Enjeux politiques de l’alcool en Afrique du Sud : prohibition et réorganisation commerciale en temps de Covid-19

Abstract

This case study focuses on Herve’s wine store in Durban, the country’s largest port. What was once a white neighbourhood is now in transition with a concentration of Indian South African Muslims. Research took place during and after a period of alcohol prohibition imposed by the national government as part of a series of restrictions related to the Covid pandemic. Herve’s story reveals his own pragmatic adjustment to the disruptions and shortages of this period to keep his business by keeping his head down, becoming “invisible”. The article places this episode in a history of alcohol consumption and prohibition which lies at the centre of South Africa’s extreme form of racism and African resistance to segregation. Durban was the first city in the country to institute racial segregation that later went national. Alcohol played a major role in defining the boundaries of racial inequality, under the Durban system named after its original locus. Beer production and consumption became a major site of violent conflict, often involving gender as well as race and class. Both in the colonial era and during Covid, overconsumption of alcohol and its pathologies became a displacement of racial exploitation.