The Pratts have done a different thing from most people. After eight years of retirement in the seaside suburb of Fish Hoek, we have moved nearer the city, to Pinelands.
We were warned by friends that Pinelands was ‘dry’. Having lived in Fish Hoek since 1957 (with a gap from 1994 to 2016 while serving as a priest) I knew exactly what that meant, what with the ’Defenders of Fish Hoek’ and all that! Another friend told us how she had heard that Pinelands was dry and had wondered why the infamous Western Cape winter rains didn’t reach Pinelands while soaking Newlands a mile or two nearer the mountains! Then the Pinelandians or is it Pinelanders had to explain to her that there had been, up to the formation of the uni-city in the late 1990s, no shops or restaurants serving alcohol.
In Fish Hoek that situation has now completely reversed. All the supermarkets in Fish Hoek have their adjacent bottle stores and most of the restaurants are licensed. Here in Pinelands they have only gone halfway. The restaurants serve alcohol but there are still no off-license or bottle stores within the old Pinelands municipality boundaries, though there are many just ‘over the border’ in Maitland and Mowbray and maybe at other sites I haven’t discovered yet.
Living Fish Hoek from the late-1950s I knew that ‘dry’ meant no sale of alcohol. I first came across it while in Wynberg Military Hospital to have my tonsils out aged ten years old. In the waiting room there was a sign saying that the SADFI Canteen was a dry canteen. I had to ask my parents what that meant. SADFI or South African Defence Force Institute was a shop or store selling all manner of goods to service personnel and their families living or working in the military camp. As thius was a ‘Dry Canteen’ no alcohol would have been sold.
Although I knew what ‘dry’ meant I wondered if there was an opposite? Could a canteen selling alcohol be called a ‘wet canteen’? I discovered that there was. The term ‘wet’ was used to describe stores which had alcohol among the items for sale.
Many years later I came across these terms, ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ while researching my master’s thesis. The subject was the Anglican Church’s mission to the Muslim in the Western Cape. Although over the years many priests had been asked to take on this task by the Bishop of Cape Town, many saw a greater need elsewhere in the diocese. A good example were the Cowley Fathers (SSJE- Sacred Society of St John the Evangelist). They had been asked to come to the Cape to do the mission work among Muslims but found that little of no work was being done among the migrant Xhosa men working as stevedores at the docks or those constructing the dams on top of Table Mountain. Thus, the Cowley fathers re-directed their efforts in this direction.
In my research I had to ensure that there wasn’t any Muslim mission work being done by individual Cowley Fathers. I came across a reference to one father who had given evidence to the Cape Colonial Government Commission on the drunkenness of the so-called ‘Coloured’ people and other indigenous people in the Colony. In this Blue Book Report the Cowley Father giving evidence spoke about large number of ‘Wet Canteens’ in the poorer areas enabling easy access to alcohol for lowly paid workers. Having previously had the knowledge about ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ I knew what a Wet Canteen was and that it was not a bar through which a river flowed!
I wonder how much longer Pinelands will remain ‘dry’? I am told that a mall containing a Checkers supermarket is being built on the old Conradie Hospital site. This is just out of Pinelands but if customers want to purchase liquor as well as groceries I wonder how many will stop grocery shopping at the local Pick n Pay or Spar and drive to Conradie Park and kill two birds with a one-stop-shop. This could lead to a loss of trade, force these supermarkets also applying for a grocery store liquor licenses. Personally, I have no problem but let’s see how it all develops.
