Tagged: monopoly

Rooibos's Monopoly Ended in 1993. It Had a Private Sequel

In 2017 South Africa's competition regulator accused the private company that inherited rooibos's old state monopoly of using exclusive farmer contracts to hold the same grip the 1954 law once guaranteed by decree.

The Board That Owned Rooibos for Forty Years

From 1954 to 1993, one government board was the only legal buyer and the only legal seller of rooibos in South Africa, and it built that monopoly on a rule that quietly shut coloured growers out. Here is how that came to be, and what it left behind.