Scotch Tagwireyi
When Dereckison Mngomezulu (40) was found dead in his shack in Katlehong two weeks ago, his relatives, neighbours and friends were convinced that beer killed him.
Mngomezulu began drinking heavily two years ago when the company he worked for closed down and retrenched all its staff. He drank mostly home-brew, a cheap but deadly beer brewed in the townships – with one of the major ingredients being the insides of used batteries.
He stopped eating, lost weight, his complexion darkened, his skin peeled off his face, lips, hands and feet, his hair fell out and he coughed up blood. He complained that he had difficulty breathing, but refused to go to hospital and eventually died in agony.
“He looked far older than his age, you would think he was 60 or 70 years old,” said one of his neighbours who refused to give her name.
If Mngomezulu’s relatives, friends and neighbours’ diagnosis is correct then he was not the first to die after drinking cheap alcohol and certainly will not be the last. The home-brew is being sold on almost every street in townships throughout the country.
“Basically there are two brands of beer that are available. One is home-brewed and the other is industrially brewed,” explained Nkosinathi Fekete, a University of the Western Cape drop-out who was found drinking during the afternoon in a Katlehong shebeen.
“The most dangerous is the home-brew. The industrial brew is okay, as long you drink it after eating something.”
According to Katlehong brewer Sophie (not her real name; brewing alcohol at home is illegal in South Africa), many people prefer her brand of alcohol. “The beer is very, very strong. Once you drink it you forget who you are, you can’t talk or even walk. You piss in your pants and soil yourself. That is why it is called thakunyisa [it will make you shit].
“It only takes one day to brew the beer. I take stale bread, crush it and mix it with water, then add yeast, and the insides of a battery, then leave it to ferment overnight and sell it the following day.”
She added that her production costs are very low since she only has to buy yeast. “I send my children to pick up stale bread and batteries from the rubbish dump,” she said.
The main ingredients in batteries are manganese and alkaline. A representative for the Poison Centre at Johannesburg hospital said eating these chemicals could lead to death. The other effects are loss of appetite, emotional confusion, hallucination, shaking and cramps.
Sophie brews the beer in four black metal containers in a shack she built next to her house. There are green flies all over the place and her yard is always filled with beer drinkers who arrive as early as 8am and often fall asleep there. From the street one can smell the beer and the urine.
Inside the yard, the beer drinkers looked exhausted. They just sat looking at each other dozing and waving away the flies from their beer mugs.
Fekete said the reason why many people drink the beer is because it is cheap. “It only costs R1 per litre,” he said, pointing out that he only needs a litre to get drunk.
“I know that it is dangerous, they mix all sort of things into it that you may not believe, but it is the only beer I can afford. I am not working and have no money.”
Katlehong clinic nurse Phumula Bhenya said: “We haven’t had any cases recently linked to that beer, but we are aware of it. It’s probably because we are no longer doing home visits where we can identify the causes of disease that we don’t have cases.”