Traditional beer brewing and consumption: Past and present

Pathisa Nyathi

FOLLOWING colonisation there ensued industrial production, commerce and primary exploitation of the country’s resources, particularly primary extraction of minerals. Labour population increased and became ready markets for the various products including consumption of traditional brews.

Ethnic dances became part of the entertainment repertoire, soccer was developed, and many mining teams emerged: Rio Tinto, Triangle, Wankie (now Hwange) Hippo Valley, inter alia. The trend has continued to this day as some of the best soccer teams in the Premier League are associated and funded by mining conglomerates.

However, our interest in this article is to do with traditional beer production and consumption. Tastes for the product did not wane following. In Bulawayo, aristocratic women continued to produce traditional beer, which was consumed within their domestic premises, particularly in the first township for blacks, namely Makokoba Township.

The Bulawayo Municipality did not initially seek participation in the industrial production and marketing of traditional beer.

However, it was not long before the Municipality realised the lucrative proceeds from traditional beer sales. The Municipality then decided to take over the production and sales of the commodity and, in the process, elbowed out the women brewers.

The Bulawayo Municipality established the first production premises for traditional beer in Makokoba Township, close to the MaKhumalo Beer Garden in 1912.

In 2012, the Municipality was keen to celebrate the first centenary of production in Bulawayo. However, they were no longer sure, when the first brewery in Makokoba Township was set up. They approached me to do some research and establish, without doubt, when they got involved in traditional beer production.

It was time for me to get to the archives and undertake research. That engagement and research yielded the date, 1912 when the Municipality set up the first brewery for the production of sorghum grain-based traditional brew.

The historical legacy of production being in the hands of women was preserved through the tradition of naming the beer gardens after women who had since been squeezed out. MaDlodlo, MaKhumalo, MaMkhwananzi, Masina, Sidudla were names of some of the beer gardens that were established initially in Makokoba Township and later in other townships that were established after Makokoba. Luveve Native Village was the next township to be set up in 1936 and Mzilikazi Township followed in 1945.

In the post-World War II, there was industrial boom in Bulawayo, which saw more townships being established at the time when Dr Eric Hugh Ashton, as Head of the African Development Department piloted the building of the new townships from Iminyela (Number 1) to Sidojiwe Flats (Number 5) and Pelandaba (Number 6). Male workers were the chief consumers of the beer and social services and housing development were anchored on the beer profits.

Later, the Municipality established a new brewery at the Steeldale industrial site where Ingwebu Brewery remains to this day.

The Bulawayo Municipality maintained a monopoly in both industrial production and consumption of African beer. In later years, when Chibuku was established, it was not allowed to set up a production factory within the Bulawayo precincts.

Its plant was thus established beyond the Municipal boundary within Umguza District, off the Bulawayo-Harare Road where the brewery is still located near the PPC cement factory.

When women were denied the role of brewing traditional beer there emerged in Bulawayo African townships various illicit brews.

Skokiaan (isikokiyana) was among the illicit brews whose production was spurred by the ban placed on beer production by other producers outside of the Municipality. That historical legacy was captured through, among other measures, by Augustine Musarurwa’s song, Skokiaan that attracted world attention prompting Louis Armstrong (Sachmore) to visit Bulawayo to meet up with the Makokoba Township-based leading saxophonist.

Southern Rhodesia’s laws regarding traditional beer production led in later years to the establishment of shebeens in the African townships where clear beer was consumed in contravention of the racially driven liquor statutes.

The shebeens would, in years when ZPRA’s urban guerrilla warfare came to Bulawayo, become the contact sites between the camouflaged combatants and the Zapu-supporting civilians in Bulawayo. Attainment of independence when Africans were allowed to consume beer in the outlets within the CBD, did the shebeens witness a decline and near death.

The various illicit liquor outlets in the business centres within the African townships have emerged where the youth consume liquor with some using their cars as mobile consumption sites. The njengu-type of “hot stuff” from Zambia has become popular where consumers’ purchasing power is hamstrung.

The njengu brews are a “kill me fast/take me high” alternative to the conventional brews.

My first contact with Chibuku was in the 1960s when I was too young to imbibe. We knew it as Isibhuku. My cousins worked as miners at Freda Mine near Gwanda. Freda Mine was one of several gold-producing mines that were set up in the colonial period. Soon after colonisation mines such as Lonely Mine (Gwamazhula), Turk Mine, Queen’s Mine, Geelong and several others were set up.

Near Freda Mine, close to the Tuli River, were other mines such as Vumbachigwe and Fife.

The mine compounds became consumption sites for the Chibuku brand. When my cousins visited our rural home, they brought along the brew and popularised its name. A certain sorghum variety was named Isibhuku and thus the grain species came to be referred as Isibhuku, as it was the favourite variety used in the production of the traditional brew.

It would thus not be too far off the mark to associate the production of Chibuku with mining compounds in Southern Rhodesia and urban townships elsewhere except Bulawayo.

Bulawayo had by-laws that saw it maintain a monopoly over production of African traditional brews. That competition was allowed in other urban centres except in Bulawayo where the Municipality fenced off competition from Chibuku, a subsidiary of Delta Beverages.

Developed by Max Heinrich, a South African national, Chibuku was industrially produced in the Copperbelt mining towns such as Luanshya, Chingola, Ndola and others in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). The name is likely to be from one of the languages spoken in Zambia where there are over a hundred different ethnic groups.

Following the establishment of the Hendrich Syndicate Ltd industrial production commenced in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in 1955.

The mining towns in the Copperbelt attracted populations from as far as Southern Rhodesia. During the days of the liberation struggle recruitment was carried out in those mining towns in a recruitment drive known as Chikuwa. Dumiso Dabengwa and Sikhwili Khohli Moyo were some of the recruiters.

Chingola provided Nikita Mangena and others who proceeded to undergo military training at Cheri Cheri in Algeria in 1965. Mangena was to become the commander of ZPRA from 1972 until his untimely death in 1978.

Licence to produce Chibuku in Southern Rhodesia was obtained in 1961. Production commenced the following year, 1962, in smaller towns. Until 1961, government did not allow production of traditional beer in the country. Production having commenced in 1962, this year Chibuku Company is celebrating 50 years of production.

Not so long ago Chibuku approached me to work on the totems of the people belonging to the various ethnic groups in Zimbabwe. It was a challenging but rewarding engagement that enriched my knowledge of the totems of various lineages (mitupo nezvidawo/izibongo lezangelo).

However, I feel the research findings of the project I carried out were not put into practice in the manner I had envisaged. It’s a good marketing tool that was not put to maximum benefit.

Nevertheless, the project did provide useful material in the form of data relating to lineage totems for virtually all the ethnic groups found in Zimbabwe. This important heritage effort complements the use of Zimbabwe’s aesthetic icons that embellish the containers/vessels for the traditional brews, both Chibuku and Ingwebu.

Consumption of traditional beer seems to lend itself to heritage documentation and preservation. Probably, what remains is comprehensive interpretation of the decorative icons that have been chosen and are common among all ethnic groups in Zimbabwe where traditional brews are consumed to this day.

The past, our past, lives through the traditional brews particularly at the consumption stage.