ABSTRACT
The South African Breweries World of Beer in Johannesburg takes the visitor on a tour of the history of brewing in Africa. South Africa's success with colonialism, they claimed, would be jeopardized if European liquor were supplied to Africans whose tribal system had broken down: 'Africans must maintain ourselves here or die'. As more and more African people were drawn into the shebeen economy, and as African political ideologies gained ground, new groups gained the power to 'name' and to redefine the shebeen as place and as space. The significant others of shebeen queens were cast as bootleggers – 'mailers' or 'gwevas' in the argot of the illicit liquor trade – often white policemen and 'coloured' men paid to buy liquor at white bottlestores. Drum journalists were acutely aware of the increased stratification occurring among Africans in the cities. For Drum writers, shebeens were both 'home', and place where Drum journalists were made and tested.
