Homebrewing kept liquor flowing for many in SA

SA’s craze for home brewing with the lockdown ban on selling liquor was good for Frank van Wensveen, who owns a home beer-brewing supply shop.

South Africans, among the heaviest drinkers in the world, improvised, brewing their own beer and umqombothi — a traditional African beer made from sorghum — and distilled mampoer, a potent fruitbased moonshine.

“The market has absolutely gone crazy,” said Van Wensveen, standing in his Johannesburg store before empty shelves.

“When the liquor ban was initially announced, people were coming to the shop in a panic and essentially buying everything in sight.” Since the government reopened e-commerce in May, online orders had ballooned, with sales up 15-fold since the pandemic began, he said.

Google searches on homemade beer recipes spiked, according to Google trend data, and a run on pineapples for beer brewing forced supermarket chain Shoprite to limit sales to five per customer.

Predictably, illegal liquor sales and smuggling of the contraband across SA’s land borders has also been on the rise.

Yet the ban on alcohol sales appears to have had the desired effect. Before lockdown, hospitals in SA took in an estimated 17,100 alcohol-related trauma admissions a week, compared with 10,300 a week since lockdown began, said Charles Parry, director for alcohol, tobacco and drug research at the SA Medical Research Council.

He expects the numbers to rise when restrictions are eased from Monday and alcohol sales are again allowed, though under tight restrictions and only for home consumption.

While the temporary prohibition spawned a booming business in workarounds, it was at the expense of traditional liquor sellers. Bars and liquor stores are suffering, as are shebeens.

“The people I am worried about are the shebeens, the Mama Ruby’s corner, the Uncle Jack’s liquor store,” said Collin Kambi, a resident of Johannesburg, who misses his local dive.

“They are going to get poorer and poorer.”