”Our backs are broken but we are still alive,” seethed Felix Nge’tich as he scoured the ruins of his shebeen at Nakuru in central Kenya.
Security forces and furious members of the public continued to raid drinking dens across the country this week following the deaths of 52 people who consumed the illegal alcohol, known locally as chang’aa, at Machakos, 60km south-east of Nairobi. The toxic beverage has also paralysed and/or blinded scores of people, with more than 200 still in hospital.
But, in the face of massive unemployment in Kenya, arrests and the seizure of tens of thousands of litres of illicit alcohol, chang’aa dealers have vowed to continue brewing the concoction.
”If [President Mwai] Kibaki gives me a job, then I will stop making chang’aa!” Nge’tich spat.
Police intensified their search for the woman alleged to have sold the killer brew, which analysis showed was a lethal mix of traditional ingredients and methanol — an industrial solvent, ingestion of which often proves fatal.
Some brewers spike their chang’aa with methanol to increase the drink’s potency and to maximise profits.
Research by the country’s National Agency for the Campaign Against Drug Abuse (Nacada) reveals that chang’aa has killed as many as 400 Kenyans since 1996, and maimed hundreds of others.
Nacada’s coordinator, Joseph Kaguthi, told the Mail & Guardian: ”Kenya is facing genocide by alcohol … Genuine chang’aa must be legalised so that it can be regulated and monitored. If people must drink, then they must drink a safe product and not poison.”
According to Nacada, Kenyans are the second-heaviest drinkers in Africa after Botswana, and marginally ahead of South Africa. Kaguthi said more than 70% of Kenya’s population of 32-million consumed alcohol, with many starting at the age of 10.
The crackdown on chang’aa is likely to be ”nothing more than a superficial, short-term measure”, declared Nairobi community activist Ethel Wanjiku. The government recently significantly increased the prices of legal alcoholic beverages, sending consumption of chang’aa ”through the roof”, Wanjiku said.
A glass of the illicit alcohol costs a mere 10 shillings (about 90c), whereas a beer retails for as much as 120 shillings (about R11) at a licensed bar.
Sipping his chang’aa at a shebeen in Kawangware on the outskirts of Nairobi, Samuel Kwamchoka laughed: ”This stuff puts the lightning in your heart, fast! Just one cup and you are alive! But I must drink beer the whole night to become drunk and I do not have such big money.”
And while the poor dice with death, those who sell the hazardous concoctions grow richer. Such as the prime suspect in the Machakos case, who owns a fleet of luxury vehicles and a mansion, and who has twice been set free by the courts after paying a nominal fine.
Nacada is campaigning for harsher penalties. ”People who sell poison to others who then die must be jailed for murder! The police who collude with the sellers must be tried as accomplices to murder,” fumed Kaguthi.