In public comments on social media and elsewhere (for examples, see here and here), Panyaza Lesufi makes it clear that he doesn’t want
anyone to drink alcohol. He went so far as to mock people working within that sector of the economy, implying they lack job-seeking skills or career ambition if they are unable to find alternative paths to economic security.
Lesufi is deeply mistaken and I want to explain why.
First, I get what it is that might be intuitively attractive about the MEC’s position. The abuse of alcohol in our society is legendary.
I have first-hand experience of what alcohol can do, ripping a family apart. Both my folks drank a lot over weekends. In the case of my late mom (bless her soul), she self-medicated with alcohol and, although this word has stigma attached to it, she became – I now think as an adult looking back on my childhood – an alcoholic. Alcohol did not cause my folks’ marital problems. It certainly fuelled their problems and helped speed