Shebeen vs shibobo: SA can’t even guzzle the Drinking World Cup

Bafana Bafana are a shadow of what they once were, and we should be better at our other favourite pastime

While many were lamenting the failure by Mzansi’s hapless, hopeless national football team to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar, the country’s growing status as a losing nation was continuing elsewhere.

In May 2016 the country’s booze consumption rate climbed up the world rankings, taking us to among the top 20 biggest boozers in the world.

The World Health Organization came up with this finding after tracking alcohol consumption per capita across 194 countries. How it did this, I am not really sure. But good lord, I would have paid my last rand to be part of that hard-working team collecting data on the world’s boozing habits.

In these trying times when a country of 60-odd million people can’t even manufacture lousy underwear, importing it instead from China, any good news – regardless of how bad – is good. At least back then Mzansians were good at something.

The data showed that, in 2015, pure alcohol consumption (per litre) in South Africa was at 11.5l per capita per year – up from 11.0l in 2014. This statistic pushed South Africa up to the third-biggest drinking nation in Africa, and the 19th-biggest drinking nation in the world, tied with Poland. The finding also noted that more than a quarter of Mzansi’s drinking population were binge drinkers who consumed at least 60g or more of pure alcohol in one session within a 30-day period.

How our politicians missed this one, I don’t know. Remember, they are given to throwing lavish ceremonies – paid for by the taxpayer – to celebrate something as trivial as South Africa being ranked the country with the highest number of lightning strikes in the world. Well, not literally, but these guys just love the pomp and ceremony. They would do anything – or just about anything – to look like hard-working, committed cadres in the eyes of the public.

In fact, I am surprised they have not celebrated Bafana Bafana’s recent achievement: the failure to qualify for the World Cup in Qatar. One would have expected a long statement from the Minister of Congratulations and Condolences heaping praise on the boys. But it hasn’t come. Or maybe it will come at the end of the tournament later this month. Who knows?

That particular minister seems to go to his office only to craft one of his long, monotonous statements that read like a Grade 7 composition, either when a public figure goes the way of all flesh or when someone or