Pop Quiz Time:
Citizens of which of the following countries drink the most Guinness?
A) Ireland
B) United States
C) Nigeria
The answer is C) Nigeria.
There is a host of reasons for this, but primary among them is that Ireland’s finest export is believed to contribute to sexual potency. (Insert your own sex & alcohol joke here.)
Nigeria’s affinity for Guinness reminds me of the politics of beer in South Africa. My favorite South African beer is Castle Milk Stout. And yet among many whites in South Africa, Milk Stout (which is far superior to regular Castle Lager, the most popular of South African Breweries’ products – my American readers should imagine the difference between Budweiser and Guinness) is, as I was sadly often told, “kaffir beer,” the K-word being the most noxious slur imaginable in southern Africa. That even beer reflects racial politics in South Africa reveals just how deeply the apartheid past infected the larger society. These beer politics have slowly changed over the last decade or so, as has so much in South Africa, but they have not changed entirely.
