Mereki shopping centre, a popular spot for revellers in the working-class suburb of Warren Park in Harare, is unusually quiet for a Friday night. In fact, the place looks virtually deserted. The few customers all seem to be nursing the very first pints of beer they bought since arriving here almost an hour ago.
On a ”normal” Friday night, Mereki shopping centre would have been teeming with people seeking a temporary escape from Zimbabwe’s severe, six-year-old economic crisis. But a shock hike in the price of beer announced by the Zimbabwean government last month has virtually emptied most nightspots, including those at Mereki, of revellers.
A pint of beer now costs a cool Z$220 (Z$220 000 under the recent redenomination of Zimbabwe’s currency, up from the $150 000 it cost last month).
”Business has been very low over the past three weeks. We have had very few sales since the latest round of price increases.
”Previously, people would get used to the new prices after about three days and they start flocking back to the pubs, but not this time round,” said Peter Sandiresi, a barman at a nightspot at Mereki.
Zimbabweans are struggling under a severe economic crisis most critics blame on repression and wrong economic policies by President Robert Mugabe, particularly his seizure of white-owned land for redistribution to landless blacks six years ago.
The economic crisis has seen inflation shooting to 993,6%, one of the highest in the world outside a war zone. Food, fuel and essential medicines are also in short supply.
No wonder that for most Zimbabweans, the cure to their worries lay in the bottle.
But last month’s hike in the price of beer left seems to have taken away the only safe way for most Zimbabweans to bury their sorrows, forcing many to resort to other, not-so-innocent means to find solace.
Marijuana, known in the local Shona language as mbanje, and a local brew known as kachasu that is banned under the law, are now in vogue, because they are not only cheap but pack a potent kick.
Sandiresi said bar owners at Mereki have also recorded high sales on spirits, popularly known in Harare’s street lingo as the ”take me quick”. The bitter and cheap spirits all have one thing in common — an excessively high alcohol content.
Police spokesperson Inspector Memory Pamire confirmed that the use of illegal drugs such as marijuana have gone up in Harare, but said the police will step up raids on black-market traders selling the illegal brews and drugs.
”We continue to raid these selling points every week. New kachasu selling points have sprouted in Hatcliffe extension, Borrowdale, Hatfield and Mbare [all suburbs of Harare], but we continue to snuff them out. We are also arresting marijuana vendors who have been on the increase in the past few weeks,” she said.
For example, three weeks ago, police in Harare arrested three people for possessing 30kg of marijuana with an estimated street value of Z$3-million.
The three, who were on their way to Epworth, a settlement on Harare’s eastern border, confessed that they had acquired the drug from Mozambique for sale in the poor suburb where they already had a loyal base of customers.
Admire Mangisi, a social sciences lecturer at Mutare University, said in times of national crisis, beer consumption increases as people seek ways of reducing stress levels.
”Obviously a significant part of the population is turning to dangerous drugs and illicit brews. In times of economic crisis, most people are able to avoid nervous breakdowns when they resort to alcohol to cope with economic hardships,” said Mangisi.
But with the recent hike in the price of beer, the graph is only going up on consumption of marijuana and illicit brews such as kachasu, a distilled gin generally thought to contain anything between 10% and 70% pure alcohol and whose effects on the health of consumers are neither documented nor known.
Perhaps one could try guessing what sort of side effects kachasu might have on drinkers by looking at some of the ingredients used to make the potent brew — they include any of the following and more: fertiliser, washing-soap powder, acid collected from old batteries, brown sugar and water. — ZimOnline