Zambezia (1975-6), 4 (ii).ESSAY REVIEWDRINKING FOR PLEASURE Š AND WHOSE PROFIT ?// all be true that I do think,There are five reasons we should drink;Good wine, a friend, or being dry,Or lest we should be by and. by;Or any other reason why-Henry Alderich (1647-1710)THE SUBJECT OF Africans' drinking of alcohol, particularly in the urbantownships, is highly emotive. White politicians have seen in it evidence of pro-fligacy, with the corollary that there must be surplus income potentially avail-able to pay rents, or to finance social services which, it is contended, arelargely borne by white taxpayers. Black politicians have hinted at a whiteplot to debauch the African and sap his will to seek political, economicand social advancement. Churchmen, welfare workers, physicians, as wellas those more personally affected Š spouses, parents, or children of drinkersŠ have denounced or bemoaned an evil trade.Facts have been hard to come by and unanswered questions abound. Arepeople poor because they drink, or is drink a refuge from poverty? Do I beatmy wife because I drink heavily, or do I drink heavily for the same reasonthat I beat my wife and, if so, what is it? Are beer-gardens a response tosocial need, or the creators of demand? Why do some people abstain, someexercise moderation and others know no bounds? In the relation betweendrinking and social malfunction, where are cause and effect? How great is thesocial benefit and how high is the social cost? Can tens of thousands of happydrinkers be wrong? Could we have the blessing without the curse?The public conscience is invoked, because the African liquor business Islargely plied by local authorities. They have a monopoly over the productionand sale of African beer in urban areas and over the sale of other liquor inthe townships. In rural areas, municipal beer competes with private enterprisein beer-gardens run by African Councils. There are grave implications forthe image of local government generally and for Black-White relations inthe towns. The Minister of Local Government and Housing has accusedlocal authorities of selling excessive quantities of beer, although at the sametime he has extolled the valuable contribution of beer profits to Africanwelfare. Making an appeal for excessive drinking to be controlled at thepoint of sale, he added that he intended to use more of the profits for buildinghouses.1In Bulawayo, where senior staff of the city's Housing and CommunityServices Department meet weekly to plan and review their work, an un-remitting climax to their meeting is provided by graphs of liquor consumption,among which African beer sales provide the focus of interest. If they areThe Chronicle [Bulawayo], 20 May 1976.115116ESSAY REVIEWgood, the beer has been good and customers have been satisfied. 'Euphoria* Ša theme word of the liquor undertaking's Trade Fair exhibit one year Š hasprevailed. People have relaxed, exchanged news and views, conducted business,dissolved tensions built up over the week, listened to music, danced, loved,and fought. Bad beer spells discontent, expressed in immediate strife, orstored grievance. High sales mean money for housing, health and welfareservices: perhaps also more drunkenness, more beaten wives, fewer schoolfees paid, and a hard day's night for the traumatic surgeon at Mpilo Hospital.Officials (and elected representatives) are faced with an intractabledilemma. The social rewards make the beer-garden seem desirable and possiblyinevitable: the social ills that accompany it prompt demands for reform, ifnot prohibition. The complexities of drinking behaviour, the ambivalenceof its social role, and its involvement with many institutions of society, createa deep well for social scientists and reformer alike to fish in. Three recentstudies contribute to a better understanding of the issues, and therefore con-ceivably, to more enlightened social management. The studies are concernedrespectively with alcohol control, alcohol use, and the institution of the beer-garden,2Reformers who pin their hopes on limitation of supply will find littlecomfort in the history of alcohol control measures in West Africa, documentedand discussed by Lvnn Pan. A succession of conferences and agreements,from Brussels in 1889 to Abidjan in 1956, reflected the desire of the colonialpowers to be for to be seen to be) in support of efforts to shield Africans fromthe ravages of the liquor trade.The main effort was directed at protecting people, among whom the tastefor alcohol was not greatly developed, against a particular type of cheap andnoxious beverage Š 'trade spirits'. Energies were dissipated in the search foran accentable working definition and surveillance was confused by statisticsthat variously related alcohol strength to volume, or weight, or percentageof proof alcohol.The outcome demonstrated the poor bargaining power of moral principlesin the face of economic and political determinants. The liquor trade wastoo lucrative Š to the producer, to the distributor, and to the colonialgovernor in search of tax revenue for development Š to be lightly abandoned.Relationships between the powers rested on a variety of pr^rmtic considera-tions among which ideals easily foundered. And the more effective the limita-tion of imports, the greater the incentive to smuggling, or local manufactureof substitutes. Pan remarks that the conflict of interests that clouded the re-form purpose has a familiar ring today, not least in Rhodesia. That is not tosay that humanitarian ideals scored no gains in the clash with private interests.In the Scramble for Africa, it was remarkable not that alcohol control wassomewhat ineffectual and overtaken by events, but that it secured as muchhearing and implementation as it did.The attempt to exercise control by restricting the availability of liquortested on the presupposition that the extent of liquor-related problems wasa function of the overall level of consumption. This seemed self-evident atthe time but would now, Pan notes, be regarded as contentious, as would2 L. Pan, Alcohol in Colonial Africa (Helsinki, Finnish Foundation for AlcoholStudies (in collaboration with the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, Uppsala),No. 22, 1975), 121pp. US$6,50; J. May, Drinking in a Rhmksian African TownshipRhf3 00; H F. Wolntt, The African Beer Gardens of Bulawayo: Integrated Drinking(Salisbury, Univ. of Rhodesia, Dep. of Sociology, Occasional Paper No. 8, 1973), 94pp.In a Segregated Society (New Brunswick, N. J., Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies,1974), 261pp. no price indicated.E. GARGETT117the assumption that alcohol was a prime cause of the social disorganisationof the 'uncivilised peoples' whom the colonial powers felt obliged to protect.The long-term question was not, in fact, whether Africans should have accessto this or that form of alcohol, but how alcohol use would be incorporatedinto the new societies of Africa; in what ways it would prove to be functionalor dysfunctional within the context of rapid social change; and in what rela-tionship it would stand to other integrative and disintegrative concomitantsof change. Such issues are explored in the other two studies.Wolcott had available to him the statistical data of two earlier surveysconducted by the Alcoholism Research Unit of the University of Rhodesia8as well as unpublished interview records round which to construct his work.May's publication is a sequel to those surveys which moves well beyond thebasic statistics to present a rounded and insightful picture of African liquoruse in circumstances of socio-cultural change. Her account, based primarilyon structured and part-structured interviews of a randomized sample of anurban township population, is clear and convincing in its conclusions. Wol-cott, by contrast, is a grazer and browser in the contemporary scene, takingan unfettered look at his surrounds and picking off what appeals to him asapposite. The result is very readable and opens up unexpected and promisinglines of inquiry.As Wolcott remarks, 'the payoff in anv field study is knowing what ques-tions to ask'.4 In his case, it was only as the research proceeded that he cameto know even what it was to be about. Having set out to use a sabbatical yearto make an anthropological cross-cultural study in the field of education, hefound himself diverted to the twenty-fourth and last on his list of research-able topics Š beer-gardens. He took it that he would be researching Africanbeer drinkers, and that he would do so as a participant observer, but wasmistaken in both respects. Not onlv was participant observation not feasible,but the fascination of the beer-garden as an institution proved too strong. Heturned to researching the integrative functions of the beer-garden, both withinAfrican urban society and between the white and black sectors of the citycommunity.Beer drinkers took second place to *Beer Garden Beneficiaries' Š physi-cians, welfare workers, policemen, missionaries, administrators and managersŠ whose professional roles were wholly or partly defined by the existenceof African drinkers. Their points of view, recorded in formal interviews andin the course of fieldwork, were critically examined. Not surprisingly, pro-fessional responses were found to be consonant with professional roles,ritualized and predictable. Wolcott points out that such viewpoints tend tobe maintained in isolation from one another and to inhibit a comprehensiveand objective grasp of the complexities of the situation. Thus the administra-tors, he suggests, had created the beer-gardens after a western model andsuch improvements or modifications as they sought to effect were in the samemould. If the 'naturalness' of drinking in African thought were recognised,enclosed drinking dens might give way to open recreational gardens, offerings D. H. Reader and J. May, Drinking Patterns in Rhodesia: Highfield AfricanTownship (Salisbury, Univ. of Rhodesia, Dep. of Sociology, Occasional Paper No. 5,1^71 "i ; T May, 'Survey of Urban African Drinking Pattern1? in the Bulawayo MunicipalTownships', (Salisbury, Univ. of Rhodesia, Inst. for Social Research Report for theMunicioality of Bulawayo (mimeo), 1971).* H. F. Wolcott, "Feedback influences on fieldwork, or: A Funny Thing Happenedon the Way to the Beer Garden", in C. Kileff and W. C. Pendleton (eds), Urban Manin Southern Africa (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1975), 106.118ESSAY REVIEWliquor among other amenities. This, Wolcott feels, would 'capture more ofthe integrative dimension of African beer drinking'.5 A similar criticism islevelled at the 'well-intentioned program starts' of welfare services like-wise derived from the Western world, which Wolcott believes are not whatAfricans would 'really' choose, even if they are what Africans say and believethat they want.6Such musings beg the question as to how far patterns of thought andbehaviour derived from traditional society can usefully serve as determinantsof services provided in a modern city. One suspects the anthropologist a larecherche du temps perdu. Traditional elements persist in the new life of thebeer-garden (just as mutual kinship support, for example, survives the trans-plant to urban dwelling and nuclear family) only to the degree that synthesisis possible and subject to constant transformation in relation to other socialpressures. Services which set out to provide for traditional survival are justas likely to founder as those which pay no heed at all to cultural heritage.Wolcott presents a vivid description of beer-garden life and of the multi-farious reasons why drinkers and non-drinkers frequent what he aptly termsa 'cultural cafeteria'.7 Drinking is no longer an accompaniment of groupceremonial: the beer-garden provides 'a down payment on the promise ofthe city'; a setting where one can 'revel in the freedom of urban autonomyand the euphoria of temporarily forgetting his woes'.8These twin functions of the beer-garden Š revelry and euphoria, or,more precisely, convivial and utilitarian drinking Š were examined by May,who found that the younger people drank for conviviality, whereas olderpeople tended to drink for indulgent reasons, presumably on account ofincreased tensions and heavier responsibilities. As both studies suggest, re-creational drinking may readily become addictive and excessive in the absenceof social controls. Stress drinking also tends to intensify, since it commonlyadds to the nroblems that give rise to it, producing a confusing round ofcause and effect.May takes a close look at the phenomenon of heavy drinking. Apartfrom 39 per cent of her sample who were abstainers, only 15 per cent claimednever to get drank; 17 per cent became drank less than once a week and 29per cent were drank every weekend or more often. Intoxication was regardedas the natural and desirable consequence of drinking. There was great toler-ance of drunkenness and little anxiety over it: only 6 per cent of respondentsregarded frequent drunkenness as excessive. Respect was accorded to whatMay terms controlled drunkenness; only daily drunkenness, gross neglect ofresponsibilities, or total loss of dignity and control stood condemned. Maycomments that drinking behaviour of this order might in European middle-class circles seem to border on the pathological, but in the circumstances ofAfrican urban living it could be held to be functional. It would be interestingto make the comparison with European working-class circles. Weekend publife in a working-class district may well exhibit a high tolerance of drunken-ness and readiness to drink to get drunk. As Eugene Marais remarks, Thedisrepute into which drunkenness has fallen among the higher classes inWestern civilization is a thing of recent growth.'9.In the African context, concern lies not so much in the high tolerancefor and frequency of drunkenness, as in the proportion Š one fifth Š whos Wolcott, The African Beer Gardens of Bulawayo 234e Ibid., 2307 Ibid., 85s Ibid., 96s E. Marais, The Soul of the Ape (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973), 91.E. GARGETT119confess to alcohol-related problems. May considers what tends to prevent orlimit the amount of drinking. A definite deterrent, not always effective, isaffiliation to a church or sect that forbids alcohol. Few heavy drinkers, indeed,have any meaningful church ties at all. More significantly, abstainers andmoderate drinkers are those who are 'most firmly enmeshed in urban-basedsocial activities'.10 They live in a nuclear family, belong to both formal andinformal groups, attend church at least occasionally, have a positive attitudetowards the opportunities of town life and find satisfaction in their jobs.Conversely, those least well integrated into urban life are among the heaviestdrinkers.The functional and dysfunctional aspects of alcohol use present a dilemmaof social management: 'how to minimize drinking in the interest of publichealth and social well-being without an assault on the fabric of collectivelife'." The answer clearly does not lie simply in action directed at drink,drinkers, or drinking places. Whether a man drinks to excess or not is likelyto depend a great deal upon the quality of his personal life and the satisfactionit brings him, on the one hand, and the social code to which he is subject, onthe other. It is society itself which must bear the reproach.City of BulawayoE. GARGETTMay, Drinking in a Rhodesian African Township, 79.Pan. Alcohol in Colonial Africa, 106.