It’s a typical Cape winter morning — weather for cocoa, not cola — when I meet South Africa-born academic Sara Byala at the eclectic Obz Books for the launch of Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African.
Like the product at the centre of her book, Byala is effervescent and a little enigmatic: young and spirited, but also pensive — qualities that suit a historian, especially one of the longue durée approach that seeks out imperceptible trends and impacts across centuries.
Bottled has introduced me to the Capitalocene — the inexorable climax of humankind’s actions which have altered the natural world in the service of capital. Does she think capitalism has reached a tipping point towards a new shape, whatever that may be?
“As a social and cultural historian, my work charts change over time [but] does not predict the future,” Byala responds. “My book points to the fact that the notion behind capitalist expansion — the idea that unmitigated growth could come at any cost — is no longer held by anyone, as demonstrated by Coca-Cola’s focus on sustainability. Whether this means greater constraints on companies, a turn to socialism, or some other outcome altogether will depend on a wide range of contextual variables.”
The issue of duality, or hybridity, features regularly in Bottled. The millions of Coca-Cola signs in Africa — in urban, peri-urban and the remotest areas — suggest, through a Westernised lens, the power and reach of the global corporation and a sense of condescension at how locals have lapped up the infiltration. But for many on the continent the Coke symbol represents, instead, entrepreneurship, upward mobility, modernity. “Africans are not simply the subject of capitalist interventions, but have also participated in capitalism,” Byala points out.
Africa-specific revenue and profit numbers aren’t discernible from Coca-Cola’s annual reports, because the continent is grouped with Europe and the Middle East. Indicatively, in 2022 this sector contributed 16% of $43bn in worldwide revenues and generated 36% of nearly $11bn in operating profit.
My book attempts to position Africans as agents, at the centre
— Sara Byala
Flipping the script
Given these returns — and considering a longer-term reckoning — I ask Byala for a judgment. If Coca-Cola were a person, how would it respond to the question: have you done enough; are you pleased with what you’ve accomplished in Africa?
“I cannot imagine the brand as a singular ahistorical entity,” she responds, seeing through my ruse, “since my research is about the opposite. I understand the impetus to have me make this guess, but it’s not one I’m in a position to make.”
I persevere. Given Coca-Cola’s significant investment and involvement in social upliftment and sustainability projects in Africa, does she think the company can be accused of “washing” its reputation?
“The very idea of washing suggests that a company is doing something simply to look good and cover up its bad work. There’s no doubt that some of this did take place over the course of Coca-Cola’s long history, globally. But there’s also no doubt that it’s easy to denigrate any sustainability work with this word,” she says.
“My book attempts to position Africans as agents, at the centre. As such, I complicate the notion of washing by flipping the question: what if corporate activities, such as those involving water, are evidence of a corporation bending to the will of locals rather than the converse?”
Her point is that a push-pull is at play in the affairs of corporations, because they are subject to the same societal forces that make for a lively but often ambiguous, murky world.
Afterwards, walking to my car, I glance upwards. There it is, on a neighbouring building — the inevitable red-and-white Coca-Cola sign. For better or worse, as Byala writes early in Bottled, “Coke is everywhere in Africa”.
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