Living for Disco

For the last month, there has been a furore going on at the Parliament buildings. Roads have been closed off, protesters have marched, waved placards and made demands, and the Namibian newspaper has featured the issue on its front page almost daily. The problem? At the beginning of June, the government ordered the closure of all shebeens that do not have liquor licenses.

Shebeens are endemic here. Usually small, one room structures with outlandish names, they crop up like mushrooms across urban and rural landscapes. My friend in Opuwo says that there are two sorts of building that are constructed on an almost weekly basis there – churches and shebeens, and there never seem to be too many of either for the general population.

There are two sides of the shebeen story. They are the major form of small business, and believe me, there isn’t much else in the way of enterprise going on. The unemployment rate is extremely high, and for the owners, shebeens pay to feed their families, and to send their children to school.

However, they do contribute considerably, of course, to Namibia’s alcohol problem. They are also considered to be a major factor in the spread of HIV – people go out, they get drunk, they meet someone, they have sex, too drunk and reckless to think about protection. There was a recent outcry in Walvis Bay because children were running to the Mayor’s office to complain about the noise from the shebeens. The question was raised – where are their parents? Well, where do you think?

So in the name of tackling the problem of alcohol abuse, the government has decided to crack down. As the Namibian has pointed out, however, what is the difference between the alcohol consumed at legal shebeens, and that knocked back at illegal ones? It’s widely held that the matter of liquor licenses is simply a revenue-generator for the government.

I don’t know why the shebeen owners who are facing closure can’t go and get themselves a license. They’ve had since 2002 to do it – four years’ notice doesn’t seem unreasonable. Also, it seems to me that this would solve the problem, pretty much. However, they seem to have taken the whole thing very badly, and have made the pilgrimage to Windhoek to protest, spending the money they could have spent on a license on the travel costs. I’m all for the right to protest. No problem there. I just don’t think they have a case.

They have now been camping outside the parliament building for two weeks, during which time, presumably, their businesses are bringing in no money, the local alcoholics are undergoing cold turkey, and their children are going shoeless to school. I drove past them the other day, and they seem to be having lots of fun, shouting, doing laundry, and sitting about in the sun, drinking beer.

Things are getting a bit fraught now, though, because the shebeen owners appear to be treating the parliament buildings with ‘disrespect’, and this is not going down well with the population in general. Bear in mind, this country is relatively newly independent, and its institutions of power are held in high esteem, even if those wielding the power are not.

So, in the opinion of many, Thursday’s slaughtering, dismembering and braaing of a cow on the lawn outside the chamber of representatives was a meal too far.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 4:50 pm and is filed under The Devil's Lucozade, Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.