Chibuku

Shake before drinking

Chibuku is brewed mainly from malted sorghum and maize, according to Wikipedia, and Delta names maize and sorghum grown in Zimbabwe. It contains starch, germ and yeast, which settle to the bottom of the pack, so it has to be shaken before drinking; that habit gave the brand its nickname, Chibuku Shake Shake. The historian Nathaniel Chimhete notes that the shake-shake carton also made the beer easier for drivers to sell on the road and for customers to carry.

The beer is still alive when it is sold. Wikipedia describes a fresh Chibuku at about 0.5 per cent alcohol on its first day, which may reach 4 per cent before its shelf life runs out four to six days after packing. That short life shapes how it is made: according to Wikipedia’s article on Delta, the company runs 14 sorghum breweries across Zimbabwe so that Chibuku is brewed close to where it is drunk.

Delta sells it in two main forms: Scud, a non-carbonated beer, and Chibuku Super, a carbonated sorghum beer that Delta also offers in banana, pineapple and ginger flavours.

Named after a notebook

The brand began north of the Zambezi. Chimhete, writing in the journal African Economic History, records that the South African-based industrialist Max Heinrich (Marx in Chimhete’s spelling) founded Heinrich’s Syndicate in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, in 1955, and Wikipedia gives Zambia as Chibuku’s country of origin.

Both sources trace the name to a book. In Heinrich’s brewery, customers’ comments on the brew were written down in a recipe book, and Chibuku is an adaptation of the local word for book.

Breaking the beer-hall monopoly

Delta dates the first Chibuku brewed in Zimbabwe to 1962. Chimhete’s study shows how hard that market was to enter. In colonial Salisbury, now Harare, the city council held a legal monopoly on brewing and selling African beer, served in municipal beer halls, and Heinrich’s company met opposition from four municipal authorities when it arrived in Southern Rhodesia in the early 1960s.

The company established its breweries in Seke, Chitungwiza, just outside the municipal boundaries, and sold its beer at the roadside and through bottle stores and shebeens. Chimhete records that Chibuku remained a contraband product in Salisbury until September 1979, yet by the late 1960s it was already the most popular African beer there. Wikipedia’s article on Delta mentions a Chibuku brewery in Chitungwiza in which the company has invested 12 million US dollars to raise production.

Beer, dance and culture

Chibuku’s name reaches beyond the carton. Each year Delta, through the Chibuku brand, runs the Chibuku Neshamwari Traditional Dance Festival with the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe; The Herald describes it as a platform for preserving and promoting the country’s traditional dances, with provincial groups competing for a national title, and a Delta release describes its provincial competitions and national finals.

Chibuku is brewed far beyond Zimbabwe too. Wikipedia lists brewers in Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. In Emblem World, Chibuku sits in the Zimbabwe drink collection, where people discover and rate local food, drink and music.