At the dawn of Kenya’s colonial era in 1902, consumption of homemade alcohol was deeply embedded in society. For instance, among the Mijikenda of coastal Kenya, palm wine was integral to traditional ceremonies, such as marriage and initiations, and in ritual offerings. This partly explains why the colonial authorities did not consider prohibiting African homemade liquors.

As early as 1908, however, they did prohibit Africans from consuming or handling European liquors. The prohibition was ratified on the pretext of Europe’s commitment to preserving the presumed innocence of Africans. The ban on Africans’ consumption of European liquor fostered and sustained racial “social distance” between the colonised Africans and European colonisers.

The socio-political landscape began to change after the Second World War. Neoliberal capitalism was becoming dominant in Africa. Multinational breweries took command of the market through advertisements, propaganda, and networking with government agencies to subdue homemade brews. It was also a time of growing political awareness by a now sizeable educated African elite. A case in point is the mid-1940s boycott of traditional brews by African elites in Nairobi and in Dar es Salaam, agitating for access to bottled beer.

The prohibition of Africans’ consumption of bottled beer, wines and spirits in Kenya was lifted at the end of 1947. The end of the prohibition marked the beginning of condemnation, criminalisation and vicious attacks on the indigenous African alcohol industry. Successive governments and religious groups opposed these brews directly. Multinational breweries also targeted them indirectly.

In the emerging propaganda narratives, bottled beer was presented as the consumers’ mark of civilisation, patriotism and respectability. Kenyan media, through popular advertisements, touted the notion of bottled beer as a mark of “good citizenship”. Consumers of traditional homemade brew were identified as unrespectable, unpatriotic.

My recent research examined three novelistic portrayals of “respectable” alcohol consumption in Kenya. Meja Mwangi’s Going Down River Road (1976) and The Cockroach Dance (1979), and Charles Mangua’s Son of a Woman (1971) highlight urban class imaginaries that emerge from alcohol indulgences at the time. Based on the analysis of the themes in these novels, I conclude that the Kenyan state’s war against traditional brews was a psychological war driven by a colonial mentality of African barbarism.

State operatives’ attempts to wipe out traditional brews, their brewers and patrons sought to create the impression that Kenya was now a civilised country that consumed European liquors.

The novelistic representations of alcohol consumption are set in the 1970s. This was a time when Africans were emerging from a highly racialised atmosphere that was the Kenyan colony. The African elites at that time were attempting to adjust to the prevalent notions of respectability. They desired co-option in the colonial order, which they believed was the epitome of civilisation and modernity. The consumption of bottled beer was one of the available illusory affirmations of European civilisation.

Going Down River Road foregrounds clubs in the inner city: Karara Centre, The Capricorn, Small World, Eden Garden. Through these drinking centres, the novelist paints a picture of Nairobi’s 1970s economic disintegration mostly experienced by the city’s marginalised low-income population. Patrons in Karara Centre admire bottled alcohol adverts on the centre’s walls. The owner sells African brews but displays adverts for Johnnie Walker, Pilsner and Scotch whisky. Empty bottles of the European brands are displayed on the counter to reinforce the colonial hype of the superiority of European alcohols.

James, a civil servant, drifts to Karara Centre when broke. He reminds the regular patrons of the homemade alcohol, and that he is a patriot who builds the nation. That is, he regularly drinks bottled beer. Such sentiments reflect the power of adverts in the construction of a people’s identities. On payday, Ocholla and Ben abandon Karara Centre for The Capricorn, a club that sells bottled beer. There, they imagine themselves to be in an advanced, modern joint, and among the respectable. However, this lasts for only one day before they slip back to Karara Centre, their dependable base.

What we note here is that the colonial histories of bottled beer coupled with the advertisements contribute to a sense of inadequacy among the underdogs who aspire to be among the “civilised” through consumption of bottled beer in “modern, advanced” joints, yet cannot afford it.

But in The Cockroach Dance, Meja Mwangi upsets the neoliberal capitalist posturings regarding bottled beer. While the adverts insist on bottled beer being a lubricant for lasting friendships and patriotism, events in the novel highlight the revolutionary savagery of alcohol. Duzman Gonzaga and Toto, key characters in the novel, partake of bottled beer. Their experiences in various bottled beer joints reveal that the spaces are chaotic. After consuming the alcohol, patrons engage in violent rampages against their neighbours. Essentially, the novel demonstrates that bottled beer is not the hallmark of modernity and orderly development.

My analysis of the novels reveals that the claim that bottled beer was a mark of respectability was merely a marketing strategy. The strategy fed into the neoliberal capitalist interests of the multinational brewing and distillery giants, distributors and retailers. Consequently, traditional homemade alcohols’ criminalisation and condemnation features here as misplaced aggression. The sale of homemade brews in informal urban settings is sometimes treated as an act of terrorism against the state. Indeed, distilled homemade alcohol known as chang’aa has caused the deaths of an alarming number of its consumers in recent years. Laboratory tests reveal the brewers’ use of dangerous additives such as industrial methanol.

In February 2024, state operatives led by the country’s deputy president embarked on rounding up and destroying the alcohol and distillation equipment in various places. Despite crackdowns such as these, the sale and distribution continues. The political elites’ war against the African indigenous brewery industry reveals their colonial anxiety – their own fears of regressing to barbarism.

Alcohol history in Kenya played a crucial role in the making of postmodern identities in the country. Colonial condemnation of African brews as emblematic of regression to African barbarism swayed the African psyche. The African elites who aspired to belong to a progressive postmodern world quickly learnt the colonial doctrine of condemning African brews. The Kenyan state’s anxieties against homemade alcohol are mainly rooted in respectability politics.

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