When revellers develop wings to fly across the land, fellow countrymen self-destruct

By Peter Kimani

Kenya: A fortnight ago, as I drove past Makutano on the Nairobi-Mombasa-Machakos intersection, I recalled reporting about a tragedy that befell some villagers there after consuming a lethal brew moons ago.

I remembered the name of the death merchant, and who I recalled being sentenced to serve three years in jail, a mere slap on the wrist considering the death and devastation that her merchandise left in its trail. She has been long released since, although her victims’ sentence was instant death.

Yet again, the nation is steeped in mourning as more compatriots succumb to deadly drinks that go by different names, although they appear to originate from the same source.

Kosovo, Countryman and Wings are the cheap liquors blamed for nearly 100 deaths, a number that could rise as many more are still in critical conditions. Many others will need rehabilitation after losing their sight.

Kenyans have a complicated relationship with alcohol; some claim men are killing themselves through booze because they do not know how to deal with their eroded social power, and the rise and rise of women power. To bury their frustrations, they hit the drink until lights are knocked off, quite literally.

The now familiar but stoic declaration — we shall drink on even if you put out the lights — by revellers who had lost their sight but never realised it, is an affirmation of our determination to self-destruct.

This succinct statement was delivered by other drinking folks only a few moons ago.

But rather than lament about alcohol as a social challenge, let’s appreciate its political economy. Without this burgeoning “cottage” economy, which requires very modest capital investment, the nature of our political organising would have a very different flavour.

After all, since we seem to be in the grip of a political fever every so often, the cheap liquor provides the necessary palliative that occasion minimal disruption when rivals clash. And politicians do not have to rob a bank every time they want to hire such mobs.

Police corruption

Then there is the question of police corruption. Kenyans have collectively conceded something need be done to improve the lot of our law enforcement agencies. But since we talk the walk, traders provide a practical response. They appreciate conducive business environment entails more than good road networks, so traffic policemen are guaranteed decent earnings as long as they do not prevent their products from hitting the market in good time.

Put another way, there are many direct and indirect beneficiaries who rely on the production and distribution of lethal brews, and who stand to lose a lot if the tap is turned off.

The suggestion to “mainstream” such production and allow multiple government agencies to regulate the illicit sector has always been met with puritanical hesitance.

Which begs the question: if the Government is unable or unwilling to intervene, and is equally hesitant to remove the hefty taxes that push the available beers and spirits off the limit to a majority of the population, is it not complicit in the conspiracy to keep them under persistent risk of drinking themselves to death?

Those dispensing the death drinks are certainly not without a sense of imagination. To accelerate the distillation process, they experiment with industrial compounds that are easily accessible. They seem confident that even when their experiments backfire, they will be back before long.

So the dead shall bury their dead, or in the political parlance of the day, accept and move on.