In private moments, Ian Khama has been known to show extraordinary levels of frustration against the ravages alcohol is inflicting on Botswana’s social fabric.
It is not a secret what a low regard our new President has for alcohol and those who take the stuff, however modestly and responsibly.
It’s no wonder then that a perception has been created in many people’s minds that the new restrictions imposed on liquor trading hours are pursued on the basis of prejudice, cynicism and possibly ignorance.
The situation has not been helped by the demonic zeal, resolute haste and a bizarre lack of tact with which the restrictions have been implemented.
For reasons best understandable to moralists, President Khama has come to the conclusion that alcohol is a nuisance that can no longer be tolerated.
If only he could muster enough courage (which incidentally he shows in other areas) and make public his inner wish to have alcohol abolished in Botswana!
In every respect, the new restrictions are setting a fearsome precedent of how a muddle of untruths can be woven up together by a paternalistic government to marshal state resources to inflict misery on a helpless and unsuspecting citizenry.
Liquor trade restrictions foretell major troubles still to come.
The issue is not about alcohol.
Rather it is about our core freedoms, fundamental rights and basic liberties.
We should never be passive when it comes to defending our freedoms and liberties.
Our freedoms and liberties are a gift from our constitution and perhaps more importantly, from God, and not any one government.
It is alcohol today but more is not too far behind.
We should be careful not to behave like willing slaves in the face of what may turn out to be the most paternalistic and chauvinist government of our time.
The new regulations are perhaps the best example of our government’s demonic preparedness to grandstand to the moralists and use alcohol as a scapegoat for all the ills consuming our society.
As for Khama, his decision to introduce the regulations will provide a frivolous thrill and excitement to a few moralist crusaders who would even goad him to ban alcohol altogether.
But such an excitement is borne out of not just prejudice but also short-sighted opportunism.
Admittedly, like everywhere else, alcohol abuse in Botswana has proved harmful, especially in this era of HIV/AIDS and no sensible citizen would condone such abuse.
That abuse, however, is an evil that has to be handled with an informed depth of assurance and dexterity.
It is important to point out that there are problems but we certainly are not in a state of emergency.
We need to rid ourselves of the alcohol scourge, but there should be a limit of how far we are prepared to go in sacrificing our basic freedoms in the course of stopping abuse.
Under no circumstances should we ever allow our government to use alcohol abuse as a pretext to change our traditional state-citizen relations. Yet that seems to be where we are headed.
In what threatens to become an enduring hallmark of this government, the carelessness with which the trade restrictions are being implemented makes it easy for this make-belief solution to be an even greater harm than good to the livelihoods of many thousands Batswana who are themselves doing no harm to anyone else.
On the surface of it, jobs will be lost, businesses will go under and the entertainment industry will be irreparably damaged.
Beneath the surface, trade restrictions will go as far as to eat at the very core of our freedoms.
The new regulations and the gleefully brash swagger with which they are enforced should serve as a crude reminder of the ease with which a moralist state could overnight erode the very liberties which over the years we have grown to take for granted in a democracy.
Much more than economic ruin it is our core freedoms and basic liberties that are at stake.
So early in its tenure, it cannot be too late for this government to be honest enough as to take the nation into confidence on the true intensions of the restrictions.
One would have hoped that instead of eroding our freedoms by stealth, the government would have been generously honest as to just abolish alcohol altogether.
While to a less discerning mind the new liquor regulations could easily prove seductive, the truth of the matter is that they are manifestly opportunistic as they are cynical – not least because they show a lack of faith on people’s ability to make personal decisions for their own lives.
However one wants to look at it, by every account the restrictions are on the wrong side of the very democracy that President Khama says he joined the army to defend.
In fact, the way the restrictions are being handled stands against everything that President Khama wants to achieve ÔÇô dignity, development, discipline etc.
Instead of promoting discipline, the regulations are likely to promote and incite underground insurgency against government.
There is no doubt that in many quarters, Ian Khama is being splendidly welcomed as a liberator.
Long consumed by poverty, want, hopelessness and despair, many Batswana look at his government as the last hope of deliverance from all such vices.
But if Khama is not careful it will not be long before we see the liberator’s excesses breed popular revolts.
If government is not careful, it will not be long before the alcohol traders who are for now biting the bullet and showing grace in the face of demented government behaviour seek recourses other than from Courts to engage their spiteful government.
Such alternative recourses, I am afraid, will not only be less attractive but also potentially more confrontational in nature.
Whatever their form, such tactics will at least go a distance in exposing the true motives of our prescriptive government.
When everything is said and done government knows so well that it has come with such unpardonably bad regulations the full price of which will be paid by many small businesses that are struggling for survival without the patronage of government.
