On last week’s Inside Africa show, CNN International explored South Africa’s booming craft alcohol industry and met some of the people transforming the brewing sector.
Inside Africa travelled to Eshowe, a town located in KwaZulu-Natal to meet the chief executive of the Zululand Brewing Company, Richard Chennells.
Chennells spoke about creating the brewery, “The motivation behind the Zululand Brewing Company was purely to put Eshowe, our town, on the map. Our brewery is very small, but it packs a big punch. We’ve got a great brand, it’s done amazing things.”
The television show team also spoke with brewmistress Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela who is the first black female brewmaster. Nxusani-Mawela narrated that in 2015, she decided to leave her corporate job and create her own company called Brewsters Craft.
“I left corporate realising that the craft beer industry in South Africa was growing but it lacked formal training, and not everybody would have been as fortunate as I am, who had to work at a brewery to learn the science of brewing, so that’s where for me it started. The brand is actually coming from my clan name. It’s like a tribal name.
“And women that brew beer in Africa, that on the continent women are still the main brewers, they would be known after their clan names. I wanted something clean, something world-class, something we could take anywhere in the world and showcase what we have as Africans,” she said.
While the unbanning of alcohol sales may have provided some much-needed relief, the craft beer industry has been too hard hit, but Nxusani-Mawela is certain that the sector will recover.
“Once we are on the other side, I think we are going to have a new breed of entrepreneurs who will have a different thinking, who will probably introduce innovative and new ways of carrying the industry forward, but I do really believe that there’s still a future for our industry,” she said.
Chennells was also confident that craft brewers in SA will survive the pandemic and is hopeful for the future.
“Due to the lockdown and this terrible pandemic, a lot of breweries have taken a knock and it’s really unfortunate. It’s been tough but as South Africans, we always bounce back,” he said.