The Human Toll of South Africa’s Illicit Alcohol Trade
“We thought they had eaten something, but now we believe it was poison.”
Friday, 26 July 2024. A group of farmworkers in Koelenhof, a farming community outside Stellenbosch, sat down together to drink.
They drank gin, about 1.5 litres poured from a 25-litre container, chasing it with soft drink. They had drunk from the same supply about a month earlier and suffered no ill effects, so no one was concerned.
They felt no ill effects on Friday or Saturday, but that all changed on Sunday.
Their eyesight began to fail, and then came the nausea and the vomiting. They called an ambulance.
Four of them did not survive.
Police confirmed that a 41-year-old man was declared dead on Sunday, 28 July. By Wednesday, 31 July, two more people, a woman of 43 and a girl of 16, had died in a Parow hospital.
Four lives were lost within a single week, leaving a close-knit agricultural community in deep mourning and detectives opening inquest dockets to investigate the tragedy.
No official cause of death has been published, but methanol poisoning is suspected. If that is what the group drank, they could not have known over those quiet forty-eight hours between Friday and Sunday, that methanol has no immediate, visible side-effects. According to the UK Health Security Agency, once it is swallowed there is typically a gap of 12 to 48 hours, before a person experiences any symptoms at all.
The Human Cost Behind the Empty Chair
When a life is lost to counterfeit or toxic liquor, grief is compounded by the economic impact of the loss of a bread winner. In farming hamlets, informal settlements, and townships across South Africa, the victims of illicit alcohol are frequently primary breadwinners, the daily and weekly earners whose wages keep households functioning.
The death or severe disability of a breadwinner triggers a devastating domino effect across the family and community. Overnight, dependents are plunged into acute economic distress, facing funeral costs at the exact moment their primary monthly income for groceries, electricity, rent, and basic living expenses vanishes.
Elderly parents who depend on working adult children for medication and subsistence are left without support, while school-aged children are frequently forced to drop out of basic education or seek informal, low-paying casual labour just to keep food on the table.
Survival does not always mean recovery. Dr Shamal Ramesar, research director at the Drinks Federation of South Africa (DF-SA), told EWN that methanol causes irreversible blindness, and that at high concentrations it can lead to multiple organ failure, which is almost always accompanied by death.
The Koelenhof family reported that the survivor’s sight returned, a miracle given the prognosis expressed by the medical field. Medical literature indicates that once the eyes are affected, the chance of regaining vision is poor. When a survivor is left permanently blind or with organ damage, a family can go overnight from relying on that person’s income to caring for them full time.
This tragedy is not an isolated incident. In June 2020, ten men were admitted to False Bay Hospital in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, after drinking homemade beer in Masiphumelele. Six of them, aged between 35 and 49, died. The Western Cape health department confirmed the admissions as methanol poisoning. That case involved home brew, not bottled spirits, but methanol is the poison named there and the poison suspected at Koelenhof.
From Industrial Smuggling to Local Taverns
Nobody has linked the Koelenhof gin to any organised supply. But the scale of the supply chain that police and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) have been pulling apart was shown in July 2026, when SARS and the Hawks intercepted a 26,000-litre consignment of 96% ethanol.
The shipment had been imported by sea and declared as ‘in transit’ to another African country. SARS said it had instead been diverted to an unlicensed and unregistered warehouse in Kempton Park, where it was being offloaded into 1,000-litre containers. It was one of four linked shipments under investigation. Had it been imported legally, it would have attracted about R9.1 million in excise duties and taxes.
Similar busts across the country reveal how widespread the network has become. In March 2024, police in Verulam, north of Durban, seized 12,000 litres of ethanol from a warehouse operating as a shop-fitting business, and found empty 750ml vodka bottles and bottle caps on site. In September 2025, the Cape Times reported that police had confiscated containers of ethanol, empty bottles and machines at another illegal facility.
Ethanol is the alcohol base of every legal spirit, but illegal operators do not follow the same rules. Kurt Moore, Chief Executive of the South African Liquor Brandowners Association (SALBA), says illicit producers do not adhere to manufacturing standards or quality controls. Business Report reported in 2025 that criminals often use industrial-grade ethanol or dilute products with unsafe substances.
Moore says illicit products turn up in both informal and formal outlets, and that they are getting harder to identify. KwaZulu-Natal MEC Siboniso Duma said in 2024 that township taverns account for 43% of all alcohol sales in South Africa. Carte Blanche reported in August 2026 on an insider describing how counterfeit stock is made and packed in recycled bottles, and sold in mainstream shops and restaurants.
A Shadow Over Everyday Life
The reach of unregulated liquor extends deep into the social fabric of local communities. Sikelela Zokufa, founder of the Somagwaza Institute, told the Cape Argus that illicit alcohol has reached celebrations that follow initiation school ceremonies. He said some hosts pay for stock that never arrives, and others serve it to guests without knowing what is inside.
A survey released alongside the DF-SA research found that 80% of respondents are worried about the health risks of unregulated alcohol. Nearly half said they know someone harmed by illicit alcohol, and 29% said they know someone who died from it. Those answers record what people say they know. They are not a count of deaths.
Separately, the DF-SA estimates that about 18% of alcohol sold in South Africa in 2024 was illegal. That is an industry body’s estimate, and the reporting reviewed contains no independent verification of it.
The true toll is not on the public record. As of October 2026, public reporting contains no national count of deaths from illicit alcohol. The South African Paint Manufacturing Association has said methanol poisonings are often misdiagnosed as acute alcoholism, which would mean recorded cases understate the problem.
Without mandatory testing of uninspected bottles and systematic post-mortem tracking, official figures represent only a small fraction of the actual loss of human life.
According to eNCA’s summary of its Making Sense programme, liquor law attorney Danie Cronjé points to complicated licensing procedures and zoning barriers as reasons many small traders operate informally. On the demand side, Aadielah Maker Diedericks of the Southern African Alcohol Policy Alliance told the Cape Times that affordability pushes consumers toward illicit sources, alongside other social and economic factors, although most alcohol consumed in South Africa is still legal.
Price drives demand; as economic pressures squeeze household budgets, lower prices make illicit products appealing despite the hidden, fatal risks.
SARS Commissioner Johnstone Makhubu has said the illicit alcohol trade deprives the state of revenue needed for public services and exposes consumers to potentially unsafe products.
Sunday Morning
For the farmworkers in Koelenhof, Friday and Saturday passed without a single warning. On Sunday their eyesight began to fail, they became nauseous and began to vomit, and by the end of the week four of them were dead.
Somewhere today, in a local tavern, a corner bottle store, or a social gathering, someone is about to buy a bottle. Until enforcement shuts down the pipeline from industrial chemical warehouses to neighbourhood outlets, families across South Africa remain just one bottle away from an unforeseen disaster.