[Source: Reuters]

A South African violist has used music and art to explore the painful legacy of how labourers at wineries in the Western Cape province were for centuries given wine as part of their payment, a practice known as “the Dop System.”

The system, which began at the time of slavery in the 17th century and persisted until the recent past despite attempts to abolish it, caused high rates of alcoholism among mixed-race workers who for historical reasons were the main labour force at the wineries.

Violist Lynn Rudolph said they wanted to expose how the practice, introduced by Dutch colonialists and maintained under apartheid, had damaged the mixed-race community’s culture and entrenched harmful stereotypes.

“When you think of a coloured (person), and what I’ve seen on social media, TikTok, all these things, to be coloured means to be violent and means to be drunk,” said Rudolph, who goes by the stage name Daphne.

The term “coloured”, considered racist in some cultures, can be used in a neutral way in South Africa to talk about people who are of mixed race.

Rudolph created and performed in a show called “Dop is my Taal”, which means “Alcohol is my Language” in Afrikaans, at an arts venue in Johannesburg.

The show involved Daphne playing music she had composed, interspersed with excerpts from the South African national anthem, while another musician performed using beer bottles, domino pieces and thimbles — objects associated with the daily lives of farm labourers.