Fish Hoek fights off demon drink for 200th year

Exactly 200 years after being proclaimed a dry town in its founding document, Fish Hoek has repelled the latest attempt to open a bottle store.

The Western Cape Liquor Authority wrote to Pick n Pay this week saying its application to sell liquor in the town was “not in the public interest” and had been declined.

The decision is being celebrated in the coastal town 33km from central Cape Town, where campaigners say they are determined to fend off the social ills bottle stores bring.

Teetotal retired attorney Donald Moore, 74, who helped to gather the hundreds of objections to Pick n Pay’s application, said he was delighted by the decision.

But he said the opposition to the latest application had been less vociferous than it was for the last bottle store bid five years ago. In 2013, Spar withdrew its application after what town councillor Felicity Purchase described as a widespread boycott of the store.

Said Moore: “Unfortunately, the demography of Fish Hoek is changing, the age profile is changing, and the same effort is not being made by everybody.”

Fish Hoek’s dry status dates from June 1818, when Cape governor Lord Charles Somerset granted the farm Visch Hoek to Andries Bruin on condition that he should “not keep a public wine house”.

Ever since, the deed has been brandished by bottle store opponents — most notably in 1956, when nine applications were rejected.

Moore said: “The objections were to do with the proximity of schools and churches, the concern by old people that it might attract vagrants and affect their security, and the fact that the shopping precinct is very congested and big South African Breweries trucks would only make things worse.”

Purchase said a series of “very vociferous” public meetings about the proposal culminated in a liquor board hearing in the town, traditionally popular with retirees. “Pick n Pay’s main argument was that they wanted to make more money,” she said.

Moore said: “One of the reasons I chose to retire to Fish Hoek is because I find the consumption of alcohol and the lifestyle they pretend is associated with it to be offensive and damaging to our society.”

Julian Hobson, co-owner of the Pick n Pay franchise store in Fish Hoek, said he and his partner Gary Williams had asked the liquor authority to provide reasons. “It has 21 days to provide the reasons . . . we will decide whether to appeal or review the decision.” He and Williams have a conditional licence to open a liquor outlet next to their nearby Glencairn store, which opened on Thursday.