Singing the booze blues
While South Africans queued enthusiatically to buy alcohol for the first time since the implementation of the lockdown, the liquor industry stands to lose millions of rands and thousands of jobs as a result of the enforced ban on the sale of booze.
A man saunters out of the bottle store with a booze-laden trolley, opens a bottle of Corona beer with a loud pop, and a “woooooooh” erupts from the long 9am queue as he walks triumphantly to his car.
It was a moment of sheer joy that even the surrounding security guards, the cop queuing for the ATM and the flustered store manager wouldn’t dare to dampen.
Most of us started to queue at around 8am, barely a dozen of us at the time.
By 9:30am, when I finally do my walk of shame out of Checkers Liquor Store, the harsh rising sun illuminates a queue hundreds of meters long, the cheerful chatter giving away its destination.
While I was far back in the queue, a group of bubbly middle-aged ladies with youthful haircuts were loudly recounting events from the night shift they had just completed as ambulance personnel.
“Is this the line for Checkers?” I asked, to which came a friendly reply, “No, this is the line for something else.
“For medicine.”
“I wish I could have one on the way home,” the oldest of the three declared.
After the night she had, and 60 days without legal booze, she needed a drink.
Another lady who was about to get married shared her frustrations with me on the perils of being a couple with a young child during a lockdown.
“My partner is now working from home and we are getting on each other’s nerves,” she said.
There were plenty of men and women in the queue, from young 20-somethings to ou toppies chatting with the young ones about the dangers of alcohol while simultaneously failing to hide their own excitement.
What many people were worried about was that products would run out of stock before they got their turn.
In anticipation of panic buying, albeit restricted by law, the liquor outlet’s security guards prepared trolleys for customers at the checkout counter.
“We may have responsibilities, but we all have vices and are adults. We drink responsibly, and governments doesn’t have a right to treat us like children,’ said a man.
Is this the line for Checkers?
No, this is the line for something else. For medicine. I wish I could have one on the way home.
Question to a customer in a queue outside a liquor store and the amusing response