BY MICHELINA ANDREUCCI
Growing up in Zimbabwe, Kariba more specifically, I often heard discussions about African beer and why beer is such an important component in indigenous cultures.
I also recall a classmate who told us of her “Ukudunduzela” celebration which took place a year after she experienced her first menstruation when beer was brewed at her home and neighbours as well as other girls who had just had the same experienced were invited to join in the celebration.
For Shona girls the ritual is known as “Kubvazera”, where beer is drunk by the “machembere” grandmothers, who instruct the girls in marriage and motherhood.
The brewing of beer – “kubika doro”, is usually undertaken by woman past child-bearing age or young virgin girls not menstruating at the time. A spirit medium who abides by the conventions pertaining to brewing spiritual beer can also brew beer.
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, traditional beer – ‘doro ‘, is an opaque beer and an integral component of African agronomical, cultural and ritual ceremonies. In Africa opaque beer is in the many local recipes that adapt to using ingredients locally available on the African Continent.
Each of the small grain varieties used in the brewing of traditional beer such as zviyo, mapfunde/imfe (sweet reed grain), finger millet, chibage (maheu), and sorghum provided the main ingredient of the beer; each beer had its specific rite or occasion at which it was drunk by the community.
Traditional beer is consumed as a means of communicating communal solidarity and cohesiveness and as a celebration of the renewal of nature. Human progress is attributed to the annual beervoffering, known as “kupira vadzimu/ ukuthethela amandlozi”, which is a libation for the deceased.
Beer is brewed to placate the ancestors and to cleanse any spiritual impediments such as aggrieved spirits, deaths, murders, wrong doings, etc. Traditional beer is brewed to prevent or overcome droughts, plagues, pestilence, hardships and war as well as national non-productivity and economic hardships such as we have to overcome as a nation. Traditional beer is an essential part of African traditional customs for communal gatherings when “Doro re mafundo/Doro reNjeneko” is brewed to inspire cordial neighbourly relations, discussions and planning amongst villagers to maintain social cohesion.
Its secular role in community co-operation and welfare cannot be discounted. In fact, despite the proliferation of foreign Western religions that have taken root in Zimbabwe, spirit mediums have voiced that Zimbabwe’s socio-economic stability can only be fully realized by placating the wandering spirits of unknown soldiers, innocent villagers and children that died in the cross fire during the Liberation war and left buried in mass graves.
Several indigenous rites necessitate the brewing and offerings of traditional beer as libation for ritual gatherings, including Doro re matendera/Doro re kuzvarwa kwemwana – the first beer brewed to thank the ancestors for the birth of a child. There is a child naming beer known as “Doro re Kupazita”, “Doro re Hurudza”. Beer is brewed as a harvest thanksgiving, beer to invoke rain known as “Doro re makoto/doro re mapfuwhe/ doro re Mvura”. Beer is also brewed to receive blessings from ancestors through invocation. Each beer has its specific rite or occasion at which it should be drunk by the community.
Beer pots reflected in the pre-historic Rock Art friezes allude to a long tradition of beer brewing
industry in Zimbabwe; marking the various cycles of human progress. The Rock Art also show the Bushmen drank to be transported into trances and get visions; which sometimes resulted in the depiction of elongated figures.
The missionaries and the Christian church which found themselves at odds over indigenous African beliefs and customs recognised the importance of beer as a factor in inducing spirit possession and for the reinforcement of cultural empowerment. They believed that African degeneracy was rooted in their culture and traditional belief systems. Colonial laws were introduced and prohibition against African beer drinking was strongly enforced by the white colonial settlers. Only then could the process of ‘civilizing the savage’ commence.
Having said this, there was also a contradiction to this fact whereby they introduced and build more beer halls than schools or libraries in urban areas, thereby promoting and encouraging heavy drinking amongst indigenous people, especially after 1960s, when Heinrich’s Syndicate Limited (HCBL), set its eyes on Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
During that time, the consumption of beer was regulated by the Kaffir (African) Beer Act (1911) and the Liquor Act (1930) In Zimbabwe, together with some farmers, Heinrich’s Syndicate Limited (HCBL), opened their first brewery in Fort Victoria (now Masvingo), in 1962. The Syndicate obtained permission to operate in the country in amidst strong opposition from some municipal authorities, namely from Bulawayo, Gwelo (now Gweru), Salisbury (now Harare) and Umtali (now Mutare).
The commercial brewing of opaque beer by Heinrich’s Chibuku Breweries Limited (HCBL), began in 1955, in what is today Zambia. In 1960 Heinrich’s Chibuku opened in Nyasaland (now Malawi), where the venture was short-lived. As a predominantly Muslim country, soon after Malawi gained its independence, the government summarily withdrew HCBL’s license and closed its brewery. In 1961 Heinrich’s Chibuku Breweries spread its wings into Zimbabwe, initially in Fort Victoria (now Masvingo) where it was granted a licence to operate and sell their beer.
But its history began during World War II, when two interred German nationals, Max Heinrich and his colleague Gustav Braun, to relieve the boredom of interment (imprisonment), during the war, experimented making various brews from potatoes. Following the end of the war, the two began to commercialise their operations by focusing on the traditional beer market, which relied mostly on the availability of products.
The brewers kept detailed records in a book of brewing formulas, quantities of raw material and any changes to brewing techniques, as well as recording customer’s responses after each delivery. This earned them the nickname “chibuku” – from a Zambian misnomer in reference to the book. This then became the name of the beer.
This led to the founding of a company – Heinrich’s Syndicate Limited in Northern Rhodesia (now
Zambia). From its humble beginnings in the 1950s, the beer has survived and evolved over the years with new variants, modifications and packaging to dominate the opaque beer industry in Africa, where, Chibuku has since been launched in fourteen African countries covering a geographic swath from Ghana to Tanzania and from Uganda to Lesotho.
Traditional beer has been such a large part of traditional culture that it has inspired much of
contemporary popular music. The Tsva-tsva music that originated in the farms and mining compounds was often associated with the wide-spread brewing of elicit alcohol such as: chi-Oneday, Seven days and Skokiaan. In fact, so popular was urban beer drinking in the 1950s that August Musarurwa (1922-1968) produced his hit “Skokiaan” that topped the American Hit Parade in 1954.
Celebrated African-American Jazz musician Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (1900 – 1971), recorded his own version of the hit under the title “Happy Africa”, which sold millions of copies worldwide.
Other well-known beer songs include: Willy Mahlangu recorded “Manwele Beerhall” which was an ode to the increase of beer-drinking and the establishment of beer halls in the townships in the mid-1950s. Safirio Madzikatere’s “Imi Vachidakwa” – ‘Hey you Drunkard’, and Thomas Mapfumo’s “Hwha-hwha”, “Uchahurega Hwha-hwha” and “Shabeeni”. Most of these songs dealt with societal ills caused by excessive beer drinking. Today we are also familiar with the South African popular township song “tati Isigubu”.
Dr.Michelina Rudo Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher and a published author in her field. For Comments E-mail: linamanucci@gmail.com
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