Abstract
In May 1995 political and corporate leaders, including President Nelson Mandela, gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa, to mark the centenary of the South African Breweries (SAB) and inaugurate a permanent exhibition on the history of alcohol production and consumption in southern Africa. 1 In his brief comments, Mandela reminded his audience that the SAB had emerged in conjunction with the development of the mining industry in the early part of the twentieth century and that the “early history of liquor… was bound up with the fearful exploitation of the country’s mineworkers.” He noted as well the history of discriminatory legislation that until the 1960s prevented black South Africans from “acquiring certain types of liquor,” and then he quickly moved on to celebrate the vibrant counterculture of South Africa’s illicit drinking establishments, or shebeens, and their role as centers for black expression in the 1940s and 1950s. Given the occasion, the president emphasized the role of the SAB as “amongst those leaders of business who embraced the future, even when it was less fashionable to do so”—referring to the corporation’s relatively early promotion of political change. 2 Unmentioned was the critical importance of alcohol production and sales in financing the structure of apartheid. Also ignored was the involvement of alcohol in many of South Africa’s most serious social and public health problems. 3
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Notes
David F. Musto, The American Disease (New York: Oxford University Press, 3rd ed., 1999), 40.
See James Mills and Patricia Barton, eds., Drugs and Empires: Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication, C. 1500-C. 1930 ( Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 ).
See Simon Heap, “The Quality of Liquor in Nigeria during the Colonial Era,” Itinerario, XX (1997), 29–44.
See Carl A. Trocki Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade, 1750–1950 (London: Routledge, 1999); and Mills and Barton Drugs and Empires.
Great Britain, Houses of Parliament, Southern Nigeria Report and Minutes of Evidence of the Committee of Inquiry into the Liquor Trade in Southern Nigeria (London, 1909).
See Craig Reinarman and Harry G. Levine, “Crack in the Rearview Mirror: Deconstructing Drug War Mythology,” Social Justice, 31 (2004), 182–99.
Charles van Onselen, “Randlords and Rotgut,” in Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand (London: Longman, 1982), I, 44–102. See also the essays in Crush and Ambler Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa.
H. A. Wyndham, “The Problem of the West African Liquor Traffic,” Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 9 (1930), 801–18.
F. Lugard, “Report on the Liquor Traffic,” League of Nations, Geneva, July 1, 1923, p. 2, Lugard Papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, 155/3.
T. A. Lambo, “Medical and Social Problems of Drug Addiction in West Africa,” Western African Medical Journal, 14 (1965), 236–54.
Emmanuel La Graviè re, “The Problem of Alcoholism in the Countries and Territories South of the Sahara,” International Review of Missions, 46 (1957), 290.
Henri Geralin, “La Question de la Ré vision de la Convention de Saint-Germain-en-Laye,” Actes et Travaux de la Première Conference Interafricaine Antialcoolique (1956), 117–39.
Griffith Edward, “Alcohol Problems in Developing Countries,” (WHO, Geneva, 1978 ).
Isidore Silas Obot, “Assessing Nigeria’s Drug Control Policy, 1994–2000,” International Journal of Drug Policy, 15 (2004), 17–26.
T. Adeoye Lambo, “The African Mind in Contemporary Conflict: The Jacques Parisot Foundation Lecture, 1971,” WHO Chronicle, 25 (1971), 343–53.
K. Selvaggio, “WHO Bottles Up Alcohol Study,” Multinational Monitor, 4 (1983), 9–11.
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© 2014 Gernot Klantschnig, Neil Carrier, and Charles Ambler
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Ambler, C. (2014). The Drug Empire: Control of Drugs in Africa, a Global Perspective. In: Klantschnig, G., Carrier, N., Ambler, C. (eds) Drugs in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321916_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321916_2
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