As SA wine mobilizes portable toilets for rent-a-guards to man the checkpoints restricting access to vineyards for tomorrow’s expected farmworker strike (in November, Boland Toilets trousered R2461.20 from Paardeberg farmers for conveniences) Reuters sets the scene with some strange statistics.

“According to statistics from the South African wine industry, the country is forecast to export a total of 440.2 million litres of wine in 2016 from 379 million litres in 2012.” Huh? Did they get these numbers from André Morgenthal, WOSA’s chuckling communications czar? If not, they should take him out to lunch as Sawis has the 2012 export figure at 418 million litres and who forecasts exports for 2016 anyway?

So where does all the wine go? Reuters again: “Following the end of apartheid South African wines are increasingly popular outside the country and are regularly sold in Britain, Japan and the United States.” Where did Japan come from? Exports to the Land of the Rising Sun do not even make the top 10. Heck, Russia buys ten times more SA wine.

Let’s hope Boland Toilets has had a chance to overall their portaloos, last seen blowing down Rose Street on New Year’s Eve in a gale, with musical Kaapse Klopse inside.