Written by Maleke Mahlomaholo
Please note that yours truly is also guilty of this !!
there are a few black projects a.k.a townships that i can recall straight away that in the old regime had what was then referred to as "bier-halls", the interesting thing about these "bier-halls" was their strategic locations as they were located right at the entrances.. you would never miss them even if you were willing to.
these were not by chance, they were by intent and hence design. alcohol was one of the great weapons used by the then regime in its anti-black agenda to disintegrate and disassemble the black community through the collapse of black families.
I read with interest the article that dealt with the SABMiller transaction of 1.4 trillion. what is interesting is the beer designed to target the black middle class whom in another article are said to be fuelling whisky sales! . .
Steve Biko's concern of the black middle class construction project as a negativity within the black agenda is manifesting in different forms including alcoholic ones, he refered to the black middle-class as a buffer zone between the poor masses and the upper class elite where the poor sees them as "progress" and hence see no need to revolt against the upper class elite. within the alcohol question, the black youth trapped in poverty within the black projects see the alcohol drinking and consumption in style by their black middle-class buffer zone as progress and a thing to aspire to!
the only difference between the current regime and previous regime is that, the former uses the methods of a "progressive party" while the latter used conservative methods of "bier-halls" right on your face. like Steve Biko mentioned once that "if the conservatives were clever enough, they would have long ago created a black middle-class like the progressives did" which could mean they would have created many alcoholics long ago!, "such that the world could count a few black people and say look: there is progress in South Africa while in the meantime 80% of the land still belongs to whites" with more black alcoholics production. .
the point of the matter here is that alcohol is introduced in nice ways into the black sphere nowadays, this leads to highly unproductive force of black people. .. all we do is to chill and drink .... or go do a 07H00-17H00 job and justify drinking through its stresses. .. we have turned traditional after tears events that had a particular meaning in black culture into heavy drinking sessions, we can't even wait for the funeral to end! .....
South Africa is ranked 4th in the world currently of highest drinking nation. ...
the current story of the negativity around alcohol is the Ntuli story..... a guy with a PhD who currently has nothing due to drinking. ....
Vuka black from that black out, get rid of the hangover. .... we have got work to do!
Mosia
