Washing and Rinsing.

The Commander-in-Chief ordered his crack paramilitary police unit to go after...chang'aa brewers and shut down chang'aa dens in a bid to stamp out the manufacture, sale and consumption of illicit brews. Fifty three years since we wrested self-rule from the bloody mitts of the dead British Empire, its insidious spirit lives on. First hey banned our traditional liquors. Then they said we couldn't distil like they did. Then they came after us with the police and their guns and dogs. You can choose which bits of your history to re-live; we seem to want to re-live each and every ignominious moment of the 43 years of the Kenya Colony.

We are now conditioned to accept that the only way to stamp out the burgeoning alcoholism pandemic in the "Mt Kenya region" is with even-more-of-the-same police tactics that have failed in the past, only this time instead of the ordinary G3-armed policeman on the beat we will deploy a crack commando police unit more used to neutralising terrorist threats than unlicensed manufacturers. I believe PLO Lumumba would be right to deploy his mosquitoes-and-sledgehammer analogy against this decision.

The General Service Unit and its feared company, the Reconnaissance "Recce" Company is a scalpel compared to the regular and administrative police units. When it is deployed, it has always been against threats that risk mass casualties of great destruction of property. The Commander-in-Chief might recall when the GSU used to be deployed against university students, but that day is long gone and that is now the job of the Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtle-looking Administration Police Rapid Deployment Units. We expend hundreds of millions every year sending GSU officers to Israel and God-knows where else to hone their anti-terror skills. Unless the Shabaab has gone into the business of manufacturing chang'aa...

The Commander-in-Chief must be a frustrated man. It is the only explanation for the declaration that the GSU would oversee the eradication of illicit liquor in Kenya - along with its anti-terror activities. I am curious whether the GSU will use the deterrence model in its efforts because it doesn't seem to work at all in other areas. Manufacturers of illicit brews have also proven quite resilient every time their manufacturing "plants" are laid to waste by the police; it only takes a few hours for them to be up and running as soon as the police are out of earshot. What will be different between this latest anti-chang'aa drive and previous ones going all the way back to colonial antiquity?

The Commander-in Chief has finally realised that because of the politicisation of the boards of management of agencies such as the National Authority for the Campaign Against Drugs and Alcohol Abuse, relatively simple problems like the control of the manufacture of illicit brews will remain a pipe dream for him and his government. Two decades of hollowing out of the public service and what we can now count on is the wash-rinse cycle being repeated endlessly when it comes to crises. The GSU-v-chang'aa dens is just an escalation of the cycle. After the shock value wears off, chang'aa brewers and their ilk will be back in business. What will he do then? Deploy the Ranger D Company of 20 Parachute Battalion of the Kenyan Army?