Anne Mager's recent book, Beer, Sociability, and Masculinity in South Africa, offers us a look into the interplay of an internationally successful South African business with the politics and social order of that country. South African Breweries (SAB), the company at the heart of this story, grew from strength to strength over this period, becoming an international force when it acquired the American Miller Brewing Company in 2002. This story follows the nimble and aggressive business practices of SAB through the changes in South Africa's social order during and after the apartheid period.
The story of Beer, Sociability, and Masculinity in South Africa begins in the 1950s as the country adjusted to postwar urbanization and newly emerging apartheid legal structures. For the first time in the country's history Africans outnumbered whites in the cities and the apartheid government that came to power in 1948 quickly solidified existing urban racial barriers and erected new institutions to embed racial separation in every aspect of South African life. The result was an explosive growth in African townships adjacent to the country's industrial centres, and the aggressive implementation of ‘influx control’ that split workers from their families and deepened the fractures developed in African social structures over the previous fifty years. In this milieu, urban alcohol consumption provided one avenue of sociability for African workers detached from their homes. And consumption of beer, traditionally brewed in the home, was an obvious connection between the old and the new. The only obstacle to this arrangement was that Africans were prohibited from purchasing alcohol. By 1960, in the face of an uncontrollable illegal alcohol trade, the government lifted prohibition and opened its own beer halls in the townships while the popular informal clubs run by Africans – shebeens – bought massive amounts of beer and liquor from companies such as SAB. Ending prohibition moved beer production from the home to commercial breweries, creating a huge market for the companies.
The commercialization of beer brewing in South Africa created a nexus between the social and the economic. From 1960 into the first decade of the 21st century, Mager's book follows the particular development of society and economy in South Africa through the lens of beer production, marketing and consumption. She takes a roughly chronological approach to the story that also divides into topical chapters originally published as separate journal articles. The book begins with the lifting of prohibition in the 1950s (chapter 1), the early development of monopoly control in the industry in the 1960s (chapter 2), the creation of race specific marketing strategies in the 1970s (chapter 3), the increase in alcoholism (chapter 4), the relationship of beer to antiapartheid activism of the 1980s (chapter 5), adjustment to post-apartheid South Africa (chapter 6), and expansion into global markets (chapter 7).
The story moves along, but some obvious links between the chapters are not clearly made as, for example, the connection between SAB's aggressive marketing campaigns in African communities beginning in the 1960s and the increasing incidence of African alcoholism. While Mager conscientiously balances the consideration of social impetus and influence with that of the economic actors, the story narrative focuses on businesses, especially SAB, as the dynamic force at work. The social and political setting forms the backdrop while the common thread is the SAB and its actions and strategies.
Throughout this story, certain themes common to South Africa's history emerge that continue into the post-apartheid period. African entrepreneurship first in the face of restrictions and police harassment during the apartheid period and later in partnerships with the post-apartheid SAB runs throughout the book. On the other end of the economic spectrum, the SAB embodies the twin tendencies of South African capital – the impulse to monopolize market control and the increasingly capital intensive nature of production. Market control helped propel SAB into the global beer market by the conclusion of this story, while increasing mechanization of production displaced many unionized SAB workers despite post-apartheid laws protecting them. Finally, Mager describes the calculated shifts in advertising, appealing to the traditional or modern, families or singles, ethnically separated or wholly integrated, but always intended to equate beer with masculinity.
Mager's book raises important questions about the transformation of South Africa that can be examined through the beer industry. In particular, can the one-sided relationship between large (white) capital and entrepreneurs (African) transition to one that promotes both? How will organized labour protect workers in the face of increasing mechanization? Will companies like SAB offer meaningful retraining programmes? In the absence of the ideological chauvinism embodied in apartheid, how will masculinity be redefined? Will the very social nature of beer drinking ever become a natural arena for social integration? Mager's examination of some early attempts by the company to move forward via sports sponsorships, overseas expansion, ‘theme’ parks (a curious but common phenomena for breweries), and Black Economic Empowerment all suggest fertile ground for the continuing study of the transformation of South African society.
