With a heavy heart, I quit the bottle

I AM sure that when I informed the editor that I had stopped drinking, he must have fallen off his chair. There are many who can’t imagine me teetotal. My history on the bottle is a colourful, yet disastrous one that would require more space than this column can offer.

There is so much I can recall and philosophise about the devil’s drink. There, I said it!

Anyway, I wish to assure you dear reader that my decision had absolutely nothing to do with the trend in my adopted home of Botswana. President Ian Khama hates alcohol and its effects — second only to Mugabe in that regard.

The reasons are personal for Khama, 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 he accepted the presidency on Fools’ Day last year, a day his countrymen will never forget for various reasons, he declared his ‘Four Ds’ chief among them DISCIPLINE. Being a military man, he should know the meaning of the word. He felt that Batswana had no discipline because they drank too much.

So he went about sorting out the problem. First, he slapped a levy on alcohol making it much more expensive. Then he reduced the operating times for liquor outlets, bars and night clubs, declaring war on shebeens.

He also banned braais (barbecues) outside butcheries because this encouraged people to drink at all times of the day while besatshisa inyama.

DRINK 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.

It is believed that 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 known to be the guzzlers’ district, and they made their displeasure clearly known.

An enterprising Botsalo Ntuane, 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.

This takes me to my own experience. Here I was in a country renowned for the highest number of drinking holes per square metre 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 then there beer kept us sane.

We went by the motto: “We drink daily and pass annually.” This was our way of 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, but those with a long memory will remember him 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.

President Robert Mugabe later remarked that “these students boast of being tigers yet when the heat was turned on, they jump out through windows like kittens.” Mutambara of course reminds us from time to time about this incident. In the theatre of politics, he believes it is significant that he was arrested by the regime before Morgan Tsvangirai whose first brush with the ZRP came after he challenged Arthur’s incarceration in his capacity as a trade union leader.

Anyway, I digress. 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 extramural 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 e-mail lenoxmhlanga@hotmail.com

Lenox Mhlanga

With a heavy heart, I quit the bottle

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