MAIN PHOTO: DINEO MOEKETSI-LANGA
VIEWPOINT: SANDILE MEMELA
Glenlivet has apologized. Dineo Moeketsi Langa has apologized. The Minister has spoken. The ANC has spoken. The advert has been deleted.
We can all now go back to pretending we are a sober, morally upright nation that respects women.
What a farce.
The backlash against the Glenlivet Women’s Month advert – which showed actress Dineo Langa walking through portraits of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Lilian Ngoyi and Sophie Williams-De Bruyn while holding a glass of whisky and invoking “Wathint’ abafazi, wathint’ imbokodo” – is justified in one narrow sense: you cannot use the 1956 Women’s March to sell single malt. That march was about dignity, not dreams. The women of 1956 were fighting pass laws, not looking for a pour.
But the sheer moral hysteria that followed smacks of hypocrisy in a country where every party, every celebration, every funeral, every stokvel meeting, every soccer victory, every matric pass is accompanied by hard drinking.
South Africa does not have a drinking problem. South Africa IS a drinking problem.
WE DRINK WHISKY TO SHOW WE HAVE ARRIVED
In fact, drinking single malt whisky is a status symbol among politicians and celebrities. This is the part no one wants to say out loud.
Go to any government after-party, any ANC gala dinner, any corporate launch, any celebrity birthday in Sandton. What is on the table? Glenlivet, Johnnie Walker Blue, Hennessy. The bottle is not just alcohol; it is proof that you have arrived. The minister who drinks cheap beer is seen as not having made it. The tenderpreneur who orders a single malt is showing he is now part of the elite.
Our parliament has a bar. Our shebeens are churches. Our taverns are parliament. And we want to pretend that Glenlivet offended us?
We are offended by the advert, not by the drinking that kills 60 people a day in alcohol-related violence.
This is worsened by the increasingly large number of women who drink and are arrested for drunken driving. It is no longer a male problem. Go to any roadblock on a Friday night in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town – young women, educated, professional, driving SUVs, three times over the limit. The liberation we fought for has come to mean the freedom to drink like men, to self-destruct like men.
There is a new saying: they don’t Cook like their mothers but drink like their fathers.
The commercial is aspirational. That is what advertising does. It sells aspiration. And for many women, especially black women who have been told for centuries to be humble, to be small, to be domestic workers, holding a glass of expensive whisky in a beautiful room surrounded by icons of power is aspirational. It says: I too can occupy space. I too can afford luxury. I too can be the woman in the room.
There are many factors that drive women to drink. Stress, trauma, GBV, single parenthood, unemployment, the pressure to be superwoman in a country that gives women very little support. To reduce it to “Glenlivet is causing GBV” is lazy moralism. South African men were beating women long before single malt arrived, and they did it on cheap traditional beer too.
GOVERNMENT’S SELECTIVE SOBRIETY
But the disappointing thing is that the government has failed to take harsh steps against the sale of alcohol in the country, despite the harm it causes.
Minister Sindisiwe Chikunga said correctly: “Alcohol abuse and harmful drinking are among factors that can exacerbate gender-based violence and femicide.”
Correct. So what has the government done? Nothing.
If alcohol is such a driver of GBV, why is alcohol sold on every corner? Why can you buy beer at a petrol station at 10pm? Why is a tavern allowed to operate next to a primary school in Soweto? Why did the government, when it had the perfect opportunity during COVID-19 to permanently reduce trading hours and regulate the industry, cave to the liquor lobby within weeks?
We have over 30,000 illegal shebeens and taverns. We have children as young as 12 drinking in townships. We have a dop system legacy where farmworkers are still paid in wine in the Western Cape, something the ANC statement correctly noted. And we have a government that collects R50 billion in sin tax from alcohol and therefore has no incentive to truly curb it.
If the statements issued by political parties and government are to be taken seriously, they must seriously address the availability and sale of alcohol in the country. Ban advertising near schools. Reduce trading hours. Enforce age limits. Tax the industry properly to fund GBV shelters. Build rehab centres. Don’t just issue a press release when a white whisky brand makes a mistake.
The ANC says the women of 1956 were not marketing props. True. But neither are they props for your Women’s Month speech when your own municipalities license taverns that become rape scenes every weekend.
ARTISTIC FREEDOM AND ACTOR’S HUNGER
And then there is artistic freedom that mirrors what happens in society. At opening nights of art exhibitions and other works alcohol is known to flow freely. At the Durban July, at the Loeries, at gallery openings in Rosebank, at book launches – the first thing you are offered is wine or whisky. We toast our art with alcohol. We celebrate our liberation with alcohol. We mourn our dead with alcohol.
Art is supposed to mirror society. Glenlivet’s ad mirrored exactly what we are: a society that commodifies everything, including struggle. We put Winnie on t-shirts to sell them. We put Mandela on coins to sell them. We put Steve Biko on expensive sneakers. Why is whisky suddenly a red line?
It also raises the role and responsibility of actors and what they are willing to do to promote their visibility and celebrity status.
Dineo Langa is a talented actress. But in an industry where work is scarce and visibility is currency, actors will take the cheque. How many actors who condemned Glenlivet have advertised alcohol, gambling, skin-lightening creams, or political parties themselves? The actor is not a curator of history; she is a gig worker trying to pay bond and school fees. To maintain a lifestyle.
Her apology was necessary, but the bigger question is: why do we require actors to be moral custodians of history when we don’t require our ministers to be?
Glenlivet made a mistake. They took a sacred slogan – “You strike a woman, you strike a rock” – and turned it into “You strike a woman, you pour her a rock glass of whisky.” That is tone-deaf, crass, and worthy of calling out.
But let us not pretend we called it out because we are a sober nation that respects women. We called it out because it was easy.
It is easy to cancel an advert. It is hard to cancel the tavern economy that funds political branches. It is easy to demand Glenlivet investigate how the post was “conceptualised and approved.” It is hard to investigate how a liquor license was approved 50 meters from a school.
Delete the advert all you want. The bottle remains on the table.
