wine since it first appeared on the South African wine scene maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I only opened my Netflix account in January this year, which probably makes me a wine hipster but not a TV hipster.

Written by: Christian Eedes Illustration: Rohan Etsebeth

The dictionary definition of a hipster is ‘a person who follows the latest trends and fashions, especially those regarded as being outside the cultural mainstream’ and, given that a hipster is supposed to be fascinated by ‘style, authenticity and uniqueness’, it doesn’t seem the worst subculture you could be part of.

And yet the term has taken on a more or less pejorative connotation, with hipsters seen as either pretentious or sanctimonious or both. Moreover, it could be argued that hipster culture has created a lifestyle that produces the exact opposite of what it promises: global uniformity instead of local authenticity. The guy in the flannel shirt with the full beard, drinking a flat white with his breakfast of smashed avo on toast while listening to Mumford and Sons on his Skullcandy headphones with his fixed-gear bike chained outside, would be a caricature if such individuals weren’t so ubiquitous from New York’s Brooklyn to the 3rd Arrondissement in Paris, Shoreditch in London, Berlin’s Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg and, yes, even Cape Town’s

City Bowl.

Back to natural wine and the advent of streaming TV. The term ‘hipster’ is seen by many as equating to a particular type of non-conformist, but I would contend that they actually are no more than the well-established class of consumer known as an ‘early adopter’. When it comes to trend pieces in lifestyle magazines, ‘hipster’ becomes code for ‘whatever it is the kids these days are up to’ and consequently orange wine and binge-watching an alternative TV series are, in their own way, hipster.

Focusing on natural wine in particular, it is telling how much of a negative reaction it evokes from the wine industry establishment with the wines very often being accused of being unpleasurable, supposedly marked by funkiness, astringency and bracing acidity. The question that has to be asked, however, is when did natural wine become a thing? Is the movement 20 years old, dating from when some alternative winemakers started eschewing technology in an effort to be

more transparent, or is it really just the revival of methods of vinification that have been with us for thousands of years? To some extent, the mainstream is inevitably going to try to sideline natural wine as it disrupts conventional ways of doing business …

That said, what those of us in the wine business should always remember is that the market is not monolithic. There are several different positionings for wine that might work equally well – wine as product of terroir versus wine as luxury good versus wine as issue-driven product, for instance. If hipster wine, broadly defined, arises out of a desire among today’s youth to produce and consume in an alternative way compared to the excesses that marked late 20th-century capitalism, then let’s hope it’s around for a while yet. It doesn’t have to be natural wine; it simply has to be wine that is made by creative winemakers dedicated to their work, wine that is made according to environmentally and socially sustainable principles, and wine that comes with a meaningful backstory.

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sea change Craig Foster and Ross Frylinck started The Sea Change Project to bring attention to the Great African Sea Forest – as important as the Amazon Forest to many environmentalists.

Written by: Pippa Erlich and Ross Freylinck Photography: Craig Foster

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‘I hovered at the entrance of the sea cave and stared into the inky recesses of the long dark chamber. A powerful groundswell was tumbling boulders on the rocky floor, effortlessly shifting them around. Even at a depth of seven metres it sounded like thunder echoing through a remote mountain range.

The swell was rebounding off the walls and pressure waves washed over me. I was cold, and I was also running out of breath.

However, something held me, daring me to go deeper into the cave. I felt a surge in the current, and without thinking, kicked to go with it. As I was pulled over the threshold and into the shadows, I knew I had made a mistake. I had gone too far. Perhaps it was the sudden change in light, the noise or the turbulent water, but looking down I couldn’t tell if I was moving or if the ground was moving and I felt as if I was falling into a void.

Maybe I blacked out for a moment and had a hallucination – it’s not unheard of.

It could have been a trick of the eye or the imagination, or maybe a flash of light reflected off my mask, I’m really not sure.

Whatever the reason, I saw a fire in the distant desert night. There were strange figures dancing around it, and I couldn’t tell if they were humans or animals. Maybe they were even dancing together. Either way, I was spellbound, unsure of who and where I was.

Then I noticed the fish. My eyes must have adjusted to the low light, because I now saw schools of them shifting in and out of the gloom, and I suddenly remembered where I was. That’s right, I thought, just relax, everything is going to be okay. But what were they doing in there, I wondered?

Why were there so many of them, and why were they swimming so frenetically?

I turned to my right, and to my surprise saw that Tom was floating next to me. He was big for his age, and a great diver, but at eleven still just a skinny kid. I wished he hadn’t followed me into the cave, and wondered where his dad, Craig, had gone.

I started motioning to leave, and we swam back to the surface where we gasped for breath beneath the gigantic red cliffs.

It was late afternoon towards the end of summer, and the southeaster was gusting.

The wind never seems to rest at the fabled Cape of Storms, bending the rocks, the 21

water and the trees to its will. Hearing a call, we turned. It was Tom’s father Craig, and something about the urgency of his tone told us to hurry up.

We swam over to him, where he lay on the surface. He was pointing into the thick kelp below, and at first, I couldn’t make anything out. Then I saw it – an enormous stingray the size of a car. I had seen giant rays swimming in the open before, but never in the heart of the forest. I knew it was dangerous to be in a confined space with such a powerful animal and watched its deadly tail swaying like a snake beneath me.

I wanted to swim away, but Craig held my arm, and told me that something unusual was happening, which was hardly necessary, I thought. He asked me if I also thought that the ray was hiding, and I had to agree. It took no interest in us, not even bothering to look our way. It seemed to be concentrating its will on the ocean beyond.

The three of us waited there for a minute, not sure what to do, and I felt strangely allied to the huge animal lying so close to me in the oppressive silence.

This dive had gone properly weird, even

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beyond the normal levels of madness that I experienced with Craig every time we left the safety of the shore. I swam to the surface to get my bearings, took off my mask, and rubbed the saltwater from my eyes. And then I noticed them: hundreds, maybe even thousands of gulls and cormorants in a cloud over the ocean, just 80 metres away. They were smashing into the sea in a reckless frenzy, churning the water into foam and emerging with shiny silver fish in their beaks.

I was mesmerised by this wild dance, and so when the white shark breached the surface with a seal writhing in its massive jaws, it took a moment to register what had happened. Then the awful realisation registered – we were at the mercy of the incomprehensible power of nature. I felt a crushing feeling in my chest and closed my eyes to shut out the fear.

When Tom and Craig came to the surface a few moments later, I told them that I had seen a white shark and that we had to get out immediately. We swam back to shore and climbed onto the rocks.

I stood there staring out to sea, shivering

in the wind. The sea was rippled by white horses, which contrasted with a blue so deep it ached. There was no trace of the shark, and the birds had moved on. I looked up at the blue sky and wondered which was reflecting which.

I looked over to Craig, and seeing that familiar glint in his eyes, could only smile and shake my head. I knew what he was thinking ... and he knew that I knew.

Come what may, and despite my better judgment, we were going back, deeper into the golden forest, and there was nothing I could do about it.’

This unpublished excerpt from the book Sea Change, created by Ross Frylinck and Craig Foster, describes an event that occurred seven years ago. This is one of the many intense experiences that Ross and Craig shared in the sea forest at the very tip of Africa. It was these encounters with raw nature that inspired them to found the Sea Change Project, an organisation not only dedicated to the protection of South Africa’s kelp forests, but also to telling stories about our collective human

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birthright: to have an intrinsic connection with the wild.

Many years later, the Sea Change Project has grown, along with a portfolio of storytelling and conservation projects.

These include an outdoor exhibit seen by over a million people, a celebrated, groundbreaking coffee-table book, and a feature documentary, My Octopus Teacher, that premieres at film festivals next month and will be available to an audience of over a hundred million people.

The team is now led by chairperson Carina Frankal and also includes marine biologist Jannes Landschoff, environmental journalist Swati Thiyagarajan and filmmakers Pippa Ehrlich and Faine Loubser. Each of them spends time in the ocean every day and has fallen in love with the sea forest in their own way.

Sea Change Project’s most recent project, The Sea Forest Anthem, was sparked by an old friend of Craig’s, Jon Young, who founded the Wilderness Awareness Movement. Jon spoke about song catching: the ancient practice of receiving songs – a melody or set of lyrics – from nature. This is something that our ancestors did for thousands of years. This inspired Craig to ‘catch’ the song of the sea forest.

In a serendipitous turn of events a few weeks later, Sea Change Project was contacted by the world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma. He was on his way to South Africa as part of his global Bach Project Tour where, in addition to formal concerts,Yo-Yo collaborates with local artists. These events are referred to as The Bach Project Days of Action and they aspire to local relevance and global significance, demonstrating the power of culture to create positive change and inspire new relationships in which people from all walks of life can build a shared future. This is especially powerful and necessary at this time in South Africa.Yo-Yo reached out to the Sea Change Project and the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) to collaborate on an event that would celebrate the country’s natural and cultural heritage.

For the next month, the Sea Change team lived and breathed the sea forest anthem, creating an orchestra of instruments made from sea forest artefacts: a drum kit from eight kelp stipes (called the octopus drum), shakers made from

shark egg cases, a dry kelp flute, as well as underwater instruments made from a whale’s ear bone and an abalone shell.

At the same time, a team of talented and adventurous musicians – Ronan Skillen, Pedro Espi-Sanchis, Madosini and Craig’s son Tom – collaborated to play them.

Jonny Blundell from Rootspring House volunteered his time as music producer.

The task of song weaving, and lead vocals, was taken on by South Africa’s hugely celebrated Zolani Mahola, formerly of Freshly Ground, who went on numerous outings into the freezing Atlantic to forge her own connection with the kelp forest, so that she could express its voice through her own.

On the 7th of February 2020,Yo-Yo and his team arrived at Craig’s house in Simon’s Town, where they were introduced to the kelp forest instruments. The sound of the whale’s ear bones resonated throughout the living room, creating an invisible network of sound that moved through the small audience.

Craig then told the story of our collective human history on this shoreline, where the most ancient records of human culture, including the oldest painting and chemistry kit, originate, making the Cape coast not only a place of incredible ecological significance, but also the ‘birthplace of the modern human mind’.

Prideel Madjiet and Loyiso Dunga from SANBI spoke passionately about ocean conservation, and the importance of connecting culture to nature.

Ethnomusicologist Ncebakazi Mnukwana took the audience back in time, describing the deep roots of African music – of human music – and mesmerising the group with her voice and profound knowledge. ‘When you are talking about the sea, you are talking about vibration and resonance … pulse, meter, born in the body, expressed on the instrument. Our first teacher of music is nature … it sits in the human DNA, in the bones … once we were hunter-gatherers.

We needed that sound and it was part of our ecology,’ she explained.

Then the musicians picked up their instruments and gave the first public performance of the sea forest anthem, titled ‘My Amphibious Soul’.Yo-Yo’s response is a testament to the power of the performance: ‘This is a dream come true. I

see an ocean symphony … a very powerful way to bring something that is slightly abstract into our immediate five senses.

My dream has always been to integrate the cello into these sounds, because that is what we are drawing from … These are the original sounds … the actual abalone shells and whale ear bones … it’s amazing. I wish every student, every child could have this experience and take it with them … If you go deeper and deeper and deeper, this is where we get to. It comes from whatever we have experienced and heard before we were born.’

By creating experiences like this, that explore and share the spirit of the kelp forest, the Sea Change Project team hopes to realise a critical conservation goal. Their underlying passion and drive is to promote and protect the Great African Sea Forest, and the ‘Seas of Good Hope’ Ecologically or Biologically Significant Area (EBSA).

They are working closely with SANBI and Professor Kerry Sink to inspire the government to apply for UNESCO Natural World Heritage status for the ‘Seas of Good Hope’, which is one of the many vital steps needed to protect this place – a place that many people feel is the heart of the world.

The value of this mission was affirmed

by Yo-Yo Ma, who said, ‘I see a very wonderful through-line from your work to the abstract notion of a World Heritage Site, which will bring more attention to the planetary discussions we’re having.’

www.seachangeproject.com

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Illustration: Archival Studio

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music miracles Written by: Dr WP van Zyl Photography: Erica Bartholomae

‘… she was passionate about the upliftment of society through music.’ These words describing Elspeth Jack’s drive to give marginalised South African youth a chance to experience the wonder of music dominated her teaching life. A further chapter of her legacy was fulfilled in 2019 when music lessons were introduced to Grade 7 pupils (12 years old) at Protea Primary School in the rural Overberg village of Napier.

By the end of that year, a local farmworker would comment about his son: ‘… since he’s been busy with the music lessons … it’s been as if something else is happening in him. He’s more positive, he looks forward to classes and he’s eager to learn!’

The proverbial stone was in the pond, and the ripples started having an effect.

Mr Deslin Temmers, Protea Primary’s headmaster, has a permanent problem with learner attendance in this poor rural school.

He is fortunate if kids’ attendance rate is 80%. This is more than 15% lower than model C schools in affluent urban areas.

But something started improving and at first it was a mystery. He noticed that the Grade 7 class consistently had 98% attendance. The only difference between Grade 7 and the rest of the school is the music programme.

When it rains, Mr Temmers has conflicting emotions: he’s happy for the environment, but he knows it also means that learners won’t come to school.

Reluctantly he does his Daily Attendance Registers, for they form part of his Personnel Administration Measures (PAM) as regulated by the Department of Education. With trepidation he records the numbers: a variation of between 25% and 72% of pupils per class have stayed at home.

On a rainy day some classes only have a handful of children.

But Grade 7? Only two students have stayed at home (an attendance rate of over 95%) and it’s pouring outside – the kids are soaked through and cold. There is no heating and they have walked through the rain without protection, some in bare feet. It happens to be a music class day.

Asked by an inspector from the Department of Education who notices the anomaly, Deslin says: ‘The music classes are all that I can attribute these wonderful results to.’ The HeadStart Music Trust has been collaborating with the Napier community for eight years. Our charity has established an organic vegetable garden at the school, and taught the students how to grow and harvest their own vegetables. The Trust supplements school stationery and art supplies, which, in marginalised, rural South African schools, are never enough to see a student through the year. The Trust even provides beanies every winter to the youngest children.

Irene van der Westhuizen, a local Napier resident, will teach 97 Grade 6 and 7 learners the piano this year (2020). She is joined by Sylvia Humphreys, a hugely experienced retired music teacher also living the village, who will be giving recorder lessons to Grade 4 pupils, and has established a Junior Choir consisting of Grade 2 and 3 learners.

I am a practising dentist with a passion for social upliftment through education. I am currently busy with a Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership Development for NPOs 33

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Without positive mythologies societies cannot have a collective self-belief.

And without self-belief the sirens of corruption or the call of self-enrichment at the expense of that society have little opposition.

at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, and I believe in Beethoven who said: ‘Music can change the world.’

Besides the immediate advantages associated with studying music, like improved mathematics results and the increased ability with languages, we now know that musical training can have a lasting impact on the brain, creating additional neural connections in childhood that can last a lifetime. So says neuropsychologist Brenda Hanna-Bladdy of Emory University in Atlanta. Time spent practising motor control and coordination (e.g. each finger on each hand doing something different), along with the music-reading and listening skills, are all factors contributing to the brain boost that shows up later in life.

But there is an even more profound impact on these kids from marginalised, poor rural situations in South Africa – the reconstruction of self-worth. This is the main issue at the root of myriad problems in South Africa and is a direct result of our poisonous recent past.

Today South Africa’s poor rural areas bear the scars of this long-term abuse most painfully, although the current Cape Flats gangland horror can also be directly attributed to this same demolition of ‘self ’ over so many years. This is why it’s so parochial and unintelligent to claim that just because apartheid has been over for 26 years, we shouldn’t blame the past for the current ills that plague South Africa.

The marginalised people of South Africa have suffered over 360 years of the deconstruction of a sense of self. Without positive mythologies, societies cannot have a collective self-belief. And without self-belief, the sirens of corruption or the call of self-enrichment at the expense of that society have little opposition. Selfdestruction ensues.

The most obvious glimmers of hope we find in present-day South Africa appear from two sources of burning light – religious institutions, especially the churches and mosques, and, of course, sport. In circumstances like ours, these institutions are incredibly resilient positive-mythology factories. They are often the only social fabric that saves communities and families from alcohol and drug abuse and the negative mythologies of gangland. They are the buffers against a denuded story of self

and annihilated self-belief.

But there is now emerging a third channel of hope – music. It is not just TV shows like America’s Got Talent and Idols that have created an opportunity to uncover raw talent, but also the ongoing attention by international music superstars like Paul Simon and Yo-Yo Ma to South African music traditions. This is because any musician worth their fame knows that these traditions go back to the beginning of human cognitive development. It was, of course, in South Africa that your ancestors first started playing music because we are all originally African.

The HeadStart Music Trust believes in this big picture of hope. We believe that music is in everyone, in our cell-memory. We believe that giving a child the opportunity to study music should be a human right. We campaign for government to make music education possible and compulsory in every primary school. We know studying music improves a student’s attendance, improves overall academic performance and students’ self-confidence.

Most crucially, we believe that music offers our marginalised youth one of the best opportunities to rebuild self-belief. With selfbelief comes a light that chases away the evil shadow all South Africans walk with – the shadow of our destroyed past.

On behalf of those children, we urge you to partner with us. This is an opportunity to give, to guide and to offer something for the greater good. It’s an opportunity to contribute on many levels to righting the wrongs of our collective past and to unearth a new treasure-trove of wealth – this time, however, a wealth that will uplift everyone: the wealth of music that is in all of us.

For a video of the work we do at The HeadStart Music Trust, please visit the Bruce Jack Wines website or scan the QR code.

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vino and vinyasa Wineries tap into the wellness trend Written by: Su Birch Art: Penelope Jack

Wellness retreats for wine lovers, which combine wine tasting and education with farm-totable cuisine and experiences in nature, are booming in the States, Italy and France. They’re more than an indulgence for the rich and trend-conscious – teaching mindfulness around wine consumption is one answer to a new generation’s concerns about health and their growing interest in low/no-alcohol beverages.

‘In my opinion, yoga and wine share natural synergies, particularly around the idea of mindful consumption that is front of mind for so many people, from casual consumers to wine country tourists, to those of us in the trade. We want to be more aware of what we put into our bodies – where the food or drink comes from, for example, and also how it impacts our wellbeing. Mindful consumption, which is at that sweet spot of yoga and wine’s synergies, can help us to do that.’

Cathy Huyghe, co-founder of Enolytics, journalist and yoga teacher

‘Pairing wine and wellness with amazing food, luxury experiences and travel, all with the intention of bringing people together to connect and share in meaningful ways.’

Chiara Shannon, founder of The Yogi Sommelier ‘Following a vine over the course of a growing year is much like a complete breath cycle in yoga – from dormancy fresh oxygen and new shoots emerge, then come the flowers and fruit, until the bounty is harvested and the vine exhales, to go within and prepare for another year.’

Rebecca Hopkins, wine PR guru, founder of The Balanced Glass, yoga practitioner

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africa 2050: searching for the great disruptors Africa is on the cusp of seismic demographic change; not just in absolute numbers, but also in distribution, as the world’s fastest urbanising region. To develop Africa’s economies at a rate quick enough to keep pace with its rapidly expanding population, projected to double by 2050, the continent requires more than incremental improvements in governance and investment. It needs to disrupt business as usual.

Written and photography by: Dr Greg Mills

The national road between Mombasa and Malindi embodies Africa’s challenges.

It is narrow and, despite being paved, rough.

In the village of Mtwapa, a seedy spot to Mombasa’s north where it is said that ‘even the dogs have girlfriends’, the tarmac has disintegrated into latticework, the dusty shoulder, too, eroded by the antics of brightly coloured matatus – minibus taxis – seeking shortcuts around the traffic. The names emblazoned above their windscreens tell their own story: Swagger, Striker, Mercenary, Anointed, Don’t Step on Me, Ice, Let’s Do It, Lust, Love and, predictably, Chick on the Side, and my two favourites, World Bank and ‘Makavelli’. It’s not only the hardware of adequate roads, bridges and public transport that is lacking; the governance and human software is weak and often corrupted.

Mtwapa’s traffic policemen, in their colonialera khaki uniforms replete with chequered hatbands, prey upon the matatus, tuk-tuks and, given half an excuse, tourists, incessantly seeking a ‘bit of chai’.

They will be inviting themselves, illegally, into your car and cajoling you to go to the station for a shakedown before you can say ‘Jambo!’.

Outside Mtwapa’s limits, in the heat of the

day, the unmarked road is an artery for pedestrian traffic, many carrying yellow water containers. And come school’s end, floods of children line both sides of the road on their walk home.

At current rates, in just 30 years, according to the UN, Nigeria’s population will increase to over 400 million, while Tanzania’s, currently 53 million, will grow to the same size as that of Russia at 137 million. Kenya’s will more than double to 95 million, while Uganda will balloon from 43 million to 106 million. This is, to put things into perspective, the same period since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Salami slice incremental change and improvements won’t deliver prosperity for all.

Something new and game-changing is required.

Over half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is today under 25, and half of this cohort are unemployed, accounting for 60% of all the continent’s jobless. This presents a politically explosive scenario. It is estimated that by 2050, 86% of the world’s extreme poor will live in sub-Saharan Africa. This is a result of better (and higher) pro-poor growth elsewhere, such as in China, and high population growth in Africa. As the World Bank reminds, 40% of those who join rebel

movements are motivated by lack of economic opportunity.

Finding a way out of this situation will not be easy. The IMF, for example, estimates that Africa needs to create nearly 20 million high-value jobs each year just to keep up with the number of young people coming into the African marketplace, let alone deal with the backlog. So far, the investment required for this economic acceleration has not been there.

African cities are projected to exceed the rate of population increase over the next three decades – their anticipated annual 4% average growth being twice the global average. Africa’s global share of city residents will mushroom from 11.3% in 2010 to 20.2% by 2050, requiring no less than $3 trillion on capital spend alone to get ahead of the urban demographic boom.

Yet, in 2018, foreign direct investment flows to Africa barely reached $50 billion, or just 3.5% of the global total of $1.3 trillion.

Developing Asia, on the other hand, received $512 billion in FDI in 2018, close to 40% of the total.

The lack of investment reflects a lack of the conditions that encourage investment – a premium for risk, high costs given the frictions in doing business, and a consequent 41

lack of investor opportunities.

African countries consistently feature in the bottom quartile of the World Bank’s Doing Business indicators. On average, sub-Saharan African countries score 51.8 out of 100, well below the developed economy average of 78.4 and the global average of 63.0. Poor governance, conflict, parlous economic growth, and climate change suggest that these conditions might, in some instances, get worse before they get better. For example, the average score for sub-Saharan Africa in the UNDP’s 2018 HDI is 0.54; in East Asia and the Pacific it is 0.74, where the higher the number, the better the conditions of human development measured in terms of lifespan, education and per capita income. This situation is exacerbated by the boom and bust nature of many African economies, where the colonial structure remains intact, with only the elites rotating, with consequent long-term structural challenges.

What might be some solutions?

Development and improving welfare are historically reliant on establishing a positive cycle of growth and improving competitiveness, where a thriving economy and better governance ensure greater revenue for governments to provide the services that their populations demand. But much of Africa has, in the main, been more successful at raising a higher percentage of tax from foreigners through aid than from its own citizens.

We also know that sustainable growth requires diversification of investment types away from traditional concentration in extractive sectors to more light manufacturing and services. This is where the jobs are. In order to take advantage of the world’s factory belt, Africa will have to find ways to discover and exploit specific advantages.

Africa will not be able to avoid the traditional components of development – the need for improving governance, the imperative of raising skills and education standards, openness to trade along with capital and technology, and building matching hardware and software in infrastructure, all of which have to be underpinned by the right combination of firm leadership with an eye to detail, competitive political systems and sound 42

growth even in the high single digits is unlikely to be enough to provide for the coming demographic change institutions. Openness to technology will also be vital to education and essential banking and other services, though it has some downsides, not least in closing off some light manufacturing avenues that previously existed for developing nations.

There is no easy way around these bare essentials. Countries are not even in the development starting blocks without them.

At the same time, growth even in the high single digits is unlikely to be enough to provide for the coming demographic change.

Africa will need to disrupt its business as usual approach to create a different set of capabilities and opportunities.

Six Disruptors to Business as Usual People themselves – and especially young people – are the first disruptor. Improving education standards, healthcare and food security are a vicious – or positive – cycle. By 2050 Africa will have the largest number of young people, those between 0 and 24, of any region, nearly twice the young population of South, East and Southeast Asia and Oceania.

Whether the region enjoys a demographic dividend – or disaster – depends on how well this generation is equipped, and whether they enter the market at the same time the birthrate reduces, creating simultaneously a swell of labour and fewer dependents. The policy choices made by government will dramatically shape this outcome.

The same policy effect is true for other areas.

Cities themselves are the second plausible disruptor. They could be sites of great development promise as agglomerations of labour and in the cost-efficient delivery of services including housing. But they will only realise this role if governments are well prepared and execute against vision. The challenge in Africa is never the absence of ideas and development plans. The devil lies

in the detail of implementation.

This requires the establishment of meritocratic and high-performing institutions that focus on reducing the cost of doing business. Better contract enforcement, unambiguous policies, a culture of efficiency and anti-corruption, and access to finance are important for reducing the transaction costs associated with investing on the continent.

There is no good in having ambitious, reform-minded leadership if the institutions lag and are unable, or unwilling, to backfill behind reformist promises. Abiy Ahmed in Ethiopia and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame both face this leadership-government disjuncture.

The third disruptor is in changing the way in which government approaches the private sector.

The most notable differentiating factor between the regions of Africa and East Asia is, for example, in this relationship. Private sector growth in Africa has largely been an anathema, and not just in the period after independence. The colonialists, be they British, French, Portuguese or Belgian – whatever their ideologies in Europe, established highly interventionist states that actively prevented indigenous African economic enrichment, while protecting white settlers, colonial companies and monopoly capital.

By and large, the African leaders that emerged after independence were comfortable with the economic systems they inherited, especially as state intervention offered many patronage opportunities.

African elites have remained largely disinte­ rested in major reform, and liberalisation, apart from ‘opening up’ the system in piecemeal fashion (from cell phone companies to infrastructure investments), a way that has reduced any risk to the status quo. Thus, investment growth that diversifies the economies and creates jobs in Africa, notably in industry, has remained very low.

Fourthly, aid can be a disruptor, but only if the West changes tack.

Traditional, Western aid is invariably focused on a multitude of projects, ‘sprea­ding our bets’ as one senior diplomat in Nairobi has acknowledged. While there is a fair amount to spread from such sources – as much as $30 billion to Africa annually – it is diluted between trying to create little successes and Jack Journal Vol. 1

prevent big failures. For all of the sincerity of its apostles, in the process it seems to have more to do with satisfying constituencies in the donor countries than creating development in the recipient.

New sources of aid – from China, Turkey and the Middle East in particular – have been less in the form of grants than soft loans, more tied to particular projects and perhaps more effective. For their part, African countries again should take a leaf out of the Asian playbook and channel aid according to their domestic priorities, driven less by the transactional opportunity than the development effect; on their side, donors need to calibrate giving more carefully.

Traditional donors have been poor at getting the politics rights. With more than two-thirds of Africans routinely polled preferring democracy to any other system of government, and given that this system is – with occasional national variations – the basic building block of the West, it would make sense to work with those like-minded in Africa. Today, ten African countries classify as ‘free’ according to the US NGO Freedom House, which has ranked democracies worldwide for several decades. Another 22 each fall into the ‘unfree’ and ‘no free’ categories.

Entrenching democracy, rather than authoritarianism, requires supporting the systems and institutions that enable it, and calibrating aid accordingly.

Instead of giving more to those that are failing, the better the democratic performance, the better should be the donor rewards. The democrats should get the free trade deals and top-end educational exchanges, for example, while the authoritarians are relegated to food and humanitarian aid along with assistance as to how to run a free and fair election.

Supporting democracy also demands shaking the shibboleth that donors should not be involved in supporting political parties. On the contrary, they must be openly involved, not least since many already are, and since without money, political competition is virtually guaranteed to be dominated by the incumbent.

Democracy also requires extensive donor support for local media, a critical governance tool, as South Africa showed again in the fight to unseat the Guptas.

African governments will likely resist such support on the grounds that such ‘conditionality’ smacks of neo-colonialism or sovereign interference. But African governments cannot claim such interference when they take aid.

The ability of governments to ruthlessly prioritise is the fifth disruptor. The usefulness of policy could constantly be mea­sured against one goal: what will be the effect of such legislation on jobs? This demands a policy approach that stresses the need to create supply chains in business, and to tie in legislation with infrastructure, for example in the construction of Special Economic Zones.

Similarly, finding the infrastructure mix to enable countries to move quickly up the value chain and efficiently access markets means turning away from vanity projects and investing only in the most necessary infrastructure, notably reliable power supply, as a matter of urgency. One-third of the continent’s total installed capacity is in South Africa; even so, its severe power outages are well known. Mini-grid technology and renewables can plug some of the energy gaps, though this will require, at its heart, central governments being willing to decentralise such agency to those areas with the will and the capacity, as for example with the Western Cape in South Africa. The logic that everyone has to rise collectively or not at all is anathema to spurring competitiveness, in infrastructure as in education.

There is a need for integration in all of the above: in infrastructure as much as policy. For example, there is no point in building an airport to attract tourists or the airlines that would bring them without action on the ‘offer’, and on access, including visa regimes and unnecessary costs. The same integration imperative is true for big infrastructure: the Standard Gauge Railways in Ethiopia and Kenya will only be the major benefit that is intended – and not an expensive white elephant – if they are closely linked in to the last and first mile handling, where logistics are tied to policy incentivising commerce, and governance aims to reduce the costs of doing business.

Leadership is the sixth and final disruptor.

In the face of states fragmented along a crazy paving of religion, tribe or race, leadership must develop a consistent message of unity and nation-building. Otherwise it will battle to shake the sense of impunity, entitlement

and winner takes all political economy which has permeated post-independence African politics, as epitomised by the Kenyan expression: ‘It’s our turn to eat’. Party unity and group loyalty cannot be the altar on which reform is sacrificed.

In this, leadership has to employ and leverage a sense of crisis, thereby explaining the urgency and radical nature of its actions.

And while its policies need to aim at inclusive growth and development, they should not seek excuses in history. Southeast Asia’s progress reminds us of the need for pragmatism over polemic, and the importance of building on the past rather than breaking it down. It also reminds us that history does not have to be destiny.

There are few countries that have suffered as much as Vietnam from colonialism and foreign military intervention. The American phase of the Vietnam War came after more than 1,000 years of Chinese occupation, French colonialism and Japanese invasion – and cost perhaps four million dead with multitudes displaced, infrastructure ruined and an economy destroyed.Yet Vietnam has transformed its economy and refused to be a prisoner of its past.

Paul Kagame is, again, a model of this sense of purpose, though there are question marks about the sustainability of his regime given its favouring of the Tutsi minority. There also has to be a clear sense on the part of leadership when it has outlived its usefulness: what CEO lasts 34 years in the top job like Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang at 40 years, an astonishing 44 years for Paul Biya in Cameroon, 29 years for Chad’s Idriss Déby, or an effective 26 years like Kagame? Disruption and competitive direction will happen by institutionalising the turnover of leadership.

Africa’s problems are complex, as are the solutions. If there is a common denominator shared by all these disruptors, it is the need for leadership that is fit for purpose – one that has made the decision to disrupt and move forward. Lacking that, as we head towards a 2050 with a population twice as large as today, the continent’s governments can only be in increasing danger from burgeoning and restive citizenry.

Dr Mills directs the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, and is the co-author of the recently released The Asian Aspiration: Why and How Africa Should Emulate Asia.

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Photo: ROLEX/Kurt Arrigo

new trends in yacht racing (Crew on 80-foot racing trimaran LoveWater #lovewater) World Record Holder for fastest crossing of the South Atlantic.

Written by: Mike Clarke

From the admiration of birds in flight to the Wright brothers, the Concorde, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird and space exploration, humans have always been captivated by flight and the speed at which it allows us to travel.

The world of yacht racing has now also gone airborne. No longer is sailing a sport confined to hydrodynamics – it’s a sport supercharged by aerodynamics. Wing, foil, pitch, lift, cant, rotate – are all part of the language adopted by sailors and the naval architects of today.

The sailors sport helmets with heads-up displays and full audio linkages to one another and the shore team. Australia II were definitely onto something in 1983 when they lifted the Auld Mug (the world’s most coveted yachting trophy), otherwise known as the America’s Cup, after beating the Americans for the first time since 1851.

Australia II’s appendices were always draped in cloth during the contest so that no one

could see what would later be revealed after their victory – her famous and highly controversial winged keel. It was a revolutionary step in yacht design that marked a new era for the sport of sailing.

Fast forward 37 years to the year 2020 and we have yachts that resemble sci-fi story machines in a Marvel comic book. It’s these technological advances that have ‘quantum leaped’ sailing into its next chapter.

Apart from the extraordinary advances in material design (lighter and stronger) in the boat, the sails/wings, flying foils that lift the yacht out of the water, the ropes, the control systems and much more, there has also been a digital revolution in terms of monitoring and measuring all the key aspects of a boat’s performance. This means the sailors can better control the yacht’s sailing characteristics and allow all involved to continually strive towards peak performance.

Gone are the days of sailing around the world in 80 days (Jules Verne Trophy); today it’s about sailing around the world in less than 40 days. Idec Sport holds the current around-the-world record of 40 days and 23 hours.

The legendary Sir Robin Knox-Johnson and Sir Peter Blake won the inaugural South

Atlantic Race (the longest point-to-point race in the southern hemisphere) in 1971 in their yacht Ocean Spirit in a time of 23 days and 42 minutes. In 2020, the trimaran LoveWater set a new record for the crossing of 7 days and 20 hours, which means LoveWater sailed across the Atlantic over three times quicker than Ocean Spirit did 49 years ago.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnson also won the first Around the World Alone Race (also known as the toughest yacht race on Earth), which he did in 1969 on his yacht Suhaili. It took him close to 10 months. In 2017, François Gabart set a new singlehanded around-the-world record of 42 days and 16 hours, or a little under a month and a half, which means that François was an astonishing seven times quicker than Sir Robin.

Apart from the significant jumps in yacht design technology that have occurred since the famous 1983 America’s Cup battle between Australia II and Liberty, there have been a number of other massive advances that have completely transformed the sport of sailing.

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has created a new phenomenon – the professional sailor. With professional sailors come professional nutrition, physical and mental conditioning, clothing, instrumentation and data analytics/ software, sail trimming systems and everything you can imagine that would have a boat sail faster.

These sailors are completely next level, and the focus they have on the sport has enabled it to evolve at breathtaking rapidity.

Together with the large-profile sponsors and pro sailors, the sport has transitioned to being a lot more ‘spectator-friendly’, with the use of on-board reporters, live feeds via on-board satellite communications, virtual regattas for the public to race against the pros, and events staged in waters that allow spectators to watch from the shore.

Sailing and the oceans have always captivated the human soul. The allure and mystery of the oceans make them one of the last frontiers for exploration and places of extraordinary natural wonder. They are also the key to our survival (our oceans produce 75% of our oxygen) but they are under serious threat from climate change and pollution and we need to protect them.

Fortunately, extraordinary work is already happening in this space, with many of the profiled sailing campaigns driving home key messages to help safeguard our oceans and our planet. LoveWater in partnership with the WWF are examples of how sailing is trying to play its part, with their #ourplasticourproblem campaign.

There are many other developments that have transformed the sport, but it’s worth mentioning the realm of weather routing.

Gone are the days of straight navigation.

Navigation is a given nowadays. It’s now about sailing the fastest way through the various weather systems that are at play out on the course.

Weather routing involves predicting the weather and sailing one’s boat in the optimum way relative to what the weather is doing currently and is forecast to do in the future.

Using weather data models (regularly updated and available on the internet) and sophisticated software blended with the boat’s performance data (what angle to the wind is best for the boat to sail in a certain wind condition as provided by the yacht designer and refined by the sailors),

navigators use the software to plot an optimum passage for their boat.

The sailors on board virtually race against themselves on a moving ‘live map’ and measure their progress using terms such as ‘percentage polar performance’ and ‘Velocity Made Good’ towards the next virtual point up the course that they are racing to. One will find that, on the top professional yachts, the skippers spend most of their time working with their routing models and less and less time on deck sailing. Boats are going so quickly nowadays that more and more sailors work in areas protected from the elements given the speed and volume of the water moving over the deck.

As we found out on our Cape to Rio Race on LoveWater, there is a price to pay for going quickly.Yes, one gets there much quicker but it’s one helluva tough and relentless load on the body and mind when one is averaging over 45km/hr across the Atlantic and often hitting top speeds of over 70km/hr.

The jolting movements, accelerations and de-accelerations mean that you clamber around the boat holding on for dear life.You live in wet-weather gear as the water and wind across the boat never let up and the noise of the whistling foils and rushing water is so loud that you can’t hear someone as close as three metres away from you.

To dive into the amazing world of modern yacht racing and to hear our story in more detail, take a look on social media at what it took us to break the world record for crossing the South Atlantic Ocean in January 2020 on our 80-foot racing trimaran LoveWater (#lovewater), proudly sponsored by Homechoice and supported by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

LoveWater sailing team: https://www.wwf.org.za/our_ news/blog/love_water_ are_champs/

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Photo: Nick Breeze

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what portugal teaches us Rediscovering indigenous grape varieties with heat resilient properties and expanding the cork oak forests are just two ways in which Portugal is responding to climate change.

Written by: Nick Breeze

The topography of the Dão region in northeast Portugal is a chaotic thrust of contours and colours, interspersed with a scattering of giant boulders that sit inexplicably on top of hills like inflated pebbles. In the dead of winter there is a bleakness to it that is compounded by the burned skeletons of pine and eucalyptus trees nakedly haunting the horizon as we drive between wineries.

In 2017, 220,000 hectares of these trees burned, as a lethal combination of drought and racing wind ensured that the fires spread rapidly, destroying woodlands, natural habitats, vineyards and homes. Over two years on and the charred remains are still widely evident.

Portugal has around 300 indigenous grape varieties that are mostly unheard of and so often blended together to make field blends. Here in the Dão the white

Encruzado is an absolute wonder.

Winemakers such as Ribeiro Santo, Casa da Passarella and Quinta dos Carvalhais have developed techniques for working with the firm backbone of Encruzado’s acidity that add texture, flavour and balance, allowing the wines to age beautifully.

The style of blended red wines in the Dão is a combination of rich aromas of violets, ripe dark fruit, and that French term known as garigue, a combination of shrubs and aromatic herbs. Alone in the hotel one evening after a full day’s tasting, I reopen Julia Kemper’s Curiosity, made from 80% Alfrocheiro and 20% Touriga Nacional, that has benefited enormously from being allowed to breathe a little. It has adjusted from the chilly tasting room to a more congenial lounge temperature. The aromas of balsamic, dark fruit and violets are intoxicating, greatly enhancing the ambience in which I find myself.

Tasting the wine and reflecting, I cannot help thinking about one winemaker who replied to my question regarding crop losses due to climate change by saying: ‘This year we lost 50% in the Dão and 70% from our

estate in Vinho Verde.’ A day later, the winemaker at Quinta dos Carvalhais said that they removed 25% of their twenty-year-old vines in 2019 due to the 2017 fires. The fire damage had diminished the quality and led to inconsistent growth patterns.

A climate casino These instances of extreme climate impacts, which can range from late-season frost to severe hail, heat stress and burned vines, are rising across many regions in Europe and across the world. This is the double-edged sword, or drunken paradox, of climate change.

Winemakers today have a wealth of knowledge, scientific expertise and technology to draw on. Climate change itself has, in many places, increased the reliability of crops with warming temperatures. The trouble is that any benefits will be tested by greater climatic extremes and irregularities that will be merciless as they worsen in coming years.

Back in March 2019, I interviewed Adrian Bridge, CEO of Taylor Fladgate Partnership and founder of the Porto Protocol, Climate 51

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Photo: Nick Breeze

The native cork oak forests in the Western Mediterranean basin, covering 2.2 million hectares across seven countries, form a natural defense against the northerly creeping Sahara Desert.

Photo: Quinta Do Noval

Photo: Quinta Do Noval

Change Leadership for the Wine Industry. He made the point: ‘In one afternoon in the Douro in late May, 12% of the annual rainfall fell in one hour … In that single hour the damage to our vineyards and buildings was in the order of about €400,000.’

The rise of dry, elegant Douro wines Later in 2019, in July, I spent an evening at Quinta Nova, a beautifully situated estate on the northern side of the Douro Valley between Régua and Pinhão, tasting their full range with owner, Luisa Amorim. The wine team at Quinta Nova are focusing on raising the profile of their dry wine selection and are already winning awards.

The wines of recent vintages are beautifully fragrant and elegant. Despite my love of the blended reds of the Douro Valley, I found the Mirabilis Grand Reserva 2017 to be the showstopper in the range - a beautifully made fine white wine with seductive elegance, richness and complexity.

However, Luisa is also very concerned about the trends implied by climate change.

A neighbour close by lost 100% of his crop to heat stress the previous year and, although Quinta Nova had only lost around 6%, global carbon emissions are still rising, thus compounding the warming and locking in the disruptive trend.

The Douro in particular is an excellent example of complex interacting microclimates. Steep terraces fall from the sky into the base of the valley where the once rapid-flowing River Douro is now sedately dammed into a series of lakes reaching all the way down to the city of Porto.

Mesmerising vistas conceal the rugged obstinance of the land mass, an ancient river valley with terraces excavated with dynamite and summer days of over 40°C, falling to freezing cold temperatures in winter.

Differences of over 3°C between the top and the bottom of the valley are not at all uncommon.

Photo: Quinta do Noval - S Chapuis

High-altitude vines in the Minho Six months before, standing in the far north of the Vinho Verde region at Quinta de Soalheiro, high up on a mountainside, I inhaled a stretching vista over the Minho River and beyond into ruggedly ancient Galicia on the Spanish side. The enigmatic owner, Luis Cerdeira, explains that he has now planted vines at an altitude of 54

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over 1,000m.

It is too high to ripen the fruit, he says, with his amused expression. He goes on to explain that the acids in the lower fruit have fallen because of the higher night-time temperatures. For the overall estate it is not currently a problem, but it is a signal that things are changing.

His wines are delicious and varied. I particularly like his Soalheiro Granit Mineral Selection Alvarinho with its lively, searing freshness, elegant flavours and clean wanton finish. It is, of course, the freshness that these winemakers must protect from the rising temperatures. Luis may not need those vines today but as temperatures continue to rise, in line with atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, as climate models predict, ripening grapes at dizzying heights on the slopes of mountains sounds inevitable.

Holding back the Sahara The forest fires of blazing eucalyptus and pine that I alluded to earlier are an example of a dangerous crop for the Portuguese as drought conditions become more prevalent.

There is, however, another species of tree in Portugal that is indigenous and much more famous to wine-loving people. It has so many incredible applications and properties that even as I write this, a news story has broken that could positively impact the carbon accounting in wine production.

The native cork oak forests in the Western Mediterranean basin, covering 2.2 million hectares across seven countries, form a natural defense against the northerly creeping Sahara Desert. They act as a keystone species, singlehandedly supporting richly complex biodiverse ecosystems of flourishing life.

The cork bark is harvested with expert care every nine years, allowing ample time for regrowth. The bark itself has phenomenal thermal properties that protect the living tree beneath from the harsh summer extremes.

Fires in these forests may damage the outer layer of cork bark but seldom go as far as killing the oak tree itself.

Across a multitude of applications, from elements of spacecraft design to architecture and fashion, cork is finding itself being branded as nature’s own polymer. Of major interest to us wine-lovers is not just the authenticity of uncorking a bottle of our favourite wine but also the secret of what that cork holds within it.

Corticeira Amorim is the largest cork closure company and has been a pioneer in extracting the value and potential of cork. An independent study by Ernst & Young on the life cycle of Corticeira Amorim cork stoppers found that natural cork stoppers, in their overall lifecycle, retained an amount of carbon equal to 529g of CO₂ for sparkling wine and 309g of CO₂ for natural cork closures. This includes the storage of carbon retained in the forest and surrounding area itself, a result of careful management and stewardship. These new figures for sequestered CO₂, it is now claimed, can potentially offset the entire carbon footprint of the glass bottle.

From emissions reductions to building resilience Entering this new decade accompanied by the visual backdrop of ecological destruction that seems to have reached a shocking peak with the Australian wildfires and subsequent floods, it is clear that reducing emissions in the wine industry is only a chunk of the story. The other part must focus on climate resilience.

Conversations around resilience are being had the world over. One method on many people’s lips is the introduction of new grape varietals and clones that have grea­ter climate adaptive properties. One such example is the trialling of Touriga Nacional in Bordeaux.

This is a variety that is resilient to a hotter climate while exhibiting cha­rac­teris­tics of elegance and a fantastic flavour profile.

At a recent lunch in Lisbon, Bernardo Gouvêa, president of Portugal’s national wine bureau, said: ‘We have already identified some clones in the same grape variety that are more resistant to the heat by 4°C than the other clones; in Tinta Roriz [Tempranillo], for example.’

However, despite these new discoveries in the lab, there is no doubt that emerging growing conditions will push the boun­daries of expertise in winemaking to new levels and that the characteristics of wine will change.

Changing state of H₂O Water scarcity is an issue that is rising over the horizon, and potential conflict lies in how it will be allocated. Perhaps this is an area where humanity must adapt to a new regime for sourcing water?

A hotter world means more evaporation,

especially where soils are depleted and the land degraded. Increasing temperatures are driving up the moisture content in the atmosphere, which is itself a greenhouse gas.

This moisture is also a powerful driver of the intensity of storms which are also getting worse around the world.

In places like Israel, where drought is a worsening issue and access to water an underlying driver of conflict, there has also been some fascinating technology developed that extracts drinking water from the atmosphere. Similar technology has long been used by British and American military operating in arid areas, but is now becoming more widely used for civilian purposes.

As new materials are developed that are able to extract between 50 and 100 litres of water per cubic metre per day, the water scarcity issue may be one that can largely be solved, allowing us to cope better in a warmer world.

Embracing the challenge In the Douro Valley, the shrivelled grapes I saw were the result of several days with temperatures of over 40°C. The damage was limited but it is a warning that this is a new paradigm.

Other technologies are being developed to defend against heat stress and protect against frost. Man-made fog with an electric charge can create a mist that is drawn to the vine, much like a jacket, to protect it from heat exchanges. It is in the early developmental stages but, coupled with a suite of emerging technology, could offer the delicate balance of resilience that will be needed to produce quality wine, even a decade from now.

The wine industry is emblematic of the paradoxical challenges we face today. The wines I have enjoyed on these trips seemingly have no end of potential for charming drinkers with their finesse and balance, and yet their existence is threatened by a global crisis that has been brought about at the hands of those who enjoy wine most.

We cannot turn back the clock to reset what we have collectively wrought but we can still shape the world of tomorrow in profound ways. Wine culture is not isolated from other forms of agriculture, but it can play an avant-garde role in building an ethos of true sustainability and delivering on the resilience needed to thrive in an anthropogenically dominated world.

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found A range of jewellery by Stefni Studio.

Made from found beach plastic paired with mainly brass and silver.

Stefni Muller is a jeweller by trade but a conservationist at heart. She makes jewellery from found objects with a focus on reusing and upcycling. She is passionate about finding materials, like beach plastic, as gemstone alternatives and main colour features in statement pieces. Each sold piece from the FOUND range donates a

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percentage to The Beach Co-Op, a nongovernmental organisation passionate about ocean conservation.

As much as this range makes a strong stand about how we approach the discarding of plastic and where it ends up, it celebrates the unconventional beautiful solutions to urgent and pressing issues.

Visit www.stefni.co.za or her instagram feed @stefnimuller to view more of her beautiful work.

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Matthew Prins | No.3 A5 painting, acrylic on canvas Matthew has started painting one painting a week with 50% of the proceeds going to WWF South Africa. Catch a first glance and an opportunity to purchase one of his paintings on his Instagram feed @ __.m.p.__

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‘The Family Portrait’ Watercolour on plyboard 2014 1200x1200mm

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new ways of art To survive as a full-time artist means that you have to sell your work. It’s not much different from the wine industry in that there is a production process, there is art, and then there is the harsh commercial reality. And to find your way around this thorny problem called selling, you need to understand how the market works.

Art & Written by: Gabrielle Raaff

The art market has three distinct streams of selling: galleries, auction houses and online platforms; it’s similar to the wine industry in this regard.

Traditionally, art galleries were a bit like wine shops – intimidating. Many South African galleries try to create less daunting viewer experiences now, with artist-led walkabouts on Saturdays and ‘First Thursdays’ evenings where the public can cruise between restaurants, galleries and shops.

Although not many art sales happen at these events, the exposure to new and younger audiences plants important seeds.

As with almost everything, online platforms present a recent focus of huge growth and opportunity for every conceivable variation of artist. Although political uncertainties and a sluggish global economy have had a negative effect on emerging art markets, the romance between collector and artist is still steaming – maybe more so now than ever.

Despite the recent emergence of online galleries, the art fair phenomenon has been the biggest global trend in the art world in recent years.

Art fairs are essentially a space in which anyone, no matter their knowledge and experience of art, can enjoy (in person) a multitude of styles and genres. Part of the appeal is that customers/collectors from all over the world can congregate over a period of a few days and explore art together.

The best art fairs manage to create non-alienating and super friendly environments. In cities like Cape Town, art fair attendees can also experience the very best of what a different, diverse, vibrant and beautiful city has to offer.

The other big trend is the liberating effect of social media platforms for the presentation of art. They generate a springboarding of young, emerging and even established artists who can utilise social media to communicate with customers of all generations and disposable incomes.

My name is Gabrielle Raaff, I am a visual artist living in Cape Town, South Africa, and I have been making paintings for a living for 28 years, ever since graduating from Stellenbosch University in the early 1990s.

Locally, I am represented by SMITH gallery and Salon Ninety One. I have exhibited in London, Paris, San Francisco, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Johannesburg.

As buying trends change, I work more and more with online gallery platforms such as Uprise Art, Artspace, Saatchi Art and Art Gazette.

These platforms operate according to the traditional gallery model of consignment and a hefty 50/50 or 40/60 percentage split commission structure, but they offer the benefit of your work reaching a much wider international audience. Like any online retail structure, their effectiveness is determined by how well and how widely they communicate their offering.

The current art capitals of Africa – Accra, Addis Ababa, Cape Town, Dakar, Lagos and Marrakesh – represent the wellspring of emerging African artists. As a result of increasing urbanisation, well-respected art schools and a growing number of African collectors to provide local stimulus, the African art market is expanding steadily, but we are all still physically removed from the majority of well-heeled art collectors.

Fortunately, collectors can now enjoy Africa-specific art fairs such as the Cape > 59

Muizenberg 53 Chinese Ink on Fabriano 660x470mm 2019

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‘Paradise’ 1300x800mm 2015 Water-based oil on canvas from solo show Nightwatch at Salon Ninety One

Town Art Fair, AKAA (Also Known As Africa) in Paris, the Lagos Photo Festival (Nigeria), Johannesburg Art Fair, 1-54 (New York, Marrakech, London), Art X Lagos (Nigeria), and the super accessible RMB Turbine Art Fair (Johannesburg). The art fair phenomenon over the past 10 years, both in Africa and abroad, has helped drive an explosion in the popularity of African art.

South African art stands out on a global platform. As a result, museums in Europe and North America have recently hosted an increasing number of African and South African art shows.

The spin-offs an artist can enjoy from the international exposure brought by art fairs are both obvious and incalculable.You may get spotted and invited to show elsewhere in the world, or you may not, but everyone knows the principles of marketing that apply to any product: visibility and accessibility. It is no different in the art market. The quality and uniqueness of what you make, its presence in galleries and online and its availability are key.

Consistency is also important.

Just like in the fashion world, all art suffers from the pressure of what is in fashion or on

trend, but if you are true to yourself and keep making authentic work and expanding your practice for your own personal growth, the rest usually follows.

No one will advise becoming an artist if job security is your number one priority. A handful of African artists are making it big, but success still remains an awkward dance between resilience, hard work, talent and luck …

A clear challenge for artists from marginalised countries in Africa, or emerging artists globally, is that investing in art is risky.

Returns are never a straightforward proposition, and investing in contemporary, upcoming artists is always a gamble.

However, when gambles work in the art world, the rewards are legendary. The unprecedented recent success of young contemporary artists at auctions indicates how the market has changed. Despite the gamble, collectors are buying more adventurously – African art and emerging artists are benefiting.

Commercial success in art investment seems to derive from market-trend nous, a large portion of luck and timing. Ultimately,

most artists and gallerists would advise that you buy what you love and what you want to live with, as that represents its true value, and to leave the rest to the art gods. Both artists and collectors benefit from being true to themselves.

I am struck once again by the bizarre nature of the art world as my nine-year-old daughter shows me some of her drawings.

Their beauty lies in their authenticity, naivety and raw energy. I tell her that if she were just to up the scale to about 3m x 7m, possibly incorporate some recycled materials and exhibit them at the upcoming Cape Town Art Fair, she might be the next hot contemporary artist from Africa.

I’m prepared to step aside and bask in her glory.

www.gabrielleraaff.com

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a new era in surfing Written by: Nick Robinson Photography: courtesy of Wavegarden

In 2015, the world awoke to a new era in surfing. Kelly Slater, surfing’s greatest professional of all time, and affectionately known as the G.O.A.T., dropped a bomb on an unsuspecting surfing public.

He had been cloakand-dagger secretive about it until then, even waging patent wars behind the scenes with other players in the wave pool game before announcing what has set the standard as the world’s most perfect machinedriven wave. Like Steve Jobs not inventing the mobile phone, Kelly Slater was not the first to produce a wave pool, but he was the first to produce a perfectly surfable wave.

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Wave pools are not a new phenomenon.

Back in the 1800s Ludwig II ‘electrified a lake’ to produce moving waves in Bavaria.

Apart from commissioning two lavish palaces and acting as a patron for the composer Wagner, he spent most of Bavaria’s money on these eccentric projects.

A long list of wave pool projects followed: • 1905’s ‘Undosa’ floating platform created waves in a lake outside Munich, Germany.

• 1912 - ‘Bilzbad’, also in Germany, is apparently still open today.

• 1927 - The Gellert baths in Budapest, Hungary, made waves for startled bathers.

• 1932 saw the opening of the ‘Natatorium’ wavemaker in Oregon before it was paradoxically 64

destroyed in turn by ocean waves.

• 1939 - Wembley in the UK was the scene for a psychologically soothing wave pool.

• 1940 - Across the Hudson River from New York, the Hudson River Pallisades hosted the opening of a large saltwater pool that had a waterfall installed at one end, creating waves across the pool.

These pools were designed with swimmers in mind and this model continues today. It’s tough to go into a water park and not find a wave pool of sorts. But what Kelly Slater did was to create something for surfers only. His computer-designed, expertly researched facility is for rippers, not splashers. No crowds of swimmers clog the lineup at his converted wakeboard park in the California desert.

At the time of Typhoon Lagoon’s construction, the Surf Pool was the largest wave pool in the country

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An early history of surfable wave pools In 1966, the Japanese were at the forefront of a new craze. Summerland Wave Pool, more colloquially known as the ‘Surf-atorium’ in true sixties lingo, was built in Akiruno.

In 1969, a park named ‘Big Surf ’ in Tempe, Arizona, opened at the same time as Point Mallard Park in Decatur, Alabama.

During the 70s the wave pool business seems to have gone flat and no other pools were created until 1984.

In the 80s, after winning the world title, Peter Townend had taken a job in ad sales at Surfing Magazine. One of their sponsors asked Pete if he’d like to travel over to surf a new wave pool in Ohio. It was in a water park called Geauga Lake just outside Cleveland.

One of his colleagues from the magazine went along and wrote an article. Pete fielded a bunch of calls from wave park owners, and the next thing he was in Adventure River, Memphis, Tennessee. By the next year the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) had held a competition at Dorney Park in Philadelphia. Shaun Tomson from South Africa surfed in the event. The craze had been reignited.

There were three technologies around at the time, all producing waves in a different manner: Surftech, Aqualogic and Wave tech.

Disney called Pete up and asked him all about the available technologies, so he produced a black book with all the info he had gathered. He presented it to the Disney execs, and they went off and created what is now known as Typhoon Lagoon.

‘At the time of Typhoon Lagoon’s construction, the Surf Pool was the largest wave pool in the country,’ said a Disney spokesperson. With wonderful spin, CEO Michael Eisner called the Typhoon Lagoon Surf Pool ‘The best surf East of Hawaii’.

The chlorinated system pumps out one super-consistent 3-5ft wave every 90 seconds - a burgery right and left off the deep end that rushes into a closeout on the inside bar. The 126,000 square foot wave pool can be rented out for private surfing before and after swimming hours. Due to its proximity to Florida’s surf industry and its relative quality of waves, Typhoon Lagoon opened the world’s eyes to what was possible. The USA amateur team trained there, and a few paying

competitions went down in the deep end during the 90s, one of which crowned Kelly Slater champ – perhaps seeding his Surf Ranch concept some 20 years later.

The Encyclopaedia of Surfing estimates that while 500 wave pools were built in the 20th century, none were specifically designed for surfing. Their business model was to get paying floaters through the door with the promise of mild excitement. Most pools gently undulate swimmers in drearily small surf. Sizeable, powerful surf leads to injuries and, more importantly, lawsuits.

Of this generation of wave pools, the most surf-stoked was the Ocean Dome in Miyazaki, Japan, which opened in 1993.

When cranked up, it pushed out genuine surfable peaks that rivalled a fun day at your local beach break. The water park peaked in popularity in the 90s with more than a million visitors annually. Park operators put on a show each day with pro-surfer Matthew Pitts performing as the surf prince Sabu. The pool was scuttled in 2007 to make room for hotel renovations.

Because this chlorinated behemoth was not designed specifically for surfing, recorded sessions are rare.

Surfing is sidelined and often falls under the park’s marketing budget (surfboards look cooler than floaties). In short, a class of fifth-graders from the nearby public school is worth more to the wave pool’s bottom line than you and your shredding friends. Don’t expect a bargain.

But the New Era technology is changing all that. Based on surf-specific income models and more waves per minute, Surf Snowdonia, NLand and BSR Surf Ranch make their money from rippers like you and they cater to surfers all day long.

Technology and Commercialisation of the New Era

The ‘It Girl’ of the wave pool scene summer 2018. The Surf Resort and BSR has starred in so many YouTube and Instagram clips that it’s trapped the attention of anyone scrolling the #wavepool hashtag. So advanced and desirable is American Wave Machines’ PerfectSwell Tech (the adjustments and possibility of wave combos is mindboggling) that STAB hosts the ‘Stab High’ wave pool contest here and they are booked out months in advance.

If wave pool technology were a tree, at the trunk would be Murphy’s Wave. The Scottish company is responsible for wave pool surf locations in Florida, the United Arab Emirates, the Canary Islands and Malaysia.

After that, the next generation of tech came from deep in the Spanish Basque Country with Wavegarden conceiving and developing the Wavegarden Lagoon System which can be found in Northern Wales and Austin, Texas. Next generation Wavegarden ‘Cove’ Technology is responsible for creating waves in places like Bristol and Melbourne.

The other tech that is open to the public is American Wave Machines’ PerfectSwell technology, like the kind found at BSR Surf Resort.

Many of the first-generation, non-surf specific pools like Wadi Adventure, Siam Park and Typhoon Lagoon earn the lion’s share of income from the boardless, bobbing and squealing public.

That income keeps the parks open.

Lowdown on the Top New Era Wave Pools Kelly Slater Surf Ranch – Lemoore, California The world’s best surfer photographed on the world’s best human-made wave captivated anyone who has ever surfed.

Now owned by the WSL, the perfection of the Surf Ranch is reserved for training, video clips, WSL contests and a few friends of the King. Private parties can rent out the ranch for the day.

BSR Cable Park – Waco, Texas, USA

The Wave, Bristol, UK Launched in November 2019, The Wave is Wavegarden’s first project utilising the new ‘Cove’ Technology, which spits out 1,000 waves per hour and caters for almost 80 surfers at one time. It’s a game-changer for the commercial viability of surfable wave pools and has seen much success over the cold winter season in the United Kingdom.

URBNSURF, Melbourne, Australia Opened in early 2020 and utilising Wavegarden ‘Cove’ Technology, URBNSURF is enjoying great success 65

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during the summer as thousands of people are flocking towards Australia’s latest attraction.

Surf Snowdonia, Vale of Conway, UK The world’s first commercial wave pool with first-generation Wavegarden technology. The crew in Northern Wales took the plunge before anyone else and had to invent the whole surf-focused wave pool business model from scratch. The result is a playground that feels like a weekend ski-resort retreat, but much, much cooler.You can surf with resident pro Jo Dennison.

Siam Wavepark, Tenerife, Canary Islands This has been an Atlantic Ocean secret spot hidden on an island of great natural surf.

It’s a solid destination for European wave pool hunters looking for something exotic in an already exotic location.

The pool has starred in a few surf videos, most notably a Volcom session with groms and rising UK star Lucy Campbell. But the

most comprehensive clip that gives a real feel for the place is a Spanish bro-fest. The guys rented the pool and walk viewers through 10 minutes of the experience, complete with high-fives and hoots.

with rip-able rights and lefts. Clearly defined rates and access to the park for surfing are a bit dubious, but armed with basic park info and contact info, the surf eager should find easy access.

Sunway Lagoon, Bandar Sunway, Selangor, Malaysia

Future wave pool projects

The site of several early 2000’s party clips from the likes of STAB and Quiksilver. The park caters to surfing with a special evening hour session once the swimmers have packed up, but doesn’t have a landing page or contact for reserving a session.

Wadi Adventure, United Arab Emirates Utilising Murphy’s Waves Technology, the wave made famous in Dion Agius’ ‘Electric Blue Heaven’ clip is accessible and surfable now. It’s a steep right or left off a wall that weakens a bit as it spreads out to centre pool.

Roaring Lagoon, Sun City, South Africa

There are so many wave pool projects under planning at this stage.

WavePoolMag.com has counted over 50 projects under development from all the major wave pool players: Wavegarden, Surf Lakes, Kelly Slater Wave Company, Surf Loch and American Wave Machines.

It’s an exciting future for machine-driven waves!

Huge thanks to www.wavepoolmag.com for much of the information in this article.

Another beautiful Murphy’s Waves setup 67

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south africa’s new wine frontier Written by: Bruce Jack

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geology, climate and happenstance Geology and Climate Around 330 million years ago, various continents found themselves in God’s mosh pit of geology. The headbanging band raging on heaven’s stage was called ‘Plate Tectonics’ (previously known as ‘Continental Drift’) and was renowned for throwing up massive mountains and magically creating a treasuretrove of minerals – the most prosaic of which (gold and diamonds) would end up helping to build European cities like Edinburgh and London, etc.It was a gig to remember. By the time South America, Australia, India, Madagascar and Antarctica stopped smashing into each other and slunk off to nurse post-moshing hangovers, Southern Africa was changed forever. From a wine perspective, this was for the good.

The Western Cape took the brunt of the collisions, ending up with 14km-high mountains folded out of bedrock, a hitherto unseen heady mixture of soils and an embarrassment of mineral wealth. Exciting stuff, like waking up with a very sore head and a smile, in a badly crumpled cosmic bed – clear signs of huge-scale Saturnalia.You notice a tattoo of Diego Maradona on your inner thigh, reaching illegally heavenward.

And you somehow feel okay about it. That’s never actually happened to me, in case you are wondering, but it more or less sums up what the Western Cape felt like after the Gondwana Mosh-pit Party.

Over the next 330 million years, those sky-piercing Cape Fold mountains were gradually eroded down to their current height – that’s why Table Mountain and the Akkedisberg (rising above the village of Napier 150km away from Cape Town) are almost exactly the same height – they were once the same mountain and a common band of hard granite at the same altitude has slowed the degradation of time.

The deposits of this action became the soil around the mountains in which we now grow grapes. As a result, nowhere on earth do you find anything approaching the kaleidoscopic diversity of our soils. This is 70

one of the reasons we are blessed with such incredible biodiversity of flora in the Western Cape. And what influences fynbos (our endemic flora) similarly influences vineyards. The diversity of soil results directly in the mind-blowing complexity of South African wine.

More influential, perhaps, is the climate of the Agulhas Wine Triangle. ‘Mediterranean’ is a hackneyed broad catchall, but describes the wet, cold winters and the warm, dry summers. Beyond this Eurocentric generalisation are the specifics of our cold winds off the cold oceans. These daily winds, predominantly from the southeast, are beneficial for natural acid retention, aroma and flavour development in grapes, but also dry out moisture in the canopy, meaning fewer chemical sprays are required to keep grapes and vines healthy. The main reason South African farmers can farm more environmentally friendly than elsewhere is because our abundance of wind allows us to.

Wind dominates the climate and plays a further crucial role in devigorating vineyard growth, forcing the plant to focus on producing delicious grapes rather than vegetation.

The culmination of these different soils, the wind, the cold winters and moderate summers results in a thread of elegance running through all wines made in the Agulhas Wine Triangle area. And because of these factors, yields will never be high, so wines are naturally better balanced and of premium quality.

Happenstance For almost a century, the South African wine industry was controlled by the KWV. While initially required to curtail overproduction and to some extent oversee quality, the system became unreasonably restrictive, and, it has been argued, abused for financial and political reasons. Which government agricultural policy anywhere on this planet hasn’t?

As a small example, one was not allowed Jack Journal Vol. 1

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Photo: Daréll Lourens

Photo: Jocelyn de Kock

to plant grapes unless the area was approved by the regulators. As you can imagine, these and other laws were written to serve certain interests, while ignoring others. Some of those prejudiced by parochial self-interest were many industry pioneers, including Tim Hamilton-Russell, who ran into a world of trouble when he planted and produced wine in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley. The authorities at the time were determined to keep the Overberg off limits for grape growing. Tim persevered, and the rest is Pinot Noir mythology.

Eventually the Cluver family, perhaps more acceptable in those dark days, hooked up with what is now Distell to plant grapes in Elgin. Dr Cluver is not a man easily swayed or ignored and the rest is a formidable family legacy.

This meant the crumbling bastille of bureaucratic idiocy was breached, and with the demise of the Nationalist government in 1994 came relief, much needed sanity and the relaxing of stifling rules.

Some of the very first to take advantage of this enlightened moment were a bold trium­virate of wheat farmers in Elim, near the southern tip of Africa, who hooked up with a brilliant winemaker, Charles Hopkins (now with De Grendel); a celebrated 72

viticulturalist, Johan Wiese; a hot-shot accountant, Pieter Ferreira; and wine businessman Hein Koegelenberg (now the Chief Executive Officer of La Motte, etc.). In winemaking circles, they were referred to as the ‘A team’. It is unlikely that a more capable and connected team of wine people had ever been assembled in South Africa. The brand they started was Land’s End, and this is now owned by Du Toitskloof Cellar, a new member of the Agulhas Wine Triangle project.

Without their audacious vision or planning rigour, Elim would never have established itself as one of the most emblematic terroirs in the world. The three pioneering farmers were Johan de Kock, Francis Pratt and Dirk Human. Alongside the Hamilton-Russells and the Newton-Johnsons of Hemel-enAarde, and the Cluvers of Elgin, etc., they placed South African wine on a new, energising trajectory. It is impossible to underplay their collective prescience, courage and influence in driving quality wine to the next level in South Africa.

Within a few years, Distell clambered on board the Agulhas Wine train with the Lomond vineyard JV. Then one of South Africa’s most canny wine marketers, Nick Diemont, put a consortium together and established Strandveld Vineyards and the First

Sighting brand. Things started moving quickly now that the area was being communicated with professionalism, worldlywise style and vigour.

The region came of age in many ways when independent winemaking rock stars like David Niewoudt, David Trafford and Trizanne Barnard fell for the intriguing elegance that seems scarce elsewhere, but so effortless in the Agulhas Wine Triangle.

Despite all the international journalistic interest, the region is removed from South African wine industry action. Suppliers are far away, both practically and, to some extent, philosophically. What works in Rawsonville or Paarl vineyards doesn’t work in Malgas, Napier or Elim. A great deal of school fees were paid over the last 30 years, and growers still have to be self-reliant and innovative.

That’s just a given in this part of the world.

This makes for a very different environment – farmers share ideas and rely on each other.

Similarly, customers are not on one’s doorstep, like in Constantia or Stellenbosch, so brands need to box clever to be noticed.

That’s why you will find one of the most engaging winery cellar-door experiences anywhere in the world at Dirk Human’s Black Oystercatcher.

Luckily, the Overberg is crammed full of Jack Journal Vol. 1

self-starters and resilience. Farmers here, partly due to their isolation, are often very open, friendly and good to be around. There’s a different vibe and it benefits the wine.

But let’s go back even further – about 80,000 years, long before Homo sapiens ventured north out of Africa. The first archaeological evidence of cognitive thought comes from the Agulhas Wine Triangle – the Blombos Cave near David Trafford’s Sijnn winery, to be exact. It was in this region that humans first started to think like modern humans. We find the first evidence of recording thoughts outside of the head, like on a wall. Ochre was being mixed with ground bone and charcoal or used separately to adorn faces and bodies. And art and music were being made. All current archaeological evidence suggests that the Agulhas Wine Triangle is also the cultural birthplace of humanity. It’s a big deal.

When the Dutch East India marauders started exploring the area in the late 1600s, they encountered the Hessequa people, with an ancient farming tradition (probably extending further back before anything was happening in the fertile crescent). They found a settled, organised collection of established communities living in harmony with each other and the environment. They were amazed and beguiled by the area, as Hieronymous Cruse’s 1669 dairies reveal.

They were amazed to discover the Hessequas kept bees and farmed with sheep despite the threat of lions and leopards. They had bred a huge, fearsome type of dog to guard their flocks by night. Intriguingly, it had a ridge of hair that ran against the grain up its back – the original Ridgeback breed, now renamed the Ari Ridgeback. It is generally accepted in dog-breeding circles that it was a Scottish missionary from Zuurbraak, near Olivedale Winery in the north of the Agulhas Wine Triangle, that took the first pair of Ari Ridgebacks to Zimbabwe.

Within a century after Hieronymous Cruse was traipsing around the Overberg, the Moravian missionaries arrived to passionately espouse the Christian doctrine. They brought a fervent dedication to their work.

Comparatively enlightened, they believed in teaching literacy and a skill. The mission of Elim benefited from thatching, the mission of Wuppertal from shoemaking, etc.And, lest we cast aspersions on those idealistic missionaries, we should remember that South Africa’s first

black novelist (perhaps first Pan-Africanist and intellectual revolutionist), Sol Plaatje, was also a beneficiary of German missionary inclusive education and influence.

One of the oldest Protestant denominations in the world, the Moravians were ecumenical in their approach, with an open-minded inclusivity. They prized personal piety and abstinence, but sacramental wine, music and education were all part of the non-sectarian spiritual journey. And, of course, for ‘nagmaal wyn’ (Eucharist wine) you must grow grapes and be able to make wine. So, grapes are not at all new to the Agulhas Wine Triangle. They were first planted at Genadendal and Elim in the 1700s.

A few years ago, we arranged a lunch on my estate with some of the Agulhas Wine Triangle partners, with the idea that everything we ate or drank should come from the area. We enjoyed a cornucopia of delights – fresh wild oysters, Geelbek (saltwater game fish) ceviche, fallow deer

tartare, braaied Springbok loin, roast rack of farm lamb, farm-baked bread milled locally from local wheat, organic garden vegetables (including the famous Napier sweet potato and onions), and, of course, a wine line-up which began with my bottle-fermented pink bubbly, included lively 10-year-old Sauvignon Blancs from Elim, intense, juicy reds from Sijnn Winery at Malgas, and ended with a brandy from Black Oystercatcher. I am not sure it would be possible to eat and drink that eclectically, broadly and well from many other small, isolated corners of the world.

I’ve travelled through most of the wellknown wine regions of the world, some very beautiful, others very prosperous, but none as intriguing or as generous of spirit as the Agulhas Wine Triangle. I am very privileged to farm at the centre of the Agulhas Wine Triangle on The Drift Estate, halfway up one of those Cape Fold mountains created 330 million years ago.

The wineries in the Agulhas Triangle are: Black Oystercatcher Wines www.blackoystercatcher.co.za

Strandveld Vineyards www.strandveld.co.za

Trizanne Signature Wines www.trizanne.co.za

Ghost Corner Wines www.ghostcornerwines.com

Olivedale Vineyards www.olivedalewines.com

Land’s End www.dutoitskloof.co.za/ lands-end

Lomond Wines www.lomond.co.za

The Drift Estate www.thedrift.co.za

Sijnn Wines www.sijnn.co.za

The Giant Periwinkle www.giantperiwinkle.co.za

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74

Jack Journal Vol. 1

new trends in

western cinema Written by: Donovan Marsh Photography: Desiree Muller

It’s traditional to talk down commercial ‘Hollywood’ films – Hollywood being the all-encompassing term for films made in the west for profit (Hollywood is in fact a not-great suburb of Los Angeles, a sprawling city that makes JohannesburgPretoria seem tiny). We, the cultured, or so we like to believe, turn our noses up at this Hollywood ‘lowbrow’ fare, calling it predictable, unoriginal and unchallenging.

We are dead wrong.

Having worked in the system for some years now, even churning out my own ‘blockbuster’ – a semi-successful war film with Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman that got not-great reviews but great audience reaction – I have first-hand experience of the number one head-scratcher studio executives face when planning the next blockbuster. I can sum up the problem in four words: THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. A paradox. Perhaps. But so are all creative-commercial problems. The definition of IRONY. The staple of a good film.

So what do I mean, the same but different?

Same in the sense that you comfort the audience with the type of experience they will get – superhero, war, thriller, horror – the whole reason genre exists. And you love it. It’s the first thing you want to know. And yes, ‘arthouse’ is also a genre – it’s a pretentious way of saying we tried to make our own rules. And we know most arthouse films are as entertaining as mud. So rules matter.

But I digress. Different? Yes, we want to see a horror movie, but please don’t repeat the same-old-same-old. Give us new horrors, new thrills, new scares, new plot contrivances, new characters. Now this was easy a hundred years ago when literally nothing had been done in this genre. But today, one hundred years later, tens of thousands of horror films later, that is hard.

Unspeakably hard. And the studios are desperate to deliver it. It is the Holy Grail.

The trend. Now, simply being different is easy. Hjiu, askoii, psfodigufg. Now that sentence was certainly different, but it wasn’t the same enough for you to follow it. I reckon you would hate a movie based on that sentence. Now how about this: It’s about a trans woman cop who assumes different genders to go undercover in bogus climate-change NGOs. Hmmmm. Not sure I’ll be watching that. It’s certainly the same in many ways and different in some. But is it enough? Too much? Too dumb? Too clever?

Too niche? You see the problem. It’s what

studios face with every movie. And, speaking personally, I take my hat off to them. I have never sat with a producer or studio exec who didn’t struggle mightily with this question, which is quite literally existential for them – they fail, they die (well, they lose the right make another film and that’s death in Hollywood).

So the trend is this – more of the-same-butdifferent kinds of films – and there is a vogue for the superhero variety right now. BUT THAT CANNOT LAST, because to make different superhero films is getting harder and harder. So what needs to happen is a switch to another, less traded genre. I am seeing sci-fi as ripe as we see science-fact films breaking through, keeping pace with actual scientific breakthroughs – the new Avatar is coming! Zeitgeist films like Joker, which is a dramedy masquerading as a superhero film – you see how clever they are? Music bio-pics – Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody (until they run out of worldfamous musicians we care about).

So check this out: we need to have more respect for these folks in Hollywood. Their work is indescribably hard and expensive.Yet they continue to risk it all by making innovative variants of the-same-but-different – very often with disastrous, money-burning results – see Cats! But, man, they are trying.

I hope they get another shot. Oh, and good luck guessing the next trend. Then you too can be a billionaire in ‘Hollywood’.

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fiction:

truth be told ‘Secrets are as certain as time. Both offer the illusion of freedom, but we are all ultimately entrapped by them. Still, there is no reality without them. Secrets are our necessary prison.’

- John/Johan Abraham/Ibrahim Frakousi – a.k.a. ‘The Topkapi Dagger’ (Turkish Secret Service 1890 – ?)

Written by: Bruce Jack Illustration: Rohan Etsebeth

John Gray knew that time was running out for Mr Gray. He had always known it would.

Time was fluid, like luck.

As an eleven-year-old, the realisation had dawned on him that he was different. He had a gift which allowed him to somehow manipulate reality. This was never more evident than when playing card games. He could cheat and win at will, even when adults were playing; and no one ever caught him. He also instinctively knew that if he told anyone he would lose this gift.

Five o’clock snuck up on him. He had been on his feet for most of the day but wasn’t feeling weary. This unusual freshness, he decided, was due to the lack of alcohol he’d consumed the night before. He had enjoyed the day, but knowing it was probably his last in this role was disconcerting. Or maybe it was the 76

anticipation of possible death – probably a bit of both, he decided. But whatever happened in the next hour, he would never be in this industry again.

John Gray was the father of three girls. He was a husband – a better than average husband, he suspected. He excelled at things other husbands struggled with. He was consistent, he was dependable, and he was kind. He carried out tedious household chores with good humour. He was handy with a hammer and liked to mention at dinner parties that he’d never been in need of a plumber or an electrician. ‘Everything you need to know is in the manual,’ he would say. That always made other men shuffle uncomfortably, while their wives looked on with some admiration.

He always took the girls to school when he was home in the leafy suburbs of

Adelaide. He was sure he was better than most in bed. And he loved his wife – as much as he could. He was besotted with his daughters, and would miss them, although he was secretly disappointed that none of them had inherited his special gift.

He was a member of the local cricket club and served on the school governing body; in charge of fund-raising.

He described what he did, to those who asked, as being ‘a paid-up member of the wine fraternity’. He didn’t make the stuff, he didn’t market the stuff, he explained – that was easy. He did the difficult thing – he sold it. His work actually paid the bills. His work paid the salaries of the rock star winemakers – it kept the whole machine going.

But John Gray had only lived under the name Gray for half his life; it was not the surname he was born with. And behind that confident Aussie accent, he wasn’t even Australian.

He’d only had three extramarital affairs, spread over the last 25 years. He knew that was unusually low for the wine industry.

Because of his gift, none of these little one-offs had come back to haunt him.

The exhibitor stand on which he now stood was bustling with people, most looking for the quenching freshness of an end-of-day beer.

Despite himself, he could feel his breathing quicken. He tried to ignore that tingling sensation he knew was the result of rising tension as his back muscles tightened.

It’s only a lack of practice, brother, he told himself. He was a lucky man, always a lucky man … in a good reality, still on form, still sharp. Be calm, brother, he said to himself under his breath.

The massive hall smelled sharply of fermenting nettles and tired bodies – the warm alcoholic fumes hung like an unseen fog, signalling the end of a long Prowein show day of pouring wine, breathing wine, talking wine and tasting wine. It was always surprisingly noisy, despite the height of the ceiling, and somehow more echoey towards the end of the afternoon. All those hard surfaces thrusting back repetitive human speech – mostly useless, recycled, insider jargon, but every now and again an exchange worth millions in a big trade.

To compose himself, to relax the tension, he turned away from the hall to the blown-up pictures of his company’s brands Jack Journal Vol. 1

– a four-metre-tall, expansive backdrop to the stand – rolling vineyards, blue sky, beautiful buildings, smiling winemakers, swirling wine glasses …

He focused on the brands he was responsible for selling. He knew them intimately, intensely. He was proud of them – not only of the hard work that went into their quality, but of the diligence he had put into this version of himself. They were a reflection of that – an extension of the reality he had bent around himself. When he talked about the wines, people sensed he loved them deeply. That was why he was a better salesman than most.

Passing by the sales manager for Europe, he lightly touched her elbow, smiled: ‘I am just popping off to taste Spain next door.

Call me if Costco pops by, otherwise, I’ll see you in the hotel bar for a beer.’ Those words, he knew, would be repeated and rehashed for many years, eventually entering into company folklore.

He stepped lightly off the stand and turned left, walking along an aisle with another dozen stands on either side before entering the adjoining hall; it was also brightly lit and about the same size – the area of a football field.

He removed his iPhone from the left pocket of his trousers and activated the location app. He slipped it into the right trouser pocket, only to remove it 22 steps later, now covered with a white handkerchief, and dropped it into a rubbish bin marked ‘non-recyclable’. No one, he knew, would have noticed.

This hall was less noisy than his. There were far fewer people at the stands. Many were impeccably suited with designer shoes – to a person more stylish, he decided, than anyone in the ‘New World’ hall. They stood around or sat at the tiny square tables in front of their small exhibitor stands, some picking on a plate of jamón, some with a glass of Cava in their hands – relaxed, mildly animated and a bit bored. He smiled at a few producers he knew as he passed. He liked Spain. His Spanish was pretty good from the old days – certainly rusty, but with some concentrated work he could reinvent himself there: cultivate a beard, maybe sell property in the south …

He had to stop himself looking at his watch as he walked and weaved between the people and stands, into the next hall –

this one slightly bigger and packed with French wine producers. He caught himself taking shallow, quick breaths again. Fuck, brother, he admonished himself. Keep it together. This would never have occurred when he was on top of his game – then he was always calm.

Breathe, brother. Deep in, slow out. Deep in, slow out. Like you were trained.

I am too old for this shit, he suddenly thought. Why, after all these years, can’t I be a bit more Zen about it? It must be the incremental damage of alcohol over the years; maybe that combined with age.

Maybe it was just because he was out of shape.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t expected a call at some stage – a bloodied butcher’s hook pulling him back into that unseen, unregulated, perilous life of damaging secrets.

When he heard her voice on the phone, adrenalin immediately kicked in. She sounded different, younger, but it had to be her. It had to be his old Austrian handler.

‘John,’ she had said, ‘thank you for answering my call … the past is back with us, John. We need to talk.’

He felt neither panic nor fear, but rather what an insect must feel the instant it realises it is stuck in a spider’s web. Breathe in – deeply. Breathe out. Repeat until your heart rate comes down and you can think and act, respond and bend reality with your gift – like you’ve done a thousand times before, brother.

Figure out the play. Get out alive.

He was standing in a noisy bar in the Altstadt of Düsseldorf when he felt his phone vibrate. The place was warm, smelling of work-worn people and sour beer.

‘Hold on, I am going outside.’

He pushed his way through the crowd, into the cold air and the slight drizzle. He stood in a bright wash of streetlight on the pedestrianised street and put the phone back to his ear, but the voice was no longer there.

No WhatsApp. But a text message. That confirmed his suspicion. It must be his old handler. Known to him as ‘Spilt Milk’. She was a young handler when they had first worked together – they were both rookies – an unusual experiment in handler/ operative pairings, he later learnt, to see how long they would survive. He had only met her once. She still sounded very youthful.

She would be at the top of the organisation

now and she wouldn’t use WhatsApp. The text message: ‘Tuesday 5.20pm outside back exit of hall 12.You will know.’

People were spilling out of the bar. He pretended to talk. He put his bottle of beer down on a table, closed one ear with his left hand and said loving goodnights into a silent phone. Then he walked back in, borrowed a colleague’s phone and called the number back. No answer, just a recorded message in German informing him it was an unlisted number. Confirmation.

He was now in the fourth hall – no. 12.

Greek, Georgian, Hungarian and Romanian producers all thrown together. He had chosen a path through the old-world winemaking countries because there was less chance that anyone would recognise him and stop to chat. At the far end of the hall he pushed aside the big glass door marked EXIT, into the cold evening air.

He stopped outside for a few seconds, scanning the scene from left to right. The huge parking lot was deserted, enclosed by the high grey exterior walls of other exhibition halls. There were a few delivery trucks 200 metres to his right, but otherwise the expanse of tarmac was quiet and wet from the day’s rain.

His eyes focused on a black VW panel van under a spotlight at the far end of the parking lot, about 120 metres directly opposite the exit. Smart, he thought – get me out into the open – not difficult, just simple planning.

Careful not to show any hesitation, he walked towards the van at a controlled pace – not too slowly, not too quickly. He scanned the far warehouse wall for CCTV cameras around the van – none, of course.

Then the spotlight above the van flickered off and it became a smudged outline in the purple shadow of falling evening light. He didn’t change pace.

It felt colder than he knew it was. He had checked the weather. The breeze was stronger than forecast. He felt it on his right cheek – fresh gusts at about 3 knots. That was good. It would feel even stronger on the roof – a concern for the sniper if there was one. He would have insisted on a sniper if this were his gig. They could have wrangled clearance for low-altitude drones, but he doubted he was important enough for that expense and complexity. No, this would be an old-style gig – they’d want to drop me 77

close to the van, he thought. Easy to get my body in.

If there was a shooter, he or she would probably be inexperienced – maybe even a first gig to get the shooter blooded. They wouldn’t have thrown a decent budget at this.

He was about 60 metres from the van when he heard a voice behind him calling his name, followed by the clatter of heels.

‘John,’ it said. German accent. Different from the caller. ‘John, please stop. I have something for you.’

So, the shooter was potentially in front of him. He didn’t expect that. He turned slowly around. Breathe, buddy. Deep in, slow out. Then he remembered a similar set-up, years ago, in Bulgaria. He had been the decoy then, not the bloody target. This was definitely a hit. They must have me on some list. Something I know; I know enough for sure. A secret that had suddenly become important, dangerous to someone. Stop. Stop thinking. Clear the mind. Focus on the issue at hand. Slow it all down. Breathe. Bend the reality like you know you can.

He faced her and smiled. She was good-looking – tall, at least his height, slim, strawberry blonde, high cheekbones.

Condensed breath caught in the light. A few freckles. She wore a figure-hugging black overcoat. She moved with a pent-up energy.

As she drew nearer, he saw that she was older than he had guessed. He expected a younger decoy. Green eyes, mascara.

She stopped a few paces away. The creases at the edges of her eyes weren’t smiling, and she was nervous – very nervous. Surprising.

There was enough light to show that she had spent time carefully applying more make-up than she needed, probably not too long ago. She hadn’t been at the show all day, that’s for certain.

She had run to catch him – stopping him in the designated hit zone for the shooter.

Maybe she had left it a bit late, inexperienced like the shooter – a newbie in heels, with age no longer on her side, an ex-desk jockey maybe, let loose in the field.

God forbid.

He could imagine the frustration of the old guard watching their novice operatives.

He could also sense the rifle sights on the back of his head, adjusted ever so slightly to the left of his left ear for the gusts of wind.

His gift kicked in: ‘You must be Rebecca,’ 78

he blurted out, a bit too loudly. His Lucky Guess Angel had arrived, and not a moment too soon.

A flash of puzzlement crossed her brow – definitely inexperienced, he thought.

Just as quickly, she was composed, now in a defiant way: ‘I have a message for you from …’ She slipped her right hand into her overcoat.

Mr Gray stepped quickly forward and held her arm there – not harshly, but intently enough that she could feel he might spin her around at any moment, into the line of fire.

‘I have a message for you, Rebecca,’ he said as slowly and as quietly as possible. Her eyes couldn’t hide her alarm. His face was close to hers. He knew the pressure would also be on the shooter’s trigger finger now – the sniper’s blood pressure suddenly elevated, heart rate increased, uncontrolled; not expecting him to have pounced. All this would be monitored. A handler somewhere would be weighing up the options, swearing profanities into a microphone headset.

Time to put everything in slow motion.

‘I have nothing more To give, and nothing More to hide, Rebecca.’

Pause, breathe.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Count. To. Four.

Slow.

‘Let’s call it A midLife crisis Let’s call it A Day.’ He was aware that every syllable was being transmitted into an earphone somewhere.

She was silent, eyes moistening with surprise. He was bending reality; his message was hitting home.

‘You look like a nice lady. Let’s dance,’ he said.

Holding her firmly, he took a quick step to his right and then another. He pulled her towards him and started waltzing to his right, knowing that the shooter would be tracking against the wind and, if he/she was a newbie, panicking and not wanting the ‘go ahead’.

‘John, I have something you need to know.’

‘You have a loving mother called Anna,’ said Mr Gray.

He felt her whole body go limp.

Bingo.

Fucking Bingo. Lucky guess. Lucky Guess Angel. His Lucky Guess Angel had saved him again. It had given him information no one could have known, and it had floored her.

Some people have angels that help them choose the best restaurant, or find parking spaces, or gamble, or choose the right partner.Very few people take these things seriously, but he had learnt to take his very seriously. It was part of his special gift. He couldn’t bend big reality without the help of his Lucky Guess Angel. It’s what gave him the edge.

His angel allowed him to guess intimate things about people – random, personal things – things that were often, unnervingly spot on. His Lucky Guess Angel was buzzing tonight, electrifying his whole being – awoken like a genie.

‘Your father had an affair. He hurt your mother. He worked on the river.You don’t really trust men as a result.’

One shoe heel clipped the back of her other shoe and she stumbled into him. This confirmed it. Her eyes dropped from his. She was breathing in sharp bursts as they moved.

His Lucky Guess Angel was going to keep him alive. Breathe in. Count to four as you do. Waltz. Keep moving. Breathe.

‘Your mother wanted to call you Gabby, but your father wouldn’t have it,’ he said slowly, between condensed breathes.

If the shooter was behind him, he/she would have had to adjust for distance. No newbie on such a small job would be given the shoot command now.They were 5 metres away from the hall doors. The shooter would be ordered to stand down.

Mr Gray stopped dancing and kissed her hand. They were both breathing hard.

He held the door open for her and they walked into the bright hall. She turned, flustered, and held out a small, black flash Jack Journal Vol. 1

drive. Something about her face reminded him of someone.

‘You are needed to tie up some loose strings … from the past,’ she said shakily, then turned and almost ran into the crowd.

Very unprofessional, he decided. His Lucky Guess Angel had spooked her properly. They can’t train for that, brother. Fuck yes!

The smothering warmth of the hall closed around him ‘Goodbye, Rebecca,’ he said to the space she had left behind. She was really very good-looking.

He turned and joined the growing stream of people heading in the opposite direction of the exit, towards the taxi queues and trains. He glanced back to see the light above the black VW panel van flicker on, revealing nothing.

They wouldn’t have a backup plan. It should have been an easy job; the panel van his last ride. The flash drive was plan C, and soon found itself in a rubbish bin marked ‘recyclable’.

Back at the hotel he took the lift to his floor, but not to his room. He walked past his room, into the stairwell at the end of the passage and up the stairs to the floor above, where he had booked a second room two days before – the night he received the call in the bar. He had waited until new faces were manning reception, then walked in to claim the telephone booking he had made earlier under another name, another passport.

Inside, he unstitched the hem of his blue blazer and retrieved a sim card which he fitted into a second phone – a knock-off smartphone made in India, which his youngest daughter had won in a school raffle.

While it configured itself, he went into the toilet and looked at himself in the mirror. He was suddenly tired, the bags under his eyes swollen and blue; bad even for a 50-year-old. But he was alive, and his Lucky Guess Angel was back by his side. He was going to be okay.

He would be sad to say goodbye to this industry, but he had prepared for it. His past was always going to surface at some stage.

Düsseldorf wasn’t a bad place for that to happen. He flipped open his laptop and sent two pre-written emails. First was an email of resignation to the guy he reported to, then the suicide note to his wife. It was time for Mr Gray to disappear.

A knock at his door.

He ignored it, but instead dialled a

number into his newly configured phone.

The call connected and rang. And rang.

Another knock at the door.

The call rang off. He dialled it again.

He could suddenly feel that he hadn’t been breathing. Fuck, dude – how out of touch are you? Big breath in, slowly out.

Slow it down.

Finally, on the phone, in German: ‘This is Lufthansa. How may I direct your call?’

And in German he responded, asking to be transferred to flight bookings.

Another knock, not impatient, just there.

‘John,’ a female voice said through the door. A female voice. German accent. Fuck.

This isn’t possible.

He rang off the call. He fought against moving towards the door. Adrenalin pounded against the top of his head. Breathe in, slowly out. Count to four. Close your eyes. Work it out.

Count to four, damnit.

They couldn’t have found him already.

Must be another explanation.

‘John, may I … I talk to you, please?’ a nervous young voice.

He stood up from the little desk and turned off the light, then walked towards the door. Slow it down. No rush. Switch off the light at the door. Look through the spyhole. He saw a young woman he recognised from the hotel reception. He removed a laser light from his jacket pocket and held it in his left hand, ready to blind.

Something isn’t adding up.

He opened the door quickly. A few metres to the left of the young girl was Rebecca.

There they stood, quietly, unmoving – Rebecca and a younger version of herself.

They looked unsure of what was going to happen next, both a bit terrified. The three of them stared at each other.

Eventually: ‘May we come in?’ asked Rebecca, still in the overcoat. Stilted voice. Flustered.

He was breathing in shallow gulps. He couldn’t move. Then a door opened down the hall, and despite himself, despite his training and his gift, he felt himself moving to one side, switching on the light and ushering them in.

The door shut behind them. They stood awkwardly close between the desk with the big TV and the bed.

‘I thought you wouldn’t recognise me, but you did.’ Rebecca paused. ‘But you only

recognised a bit of me …’

Mr Gray felt something burn in his lungs.

He caught a quick breath. He suddenly knew exactly who she was.

‘How long has it been?’ he asked quietly.

He could feel his left eye starting to twitch.

‘Nineteen years … almost twenty,’ she answered. She held out her hand to the younger version of herself who took it.

‘We have been following your career, John,’ she said slowly.

He looked at Rebecca silently for a few seconds and realised that he knew her name, not because of his Lucky Guess Angel, but because he actually knew her name.

‘I understood the rules, John.’ She paused again. ‘We were fine without you, without bothering you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I had a husband, John.’ She looked at her daughter. ‘He thought Gabby was his. It was simpler to play along with another version of reality, so no one was hurt. I told Gabby about you when she was twelve. I was divorced by then, and it seemed the right thing to do. The truth made things easier, not worse.’

Mr Gray realised that again he hadn’t been breathing. His head started to spin, he shuffled back a few feet and sat on the bed.

‘But you used a new name the day before yesterday to book this room. Gabby was worried about that. We couldn’t understand and we were worried … we …’

‘Did you send the message to meet?’ he asked. Then … ‘No, you didn’t – that was Gabby.’ He looked at the young lady properly for the first time. She had clear eyes, a relaxed posture, ever so slightly raised chin. Bright and in control.

‘Gabby persuaded me to come to you tonight in the parking lot,’ said Rebecca, ‘to give you that message on the memory stick.’

Her eyes dropped to the floor. She was suddenly old, but resilient beneath her make-up in the doorway light.

He looked at the younger version of Rebecca, who looked straight into him.

‘I didn’t know…’ he managed.

Then his daughter said, ‘John, we didn’t want to upset things. We don’t want to upset you. We only want to make sure you are okay.’

And he saw his gift in her.

And the reality she was bending around them drew in closer.

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contributors

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CRAIG FOSTER

BRUCE JACK

is an award-winning filmmaker and naturalist.

His three-decade long filmmaking career has produced more than 60 awards, including the Golden Panda, the ‘Oscar’ of natural filmmaking.

With his Sea Change Project, he is dedicated to saving the Great Southern Sea Forest.

is a winemaker.

ROSS FREYLINCK

NICK ROBINSON

Ross Frylinck has been exploring the South African coastline as a surfer and free diver for most of his life. He started the Wavescape Ocean Festival and has been pioneering ocean conservation and culture in South Africa for the past 15 years.

lives the Algarve dream and could be 007. He is a serial entrepreneur and has built businesses in web development, digital marketing, journalism, surf tourism, SUP eventing and podcasting. He is busy building a wave pool near Lisbon.

DONOVAN MARSH

PIPPA ERLICH

is a mercurial, ridiculously talented, awardwinning film director and writer. He recently completed the Hollywood submarine thriller, Hunter killer, starring Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman. He is currently making I am all girls, a crime thriller he directed and co-wrote.

communicates about nature, science and conservation as a journalist and filmmaker. She has covered stories from the Bahamas to Palestine, specialising in the plight of sharks, rays, ocean awareness and ocean revitalisation. She is a member of the celebrated Sea Change Team.

Jack Journal Vol. 1

GABRIELLE RAAFF

MIKE CLARKE

is a full-time, internationally celebrated, successful, contemporary artist living in Cape Town. She works with ethereality, using ink, water colour and water-based oil to express the form and emotion of her subjects. She exhibits extensively locally and abroad.

holds the record for the fastest transatlantic yacht crossing. Since his first night sail in a storm with his dad around notorious Cape Point at the age of nine, Mike has had a passion for nature, water and adventure. He is passionate about educational outreach and believes that with access to innovative ways of learning, children who would otherwise be trapped in poverty can be set free.

DR WP VAN ZYL

RICHARD SIDDLE

is a dentist with a passion for community upliftment and received the Community Dentistry award at university. He has been involved in rural community projects in most of South Africa’s provinces and is Trustee Manager of The HeadStart Music Trust.

is an award-winning business editor with over 25 years’ experience working across a number of fields including wine, drinks, computing, grocery retail, convenience and travel. He founded and runs the celebrated B2B wine publication The Buyer. He is much admired by all in the wine business.

SU BIRCH

CHRISTIAN EEDES

is a distinguished international marketing and generic promotions specialist. As CEO of Wines of South Africa, she received the Drinks Business Woman of the Year Award. She runs her own marketing business called Thinking Seahorses, and volunteers her time teaching English in poverty-stricken townships around Cape Town.

is editor of Winemag.co.za. As a hugely respected palate and critic, he contributes to Jack Journal, Decanter, etc. He runs dozens of focused blind wine tastings, tastes for Platter’s Wine Guide and various international competitions. He likes alt rock and long lunches.

DR GREG MILLS

NICK BREEZE

is the author of numerous bestselling books and heads the Brenthurst Foundation. As Director of the SA Institute of International Affairs, he directed reform projects in many African presidencies. He has served four deployments to Afghanistan with the British Army as adviser to the commander and has his national colours for motorsport, recently racing a Bentley GT3 at Le Mans.

is a prolific, professional journalist based in London, working in the fields of wine and climate change. He co-founded the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series and writes regularly on climate change for The Ecologist. He is also the Secret Sommelier!

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pumpover playlist We asked a couple of winemakers to share a song currently playing in their cellar or car, or one that simply reminds them of the 2020 harvest ...

01.

Take on Me, A-ha Trizanne Barnard, Trizanne Signature Wines

02.

Roll The Bones, Shaky Graves Jean Smit, Damascene

03.

Death Is A Girl, Mini Mansions Leon Coetzee, The Fledge

04.

010.

Break my Baby, Kaleo Etienne Terblanche, Thistle & Weed, Elmie

011.

Daarsy Boys, Francois van Coke & Hunter Kennedy Wynand Grobler, De Kleine Wijn Koöp

012.

Howlin for You, The Black Keys Lukas van Loggerenberg, Van Loggerenberg Wines

Le Beaujolais, La Rue Kétanou Alex Milner, Natte Valleij

05.

013.

Democracy, The Lumineers Bertie Coetzee, Lowerland

06.

Sestien Jaar met ’n Vals Kitaar, Koos Kombuis Pieter Walser, Blank Bottle

07.

Baby Murdered Me, Springbok Nude Girls Abrie Beeslaar, Beeslaar and Kanonkop

08.

Down the Garden Path, Felix Laband Jacques du Plessis, Oak Valley

Apple Music scan and listen to the pumpover playlist.

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09.

Sit dit Af, EET Kreef! (herleef) Reenen Borman, Boschkloof

Bamthathile, Sun-El Musician & Mindo the Vocalist Gavin Slabbert, B Vintners & Raats

014.

Roxanne, The Police Duncan Savage, Savage Wines

015.

Kokomo, The Beach Boys Peter-Allan Finlayson, Crystallum & Gabrielskloof

016.

Follow the growing playlist by scanning the QR codes below and following the playlist on either of the two platforms.

Spotify

scan and listen to the pumpover playlist.

Jack Journal Vol. 1

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