Government has announced that effective June this year, traditional liquour chibuku will no longer be sold from homesteads.
In fact, the regulations were put into use effective January 1.
The six months grace period is most likely a humanitarian gesture from authorities realising how many people are going to be affected by the new laws.
The new law is a follow up to a previous one that effectively reduced the amount of trading hours for alcohol. It almost brought the industry on its knees.
While initial law proved very unpopular, the current one is set to be worse given the high number of people who will be affected.
We have no problem with the regulation of alcohol if it is done properly, sensibly and for the greater good of the country.
We, however, have serious reservations if such regulations or laws are meant to get all the rest of us to emulate the lifestyle of those who happen to be in leadership positions at the moment.
If not proprely administered, liquor laws have the potential not only to disrupt people’s ways of life by denying them regular legal income but also to be counterproductive in that we are likely to see the emergence of new potentially poisonous brews in response to the crackdown promised.
We have in the past also argued that if not well implemented, alcohol regulations have the potential to drive the trade underground while not reducing consumption at all.
For many societies, including our own, alcohol is a traditional way of relaxing. While we cannot behave like there is no history or culture of alcohol consumption and or abuse in our society, it is foolhardy for our Government to try to behave like alcohol is a new thing that has to be nipped in the bud like, say, cocaine and heroise use.
What we need to do as a country is to encourage responsible, safe alcohol consumption, while discouraging abuse. Unfortunately at the moment the behaviour of our government is not too different from that of a government preparing for a total alcohol ban.
Teaching people the negative effects of alcohol is someting that needs a multi-pronged approach. It is something that needs sustained efforts. It cannot be achieved solely through legislation as this Government seems intent on doing. Rather than come up with a plethora of laws what we need to do is embark on a sustained campaign of public education.
Once again, we have no wish to be seen to be endorsing alcohol abuse. In the same vein, we are against populist shortcut mechanisms of fighting abuse that only serve to give political leadership a moral high ground while in practice achieving very little or, in some instances, serving to entrench abuse.
We are for well thought out policies. And experience from other countries shows that enduring ways of fighting alcohol abuse do not come cheaply. Rather they are long term, and put public education at the fore.
Many families rely on selling traditional beer from their homesteads. Giving them six months to move out into designated depots is a fairytale.
Where are those depots going to be located?
Our government is behaving like they have already set up a special department whose sole task is to issue licences for the said depots. As a fact, we know what a hassle applying for a business premise can be in Botswana. And here we are not even talking about raising money to errect the necessary structures for alcohol depots, which on its own is no doubt going to be a challenge for many of the concerned people who, as we know, are almost exclusively members of the most impoverished sections of our society.
In coming up with this law, the Botswana Government no doubt has on its eyes those people who, in trading in traditional beer, have also become a nuisance to the neighbours. But our view is that such people are few and far between. They can easily be dealt with through the law. The majority of shebeen operators, including those who sell from their houses are law abiding citizens.
They also are women.
They use the proceeds from their trade to maintain their families. It is these people who we think government has to differentiate by recognising their status.
It is these people who stand to lose most if no ways are put in place to cushion them.
