Illicit Liquor, Prohibition and Women Resistance: A Case Study of Cato Manor, and Urhoboland, 1950 – 1960

Abstract

The colonial and apartheid periods in South Africa reflect a history of racial discriminations and inequalities which had a debilitating impact on the social lives of the Black people in particular. The institutionalisation of Apartheid systematically restricted the rights of the indigenous people of South Africa, as did the colonial period in Nigeria, from gaining access to social, economic and political institutions, which had a severe impact on African peoples. This paper compares the nexus between the colonial laws enacted by the colonial administrators towards prohibiting the sale and the consumption of locally brewed beer and subsequent resistance by Black South Africans in Cato Manor and the Urhobo of Nigeria’s Niger Delta region as case studies. The paper equally highlights the apartheid government’s attempt to control Black women’s occupational livelihood on beer trade, and also reveals how civil disobedience was used as resistance mechanism against colonial authorities. It also analyses the impact of beer consumption and the trade on local peoples. The study relies on both primary and secondary materials to theorise the beer trade in terms of resistance to the racial and class hegemony of settlers.