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Of beer and men
Marko Phiri
August 17, 2005

One of the weirdest ironies to come out any nation is for the people to claim with straight faces that they cannot afford any form of entertainment. Ironic because it would border on the absurd and downright preternormal for any body to live a life as a Stoic or Puritan with an aversion for all things pleasurable at a time when the hardships here have sent many bonkers. And what with reports of the bulldozed million dollar informal businesses which saw some owners being hit by massive cardiac arrest and crossing over to the afterlife. But then the super-religious do after all take their families to the zoo, safari parks and some such places that will not have then straying from their idea of the holy and mighty. So taking time out and doing what one loves best is very good for the soul. Even Pope Benedict XVI said so himself during a holiday in the Alps last month.

In the days of yore when the neo-oppressors' "favourite enemies" ruled the country, it is said that these white folks lampooned the black man with stories like what the black man's favourite pastimes were. And indeed they were thus listed: if the black man was not watching soccer, he was drinking masese or some lethal homemade brews, kachasu, or making love to their wives. And the last was actually supposed to be a pastime! Today many years later, Zimbabweans find themselves not very far from that derogatory era. But it is the bit about drinking that brings us to the issue of what the black man does today as a favoured pastime.

Drinking has always formed the social life of both black and white folks, but latest developments here apparently seek to excise this pastime from the loves of the people here already deprived of any means that will make life, as some would put it, liveable. Beer went up this week - for the umpteenth time this year - and one wonders what the people who usually appealed to Dutch courage and said all kinds of stuff about the lords of the land would appeal to now to register their discontent. Deprivation of all forms of comic relief reduces people to a life which borders on an experience at Auschwitz. What is there to laugh about anyway when the favoured pastime of the guards would be depriving inmates of food and all things of nutritional value? And then we extend that to the here and now where beer, the all time equaliser - after death - as both the monied and perpetual paupers for once claim one thing they would do within the same settings.

This is the kind of stuff that creates friends out of total strangers, and haven't multi-million dollar deals been born out of chance meetings at the favourite pub? And now this miracle commodity is fast disappearing into the setting sun like the triumphant cowboy in those old Western movies. But not a happy ending this one though. In Kenya sometime early this year, dozens of deaths were reported after innovative citizens deterred by the price of the beer they would rather have created some lethal home-made concoctions which assured them of instant inebriation. The authorities steeped in, alarmed by the number of deaths and concerned groups actually made efforts to legalise the brew but with toned-down alcohol levels. And all this because the ordinary man figured he could not afford his favourite lager!

But we have heard such stories before here when the partakers of kachasu took one gulp too many and found themselves staring at the roof of the morgue. Strange hey to complain about the price of beer? Among the many so-called basic commodities, this is something many people took for granted, including housewives who knew their loving husbands had a cut from their meagre wages for those wise waters. But then imagine all these chaps confined to home and hearth because their spouses think it is a waste of money! And in any case would they be wrong considering the circumstances? Still, imagine if men had their own version of Women of Zimbabwe Arise and took to the streets protesting about the ever-increasing price of beer.

If only Ndabeni's victory in Bulawayo could make difference. But with the beer prices having gone up "as soon after his victory was announced" - many already smell a conspiracy - and with the announcement that public drinking will no longer carry a fine but seemngily a custodial term or community service, what is there to celebrate? That is how weird a country can become with all kinds of voodoo economists figuring they can tinker the economy but only to have basics shooting through the roof and pauperising compatriots. Perhaps it is the chaps who drink who will form the vanguard of street protests, because for millions of men not only here in Zimbabwe, but anywhere in the world, being teetotal is not an option.

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