34-year-old Lindile ‘Lindi’ Ndzaba sits waiting for me in Clarke’s in Cape Town. He’s wearing a black baseball cap tilted up, emblazoned with his brand’s identity, Khayelitsha’s Finest Wine (KFW). He’s just finished his shift at Frankie Fenner Meat Merchants in Gardens, where he’s the front-of-house manager.
His birth name Lindikhayo means ‘home’ so called as his late mother said he waited until she had a proper brick house to be born. He still lives in that house in the community of Khayelitsha, located on the fringes of the city. In a parallel ‘Khayelitsha’ is Xhosa for ‘new home’, the sprawling township a hangover from the Group Areas Act of the Apartheid regime.
Lindi comes across as contemplative, gentle-natured and deeply driven. With his range of wines he says he’s: “trying to educate people to drink responsibly, uplift the township and create employment.”
Lindi got his start in 2009 through a hospitality programme that was part of the recruitment process for Brewers & Union. He worked his way up from dishwasher to front-of-house, learning every facet of running a business, and storing this knowledge, quietly stoking a dream of one day becoming an entrepreneur himself.
It was here the wine flame was lit, &Union was then Cape Town’s hippest bar, the epicenter of the nascent craft beer scene. It was while serving wildly expensive brews and high quality wines that the difference was made stark of what was available in the taverns of Khayelitsha.
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