Our President and members of the Kenyatta family must really hate other Kenyans.
Why then would Uhuru specifically single out bars and by extension, restaurants, yet he himself immerses in top-drawer whiskies on a daily basis and his attachment to the tipple is legendary?
What have pub owners done except to create mass employment and offer a badly needed service, to a badly disaffected citizenry in a clownishly run country?
To compare the reopening of pubs and restaurants to that of the places of worship as belligerently put forward by religious organizations ad nauseam, is akin to comparing the finality of death with the impermanence of sleep.
But no one wants to have the overdue discussion of taxation of church proceeds because apparently, when Christ said to give unto Caesar, there was a hidden caveat somewhere in there that excluded the billions given voluntarily to churches, mosques, temples et al.
It does not matter which branch of religion you ascribe to, the fact of the matter is that pubs employ millions of Kenyans and by multiplier, feed families, educate children, pay hospital bills, pay taxes and sustain jobs in its supporting or supply chain roles.
How then can a country with no social security safety nets, close all pubs and their associated restaurants, in one fell swoop for the better part of a year? What scale of economic devastation has our Government wrought upon this country in the process?
When the Government says that “accelerated covid-19 infections will stretch our health systems”, we can’t but ask ourselves, what health systems? Is this the same system where doctors and nurses take turns annually to go on strike over salaries?
Whatever happened to the so-called health facility scheme where massive loans were obtained to install medical equipment in our Government Hospitals? Weren’t the likes of General Electric contracted to ensure that they provided and serviced such machines annually?
Aren’t these the same level-4 and level-5 hospitals where there exists no single ICU bed?
Does it matter therefore, who gets infected, aren’t we all in the same boat, where only the uber-rich can afford Ksh. 600k admission fee for a hospital bed in private hospitals?
How then can a country that relies so much on the trade and consumption of alcohol be so blasé about it? Isn’t the fresh produce sector and that of the export of Tea and Coffee, highly regimented and protected?
Why is the legal sale of alcohol approached in the same way the Government approaches public transport, in a knee-jerk, off-hand and casual manner?
It has all to do with the arrogance of non-drinkers, religious demagogues and the partition of the most prime parts of Kenyan real estate by interested parties.
To be fair, mainstream churches have over the years scaled down the anti-alcohol rhetoric for the simple and functional reason that in this World, we must live and let live.
Barely 20 years ago, Nairobi CBD was a vibrant entertainment Centre with a smattering of decent pubs doting the landscape, from Ibiza next to Nation Centre, to Hornbill Tom Mboya Street, Zanze Bar at Kenya Cinema Plaza and Simmers on Kenyatta Avenue.
What began as the innocuous purchase of Nairobi prime properties at over-inflated prices using money obtained from ransom demanded by pirates off the coast of Somalia, later turned out to be the acquisition of many business spots in the CBD by Somali businessmen.
In those days, the CBD was safe and revelers would take late night matatus home to their respective estates. The CBD was vibrant and worthwhile to plan a meet-up for drinks.
Today, Somali-owned hotels and restaurants have taken over many of these spaces in what appears to be a well-orchestrated policy.
This policy appears to have become very aggressive with the prominence of Garissa MP Aden Duale as the Jubilee Party whip in Parliament and the likes of the recently deceased Ibrahim “Johnny” Ahmed in the crucial committees at CBDs Jamia Mosque.
This informal policy against alcohol consumption was silently rubber-stamped in the Jubilee Government by Deputy President William Ruto, whose dalliance with charismatic Christianity has led him to develop a deep contempt for his boss, Uhuru Kenyatta, whose functional alcoholism has become a blight on the Republic.
Ironically, key cogs in the Ruto side of the divide is another functional alcoholic, Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria, who together with President Kenyatta manifest the face alcoholism in their home constituency, which has a 25% rate of alcohol abuse in illicit brews.
The last 10 years of the UhuRuto economic disaster have not shown Kenyans an alternative means to creation of jobs to absorb millions of Kenyans, yet they callously pull the plug on a major employer like the bar and restaurant sector.
Interior CS, Dr, Fred Matiang’i, himself an elder of the SDA Church has no time for alcohol but surely as a former lecturer he can wrap his mind around the economic concepts of this industry. How does he expect Government to raise revenues to pay his police and administration employees? Surely he is not banking on IMF loans to do this sustainably.
Bloggers, mainly those from the ODM wing and who view alcohol and its consumers as a lower life form have managed to compartmentalize these issues in a very juvenile manner. The likes of Robert Alai, Abraham Mutai, Dikembe Disembe, Silas Jakakimba and on the Ruto side, the colourless Dennis Itumbi, not to mention mainstream media journalists like Saddique Shabaan have not grasped the economic import of this sector.
They exploit any unfortunate incident or accident to verbally project their contempt for alcohol because they believe that they’re a special class of “sober” Kenyans, whose sobriety unfortunately hasn’t contributed to the country’s GDP or foreign exchange reserves.
At the height of last years first lockdown and subsequent commencement of BBI campaigns, those same bloggers were aggressively tweeting #UhuruDontOpen because their short-sightedness couldn’t rationalize that lockdowns were a sinister conspiracy at crumbling the economy, as opposed to stemming the spread of the virus.
Back then in fits of teenage excitement, those ODM bloggers derived narcissistic pleasure and near orgasmic excitement over the lockdowns as a broader means to curtail their then political adversary William Ruto. Fate indeed does have a sense of humor as both their demigod and hustler are said to be cozying up.
In the war against bars and alcohol, ODM bloggers found a kindred spirit in Interior PS Karanja Kibicho, who continues to fund their toxic narratives online. A curfew significantly reduces the security budget and creates an artificial semblance of peace, allowing bureaucrats to plunder state coffers with reckless abandon.
Now they’re throwing tantrums online claiming the middle-class cannot participate and unite for a common purpose like #RevolutionNow because their profound sense of entitlement wants to make us believe that Raila is the only custodian of mass action in the country.
Raila has used that as his capital to cut himself personal deals with the ruling regime, diplomatic corps and media, and now that there’s a critical mass departing from political to people-based mass action, his bloggers feel threatened and won’t fail to remind us how in 2017, their comrades from the slums in Kibra and Kondele, engaged the police in running battles.
Young Kenyans don’t aspire to riot and loot like the ODM “revolutionaries”. I believe young Kenyans want to peacefully picket under Article 37 of the Kenyan constitution, calling for meaningful interventions regarding governance of their country.
Could it be true that this lockdown was engineered to slow down the momentum of the very misguided and self-cannibalizing #hustlermovement? Right now we don’t know, and frankly we no longer care.
Those concocted figures that the MoH constantly bandy’s around no longer make sense, even when we all know they’ve never conducted mass testing instead relying on Kenyans to procure the costly tests and present that data as their own.
Now they’ve gone onto phase 2 of their deviant agenda and are now hoarding the vaccines as they wear Kenyans out with anticipation to buy time and sell later.
However we’ve reached a point where their convenience will not be our impoverishment, depressant and eventual extinction. Yesterday’s Thika Road display of raw power and entitlement by the ruling elites has exposed the weak under-belly of Uhuru’s misguided dictatorship.
While Mutahi Kagwe and other digital acolytes are posturing and chest-thumping how they “won”, Kenyans know that they’re the ones who repulsed police and forcefully removed the barriers. They’re now hungry for more “cordial” interactions with the police and we urge President Uhuru Kenyatta to escalate police presence and brutality.
