Coffee With Leopard
If you were having coffee with me, I would be happy to have you join my tangle of words. Make yourself at home, and do mind the leopard..
Oh what leopard you ask? Don’t worry, not the animal, we never see those unless we go to a national park like all tourists. Which reminds me, that our tourism industry mainly serves global and regional visitors, that it’s not surprising to find people who have never been to any of our widely recognisable attractions, but that’s a tale for another day…
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that a few months ago Delta Corporation expanded its beverage portfolio with the launch of Leopard Extra a new traditional opaque beer brand with 5% alcohol, marketed as The Beer With The Bite.
It follows in the footsteps of the iconic Chibuku traditional brew by the legacy market leader, which has been steadily losing its market share to rival brand Nyathi made by The Buffalo Brewing Company (TBBC), a subsidiary of the Zimbabwean conglomerate Innscor Africa Limited. Word on the street is that The Buffalo Brewing Company poached former Chibuku brewmasters to develop their smooth, premium sorghum brew, effectively challenging Delta’s long-standing dominance.
Leopard Extra is one of Delta’s responses in regaining its market share. The new brew is almost like Chibuku, and subjectively tastes smoother and less effervescent than the Chibuku Super. Its gotten mixed responses from patrons but the overall agreement is that you can feel the increased alcohol percentage and its not to be over-indulged as the hangover is akin to being hit by a truck.
To those uninitiated to our traditional opaque beer, while it looks like a frothy, rich milkshake, the taste is acquired. Some try and make it more palatable by adding milk and chocolate and breweries have been experimenting with various flavours. Nyathi has a popular baobab flavour while Chibuku has had Ginger, Banana and Pineapple flavours.
South Africa also has or had a Leopard Special opaque brew, known for its caution statement, which instead of the usual, do not drink and drive warns people not to drink and walk, on account of its imbibers not commonly being in the car-owning demographic.
Traditional beverages are perceived as being “low class” or because one cant afford better, while the latter might have truth to it, a large part of this perception, stems from how historically, the colonial policies basically made it illegal for black people to drink anything else… unless you had a special permit authorising you to drink clear beers.
And like a warped sort of Stockholm syndrome, we desired what they denied us, and thus made that their lifestyle a status symbol and the epitome of success, fork and knife dishes, washed down with bottled beverages.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that this post has been in my draft ever since I had a brilliant idea to title it as Oh Look It’s a leopard in a parody of the Lion King Circle of Life but I did not have 27 million dollars laying around to pay for a lawsuit… But now that a U.S. Judge dismissed the case against Learnmore Jonasi.
This whole saga could have been resolved amicably sooner had the parties involved not gotten high off the attention generated; in the old times a council of elders would have presided over the disagreement beneath the shade of tree over calabashes of traditional beer.
If you are having our national airline is reintroducing a direct flight from Harare to London after a 14 year hiatus. The route is made possible via a wet lease agreement between Air Zimbabwe and a Spanish corporation. The Airbus A330 300 had a water canon salute at Robert Mugabe International Airport ahead of its inaugural flight.
Now in a crazy move that would have you wonder what government officials drink, they packed into the plane for a trip to London so they could relaunch the plane there as well…
So they all hopped on a flight so they could shake hands and welcome each other in London? Could they not have let their Embassy staff handle things that side without turning it into an eye-brow raising spectacle. Especially with the talk around the actual wet lease agreement whose terms have not been made public and the allegations of charter company’s executives being under investigation for money laundering and fraudulent misuse of state funds, making one wonder if all is as it should be…
Meanwhile, a wave of civic protest is being organised for 31 July against the constitutionality of the recently signed Constitution Amendment Bill Number 3. But without anyone claiming leadership or organisation of the protest, it’s likely to fizzle out into another business-as-usual day with people being strongly encouraged to go about their usual routines.
Whats been happening in your neck of the woods?
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