Mamogaswa, Setswana, and South Africa’s Women Storytellers
Obakeng Malope
Back in Final Gravity Issue 05, we published a conversation between Amanda Bruns and Obakeng Malope about the story of Mamogaswa, a South African water spirit, and a collaboration beer they brewed in the being’s honor. Obakeng has now produced a documentary film about Mamogaswa, the South African oral storytelling heritage, the brewing of Setswana—a traditional sorghum beer—and the women who have carried these legacies into the present day.
The documentary begins by introducing us to Obakeng’s village in South Africa and the women storytellers who have preserved so many of the region’s cultural traditions, one of which will be of particular interest to beer lovers: homebrewed sorghum beer. These women share their processes for brewing the beer—which vary slightly house to house—and Obakeng shares video of the brewing process as well. It’s a remarkable document for those interested in traditional brewing techniques around the world. She explains that these beers are typically brewed for important events, such as weddings, funerals, or initiations.
We then hear from these women as they share not only stories about Mamogaswa and other folktales and beliefs, but their memories of how these stories were shared with them as children. The oral storytelling tradition has been, in many cases, the primary or only means by which these stories have been passed down and preserved, and the number of women who have held onto these stories to pass down has dwindled over the years, making this act of preservation all the more important.
Toward the end of the documentary, Obakeng talks about the modern steps of commercial brewing—malting grain, milling it, soaking it in hot water so enzymes can convert starch into fermentable sugar, and adding yeast to ferment it—and highlights how these are essentially the same things South African homebrewing women have always done. The processes might look different, but the underlying principles are the same. She reflects on whether her people’s brewing knowledge was, at some point, stolen in the same way so many other resources and traditions were, knowledge that is now being sold back to them in the form of commercially brewed and packaged “traditional” beers.
When she watched her grandmother brew Setswana, she asked the older woman why she did certain things during the process. The answer was inevitably that that was how her grandmother had taught her.
“I went to the city of Johannesburg to study filmmaking, only to find out I had left a storyteller at home,” she says as the documentary concludes. “I went to the city of Johannesburg to study beer brewing, while I left a beer brewer at home.”
Obakeng’s documentary is an important account of her culture’s traditions and stories, and a poignant reflection upon the precarious nature of those traditions and stories, and the necessity of preserving them.
To watch the documentary, send a small donation here and email Obakeng at obakeng.p.malope at gmail dot com to request access.