A picture tells a thousand words

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

The power of a picture cannot be discounted. Just think of some of the seminal images that have gone down in history – the Vietnamese girl running down the road, screaming, after her clothes had been burned off in a napalm attack by US forces, Hector Pietersen’s limp body being carried away in the Soweto riots of 1976, Nelson Mandela walking free from Victor Verster prison… And why else would those smart American film and television producers charge hefty ‘product placement’ fees to have fleeting glimpses of certain items screened?

So how much impact will the widely published photo of teetotalling President Jacob Zuma, holding a bottle of South African wine in a visit to a local supermarket on his official visit to the United Kingdom have?  (And just imagine the impact of an image of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema handling a bottle of his favoured Moët et Chandon!)

The supermarket in question was in Greenwich and President Zuma was accompanied by Environment Secretary Hillary Benn and Sainsbury’s Chief Executive Justin King. He was apparently pleased to see the amount of shelf space granted to South African wines – and was snapped cradling a bottle of Fairtrade wine. Sainsbury’s King explained the significance of the Fairtrade certification, as it applied to both fruit and wine. Figures bandied about by Mr King were that South African products accounted for £120 million of Sainsbury business last year and it was expected to rise to £200 million in 2010.

So, hopefully Mr Zuma – who visited the UK with a massive business delegation of around 200 people – will catch on to the impact that SA wine is having. And not just in UK supermarkets but the contribution it makes to the country’s GDP and that of the Western Cape economy as well. Is it too optimistic or naive to think that government might take an interest in supporting this particularly valuable sector of the agricultural economy?