Beer, Sociability, and Masculinity in South Africa ― Drinking, Sociability, and Masculinity

Beer connects commercial, social, and political history in this sobering look at the culture of drinking in South Africa. Beginning where stories of colonial liquor control and exploitation leave off, Anne Kelk Mager looks at the current commerce of beer, its valorizing of male sociability and sports, and the corporate culture of South African Breweries [SAB], the world’s most successful brewing company. Mager shows how the industry, dominated by a single brewer, was compelled to comply with legislation that divided customers along racial lines, but also promoted images of multi-racial social drinking in the final years of apartheid. Since the transition to majority rule, SAB has rapidly expanded into new markets—including the United States with the purchase of Miller Brewing Company. This lively book affords a unique view into global manufacturing, monopolies, politics and public culture, race relations, and cold beer.

Anne Kelk Mager is Associate Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. She is author of Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945–1959.