Anyway, I can attest to the fact that my decision had absolutely nothing to do with the trend in my adopted home of Botswana. Their president Ian Khama hates alcohol and its effects second only to Mugabe. The reasons are personal, his family having been affected by alcoholism, his father Sir Seretse and sister, Jackie being notable victims. We all know how Batswana love their drink. They will drink anyone under the table particularly the women.
So when Khama accepted the presidency on Fools’ Day last year, a day his countrymen will never forget for various reasons, he declared his four ‘D’s’ chief among them DISCIPLINE. Being a military man he should know the meaning of the word. He felt that Batswana have no discipline because they doth drink too much. So he went about sorting out the problem. First, he slapped a 30% levy on alcohol making taking it out of the reach of the majority. Sad to sad they have resorted to Chibuku and other vicious concoctions that I will not care to mention. Then he reduced the operating hourss for liquor outlets, bars, night clubs and declared war on shebeens.
He also banned the operation of braais (barbecues) outside butcheries because he felt that this encouraged people to drink all day while besatshisa inyama. Drunken driving was next in line and a presidential directive increased traffic penalties by 100%! Batswana, while acknowledging their drinking problem, were appalled. In fact, the whole thing was so political that the opposition used it as a campaign tool in the just ended elections.
In fact, the former Minister of Trade and Industry, Neo Moroka lost his Kgalakadi South seat to the opposition because he was the face of Khama’s alcohol prohibition campaign. Kgalagadi is a well known guzzlers’ paradise and they made their displeasure clearly known. An enterprising Botsalo Ntuane, BDP candidate in one of Gaborone’s constituencies, organised a free concert featuring South African pop band Splash on the eve of the elections. He stepped on stage and shouted to the capacity crowd, ‘I love alcohol!’ He won the seat for the ruling party.
Allow me to digress. Here I was in a country renowned for the highest number of drinking holes per square kilometre and all of a sudden I stop drinking! Hard to believe as it sounds I am comforted by the fact that I was never an alcoholic. Otherwise I would have suffered from horrible withdrawal symptoms which I did not. I have always said to people that I was a social drinker and never felt so desperate to drink. I should admit though that this seemed to be the case when I was at the University of Zimbabwe but there beer kept us sane.
We went by the motto ‘We drink daily and pass annually’ more as justification than anything else. But unlike a great many of the UZ Alumni who got their first taste at the Students Union, some of us were already veterans. I am glad that my former roommate at the New Complex Phase One, Finance Minister Tendai Biti was not among us sinners. Such people had a role to play like the time when I went celebrating passing my second year and had one too many smuggled vodkas at Bretts nightclub.
A concerned Laxton Biti, as we knew him then, came to my rescue as I lay immobilised in my room by the mother of all hangovers. He dutifully brought me all my meals and though I never ate any of them I was moved by his concern for someone whose agony was self inflicted. I will not forgive Darlington Masenda, another non-drinking student, who was the DJ because it was partially his music that contributed to the damage.
Arthur Mutambara was another sober individual who I remember for his driving ambition to be in some position of leadership. His futile attempt to get elected as chairman of the Ballroom Dancing club on campus might never make it into his biography which is why I mention it here. He may deny it by witnesses will remember giving his reason to stand for election as his curiosity as to why it was led by people coming from Matabeleland.
His persistence later got him into the Students Representative Council and look where it he is now, Deputy Prime Minister of Zimbabwe! I clearly remember Mutambara’s infamous brush with the notorious CIO that saw him tumbling out of the Phase Two window. Mugabe later remarked that ‘these students boast of being tigers yet when the heat was turned on they jump out through windows like kittens.’ He always boats about this incident claiming he was the first to be arrested by the regime before Morgan Tsvangirayi who only was later locked up for challenging Arthur’s incarceration when he was a trade union leader.
Anyway that is beside the point. I have to admit that I come from a family that drinks as if it were going out of fashion, which in itself speaks volumes. Being of royal blood, kings were known for their liking for the frothy brew, notable among them Mzilikazi kaMatshobana who suffered from excruciatingly painful gout. I recently learnt that I am a direct descendent of Soshangane wakoGasa. If I had a good excuse for drinking this was definitely going to be it.
But then there are many negatives that come with the practice of imbibing. I have lost a great deal of very close relatives, notably uncles, to the bottle. In fact my maternal grandfather’s young brother so idolised beer that he composed a song to entice me into appreciating it when I was 10. I used to accompany him and my father on their fishing trips which I thought were an excuse from them to drown themselves in booze. After taking ‘several’ he would burst into the rendition, “Amahewu, amnandi, amahewu, amnandi sibili!’ They say that the rest is history.
So the question in your minds is now what? I believe we all have quotas and I have exhausted mine. Sad to the brewers this might sound but I think my contribution to the industry stops here. There is this theory that people who don’t drink have more time to indulge in other extra mural activities such as chasing women. Though there might be a grain of truth in that, I would not relish being ‘planted’ in the ground like a flower. There is this disease that is wiping out Batswana and I would not like to be another of its statistics.
Is there anything wrong with making an about turn in life and sampling how it would be like if one’s mind wasn’t clogged with alcohol? There are a lot of things that I appreciate more like family, nature and just being alive. That does not mean that I will shun my former drinking companions. I miss the humour and the antics only now that I will have all my faculties alert enough to fully capture the fun for me to recount to you on these very pages.
Lenox Mhlanga can be contacted on http://www.facebook.com/lenoxmhlanga
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