The Rupert clan of South Africa owns a few businesses that make a lot of money: Cartier, Dunhill, Montblanc and Piaget, etcetera. Their fortunes began with Anthony Edward Rupert, who could not finish medical school “due to lack of funds,” but thanks to apartheid magic (and business smarts) he began manufacturing cigarettes in his garage. He eventually built this into the tobacco industrial conglomerate The Rembrandt Group, which made him a billionaire. In the late ’60s (think the time of the Rivonia Trials), a scion of the family purchased the L’Ormarins wine estate in Franschhoek in the then Cape province. The family’s fortunes continued, with the addition of another wine estate, La Motte. One could say that Franschhoek’s current stature is probably owed in large part to the efforts of the Ruperts to promote the district as a little corner of France, replete with cheeses, fruits, herbs, mushrooms, nuts, olives, coupled with the exotic appeal of the bush: ostrich and crocodile steaks. Of course, there’s also the poorly paid coloured labour, but that’s not in brochures intended to lure visitors.

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