Dr. Verwoerd: New Liberal
By KENNETH MACKENZIE
THIS column is not paid for by South Africa House, but it has for a change to report that Dr. Verwoerd's Government has behaved in a creditable manner. Difficult though it will be to convince people of this, they have passed a law that can only be described as liberal.
The law grants to Africans the precious right to get drunk in peace. Up to now people with black skins could legally drink nothing except a substance known as `kalfir beer which had the consistency of thin porridge and was more nourishing than intoxicating. Now they will be allowed to buy any sort of beer, wine or spirits they wish at bottle stores, and special bars are to be set up to serve them over the counter.
Africans, therefore, have now regained the position they held in 1891 in the pre-Union Cape Province when a similar Bill was passed. In those uninhibited days the Johannesburg Star wel- comed the idea for straightforward genocidal reasons. 'In alcohol,' it wrote, 'is to be found the only influence which may be trusted to sap the fund of seemingly infinite vitality [of the black man] which will overcome civilisation if civilisa- tion does not overcome it.'
Dr. Verwoerd's motives, though less sinister, are also not entirely disinterested. I think we may assume that he is less concerned with the welfare of the African roisterers than with the welfare of the wine farmers, who tend to be rich and influential Nationalists. They produce more than they can sell, in spite of the notorious 'tot' system which enables them to pay part of their labourers' wages in cheap wine, and for years they have been agitating for an African market. Now they can snap their fingers at overseas boycotts.
Dr. Verwoerd was backed by a government commission which reported last year, the last of a whole series of commissions recommending legal African drinking, and he was supported by the police, who are understandably bored with trying to enforce an unenforceable law. Never- theless his liberalism required some political courage. The Dutch Reformed Church, which is not lightly ignored, is opposed to drink in any circumstances, and considered this Bill would have a disastrous effect on their missionary activi- ties; and to many of Dr. Verwoerd's more primi- tive supporters the whole idea of allowing 'white' liquor to black men is inconsistent with 'keeping the kaffir in his place.'
Whatever the motives behind it, the new law will make an enormous difference to everyday life. An average of over 1,000 Africans a day were convicted under the liquor laws, and these represent only a tiny proportion of those who suffered from the cruel and futile police raids in support of prohibition.
As a young reporter on a Johannesburg news- paper I had the rather degrading experience of going with the police on an anti-liquor evening. The vice squad knew the whereabouts of most of the big shebeens, or drinking dens, around the centre of Johannesburg and raided them in rota- tion (according to the police) or in inverse pro- portion to the amount of bribery paid (according to the Africans).
A small force—three whites and three Africans —would arrive at speed in a disguised lorry. The look-out at the door, usually an African child, would raise the alarm and be cuffed; and we would rush into a courtyard or an open space between slum houses, to find a chaotic scene as African drinkers surged around trying to find an exit. Those who were too drunk to drop their tins of drink would be arrested. Then would begin the game of smelling out the shebeen 'queen's' stock of home-brewed liquor, usually in great big drums buried or cunningly concealed in ceilings. The liquor, called 'skokiaan. 'Barber- ton,' or half a dozen other names, was a literally poisonous brew made basically from bread, yeast and sugar boiled together and fermented swiftly in a few hours, to which could be added fruit peelings and various other things for flavour and sometimes methylated spirits for additional kick.
Once the liquor was found the police either poured it away or soured it by the addition of water or urine. The 'queens' themselves were sel- dom arrested; they could only be convicted if a drinker could be found to testify against them, and that sort of drinker tended to die young. Although the police were very rough with any- one who raised a hand against them, and although the 'queens' poured out highly coloured abuse continually, this sort of raid was in my experi- ence reasonably good-humoured — almost a game. Immediately the police left, the 'queens' would start brewing again.
Less good-humoured were the raids on the better-class shebeens, furnished rooms in which 'white' liquor was sold; the sort of place that is romanticised into King Kong's 'Back of the Moon,' and figures large in every African intel- lectual's memoirs. In these the Africans, being well-dressed and therefore 'cheeky,' were fre- quently ill-treated by the police.
Worst of all were the regular raids on residen- tial areas, where homes would be broken into, floors ripped up, furniture broken and hundreds of thousands of non-criminal people made to suffer. A raid of this kind led to the murder of six policemen in Cato Manor about eighteen months ago, and that was only one of a large number of riots caused by the ill-feeling engen- dered by liquor raids.
The liquor laws, incidentally, were habitually broken by all whites who were sufficiently liberal to entertain people of other colours—with little danger of prosecution unless the guest could be persuaded to testify, though if the party was sufficiently noisy to attract the neighbours' atten- tion the police would sometimes come blundering around to take names and addresses.
The new law may for a time bring an increase in drunkenness, for which it provides more severe penalties, but this would seem a small price to pay to see the end of it. So let us praise Dr. Verwoerd. But of course this law, which is on a par with his instructions to the police to be more polite (the old form of address, `kaffir,' is now frowned on), does not mean he has been con- verted to decency. It just means he is making belated efforts to avoid committing suicide.
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