Alcohol and Tobacco: Time for a Township Reality Check
Published in the Mail&Guardian 21st April 2020
Calls to end the prohibition of alcohol and tobacco during South Africa’s lockdown have been rejected. Both have costs for society and reduced use would be beneficial. But right now our priority is to reduce the spread of the corona virus, especially in crowded communities.
Three, interlinked issues mean the booze and fags ban is counter-productive: townships’ underground economies; the nexus between public health messages and social control measures; and the grassroots politicisation of aid. I sketch these issues before addressing government’s prohibition policy.
The Townships’ Underground Economy
While suburban residents may be initially at a loss over sourcing alcohol and tobacco once sale is prohibited, township residents can resort to a lively underground economy. Before the lockdown, this catered largely for ‘back door’ goods, untaxed cigarettes, and cannabis. These have always been easy to obtain, if you ask around. With prohibition, these networks have been supplemented by residents brewing alcoholic beverages from a range of ingredients for themselves and for sale.
For many township men, social life revolves around male-sociability lubricated by alcohol, tobacco and zol. While, the socialising may be gendered, these men are also fathers, sons and brothers in families with which they live. While the authorities may be able control ‘pinch points,’ such as entrances to townships, they have limited control over movement within neighbourhoods. The lockdown has increased the number of hours men spend in the township and, it’s hard, given limited recreational options, to be both idle and sober.
The prohibition is reflected in price hikes in the informal economy. In East Rand townships, the cost of loose (i.e. single) untaxed cigarettes has doubled, while a 750ml bottle of spirit, previously retailed for R150 is now R300 or more. Given the price inelasticity of these goods, prohibition may well lead to higher expenditure on these items and, consequently, less on food or other necessities.
A Nexus between public health messages and social control measures
Restrictions on movement and gatherings aims to reduce the virus’ spread, while public health messages aim to re-inforce this by shifting individuals’ behaviour. Smoking township-style carries a real public health risk in the era of corona: the culture of skeif! If you are smoking and somebody with the remotest social connection says ‘skeif!’ then it’s all but obligation to share. It’s part of the sociability of township life. There needs to be messaging that sharing cigarettes (and joints) is going to spread the virus. But it’s not easy to tell people not to share cigarettes when you’ve just told them that they can’t smoke because they can’t buy. Such a message is going to be, at best, convoluted. We end up with the worst of both: cigarettes are still available, but without behavioural change around how they are being smoked.
While alcohol reduces inhibitions and increases risky social contract, outright prohibition has been responded to by the black market and home-for-sale brewing. As well as the risk of happy drinkers sharing intimate space, like cigarettes township culture means the frequent sharing of bottles and glasses. As with cigarettes, we have ineffective regulations and stymied public health messaging.
Grassroots politicisation of assistance and social order
At the national level there has been considerable peak-level cooperation between political parties: a united front. But this does not translates into the local where the real political contests are not between political parties, but between factions within the ruling party. Delivering food parcels via councillors are becoming mired in the same patronage politics that plagues service delivery. If you are not a ‘special’ – that is in some way important to your councillor – then you are going to be at the end of the queue for relief, if you are in the queue at all. Even if councillors are even handed, perceptions of cronyism and corruption are now so deep seated that likely it’ll be assumed that they aren’t.
This is an argument for delivering relief by impersonal bureaucratic systems such as child support grants, rather than patronage-inciting food parcels. Indeed, food parcels in the hands of councillors may well do more harm than good in entrenching feelings of exclusion from the state and justifying participation in self-help activities such as looting. This follows the same logic as service delivery riots in which factions of the community protest to demand a share of what is available.
Alcohol and Tobacco Regulations: Time to Change
Current policies and practices are creating a pressure cooker environment in the townships while stymieing public health messages. Government can keep the lid of the pressure cooker tightly sealed. But this will need an increasingly authoritarian hand and is already initiating a cycle of repression-by-regulation responded to with subversion and defiance. To maintain the lock down, food deliveries will need to be escorted into townships and the klopjags of apartheid policing reintroduced to supress home brewing. Yet all this will achieve is the pretence of a lock down while effective behavioural change messaging, taking into account the cultural practices of townships, will be crowded out.
Much described in this article should not be happening. Cigarettes, for example, should be taxed, shouldn’t be sold loose, and, ideally, shouldn’t be smoked at all. But now is not the time for grandstanding. We need a dose of realism as to how South Africans actually live and we need to respond with appropriate policies.
There are good arguments for keeping taverns and shebeens closed during the lockdown given the impossibility of maintaining social distance in these venues, but off sales should be allowed during the day and the sale of tobacco normalised. Such a relaxation could be packaged as a social pact: sales are permitted but we must stop sharing for the duration of the epidemic
