ALCOHOL REGULATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

ALCOHOL REGULATION IN SOUTH AFRICA

POPULAR CONTROVERSIES

INTRODUCTION

The South African liquor landscape is incredibly polarised: from licensed venues in high-income city neighbourhoods, to illegal shebeens in lowincome settings. These disparities stimulate and devide public opinion and debate. They also provoke conversations about rights, responsibilities and the freedom to consume alcohol, as well as how to best protect people from harms. These conversations are, more often than not, deeply divisive and inherently controversial.

But controversy does not always produce effective policy for the majority of South Africans living in working class townships. This document sets out to separate facts from fiction in five main areas of controversy. It does this with the aim of igniting new conversations, debates and thinking about how best to manage alcohol. In stimulating discussion, we aim to shed light on some of the main policy messages within recent published research by social scientists variously seeking to better understand the complexities of alcohol in our society.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH

ALCOHOL IN SOUTH AFRICA?

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South Africa's alcohol problem has deep historical roots. Alcohol control was a significant component of the political, economic and social landscape under apartheid. The restriction of drinking among Black Africans helped catalyse the growth of illicit sorghum beer production and the mushrooming of shebeens. Today the majority of South Africa's estimated 200,000 shebeens still remain unlicensed and illegal.

Selling alcohol has become an important means of making a living in townships where alternative business opportunities are limited. Despite their illegal status, shebeens provide significant distribution channels for formal liquor as well as a source of employment for many. These small businesses then contribute towards an alcohol industry worth R40 billion a year in production, exports and domestic consumption.

The economic benefit and livelihood opportunities from alcohol must be reconciled with its significant negative social and health

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impacts. Although many adult South Africans don't drink (28% of men and 54% of women report being lifetime abstainers), those who do drink, tend to do so in ways that precipitate health and socioeconomic harms. Over 30% of male drinkers report binge drinking [1]. These practices are both cause and consequence of a host of acute and chronic harms including: accidents; crime; violence; addiction; and having an impact on the prevalence and treatment of chronic disease.

In 2011, the Second Biennial Anti-Substance Abuse Summit, taking forward this mandate, passed 34 resolutions for government action, including the need to restrict the time and days on which alcohol could be sold and a call for the implementation of laws to reduce the number of liquor outlets, `including shebeens, taverns and liquor stores in specific geographical areas' [2]. The scale of public and governmental concern is perhaps best reflected in the language of the National Drug

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Master Plan 2013-2017 in which it is argued that alcohol is placing `many communities under siege' [3]. This short publication then explores the controversies that underpin how best to address this siege.

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CONTROVERSY 1

LIQUOR IS A THREAT TO DEVELOPMENT

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Alcohol plays an "ambiguous" role in the social and economic development of developing countries [4]. On one hand, it contributes to local, regional and national economies through providing formal and informal employment and tax revenue.

On the other, excessive alcohol consumption is one of the four major risk factors for the chronic disease burden and contributory factor to violence, injury, crime, poor mental health and infectious diseases. In many rapidly-urbanising developing countries, alcohol-related harms are severely curtailing quality of life, wellbeing, personal safety and are a significant drain on limited household resources. For the poor, drinking alcohol may be a coping strategy when employment and leisure opportunities are curtailed and poverty makes life perpetually challenging and stressful.

This form of coping can ironically only worsen and reinforce vulnerabilities to alcohol-related

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