Bad days indeed for the Cape’s luxury helicopter operators who used to take Mr. Waterfront, Vaughan Johnson and flunkeys of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Emir of Dubai, on window-shopping trips over the Cape Winelands, looking for estates to snap up. Meerlust was a magnate and the Hemel en Aarde Valley a particular favourite. After a long lunch at Constantia Uitsig last year, 50% ownership of one of the valley’s prime pieces of real estate nearly went to the Sheiks. Seems that Dubai World were looking to secure wine supplies for their international empire of hotels and resorts.

Gulf investments in the Winelands

Industry observers are wondering what yesterday’s financial meltdown in Dubai will mean for operations like the Cape Town Waterfront which is owned by the London-based Livingstone brothers and interests from Dubai while it is no secret that Jozi’s Mr. Meat, Alan Pick, of Butcher’s Shop & Grill fame, has long been a fan of (and investor in) Dubai.

Canny Investec, which held the mortgage bond on the Waterfront, recently palmed it off to Absa, obviously heeding the Biblical injunction about building your palaces on sand. For new Absa CEO Maria Ramos-Manuel, it’s déjà vu all over again as she sold the Waterfront when she was running Transnet. Absa was the government’s bank in the Old SA, a role it seems to be reprising in the New. Let’s hope Absa’s man in Dubai is a good camel jockey.

Dubai is not the only Gulf investor in the SA winelands feeling the heat. Kuwaiti-owned IFA Hotels and Resorts plans to offload several prime parcels of Boschendal real estate via public auction on December 7, including an historic cottage, once property of Cecil John Rhodes. Although the appellation “Rhodes” is something of a misnomer as it turns out the great man only spent a weekend there in 1902.

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