Our fucked up nanny government.

Like most left leaning politicians, the current and previous ministers of health believe that they have the right to tell qualified adults how to pollute their bodies. Witness the near zealtous campaign against smoking and big tobacco- warning labels are plastered on all packs of cigarettes so that pregnant mothers are warned that Gunston Plain will harm the health of their unborn children; restaurants may no have overly large smoking areas; all forms of tobacco advertising have been banned. Its clear that Ministers Zuma and Manto don’t want you to smoke.

As ministers of health, they are tasked with being vigilant about the health of South Africans. Problems arise when the application of such health-preserving urges is so spotty. While smokers are made to feel that they are one step removed from pederasts if they smoke in the presence of a child, nary a poster is designed to warn South Africans about the dangers of alcohol abuse.

A balanced approach might argue that the two vices are equally harmful. My view is that of the two, alcohol is more harmful and in need of control. It is not coincidental that a nation which likes to dop is also a nation with one of the world’s highest road accident rates. The connection between our unacceptably high women/child abuse rates and pervasive alcoholism is there to be seen by anyone who has eyes in his/her head. We also have the distinctive dishonour of being the country with the world’s highest incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).

Widespread boozing has broader implications. We all pay for the damage done by drunkards at Christmas time, when hospital beds are filled by their handiwork. FAS has ensured that generations of farm workers in the Western and Northern Cape are so mentally and physically underdeveloped that their changes of breaking free from crushing cycles of poverty are insignificantly small. And yet the beer continues to flow unabated.

It’s clear that the government has the means to tackle the problem ala anti-tobacco campaigns. Warning labels on every box of Châteaux de Cardboard sold would not be amiss. Every advertising space and medium previously occupied by tobacco merchants has been claimed by booze manufacturers; why not ban advertising of THIS harmful substance? In much the same way as the purchasing and enjoyment of cigarettes has been drastically curtailed, the sale of alcohol could also be restricted to certain shops and times of day.

Of course billboards telling consumers about the harmful effects of ethanol will have very little effect on alcoholics whose poverty and powerlessness give them little to life for anyway. But by doing something to limit the damage of alcohol abuse the government will demonstrate that it takes this mammoth health issue seriously. It may not solve the problem overnight, but it would get the process going.

Far be it from me to find a conspiracy around every corner, but methinks that our cadres in Cape Town have good reasons for not clamping down on the sale of hooch. Just how many shares in SAB are owned by the busy bees who frequent the halls of power? Or are our leaders practising Verwoedean (and Mugabean) statecraft? Verwoed and his Nationalist cronies saw to it that townships were well supplied with cheap liquor while every village in Zimbabwe has at least one bottle store. No revolution was ever launched by citizens too drunk to wield their pitch forks and Molotov cocktails. Better to stay home and enjoy some government- sanctioned Klippies and Cola cocktails.