During the last election campaign, folkloric candidate George Wajackoyah, while admitting that he has never used, had listed the legalization of cannabis sativa, better known as marijuana, as one of his priorities to lift Kenya economically in his leadership program.
According to Wajackoyah, a London graduate, former secret agent and lawyer of lost causes, the government could have raised one-third of the revenue from taxes to help pay off the national debt, creating countless jobs, with multinational pharmaceutical companies, "green" chains and therapists from around the globe already interested in buying and thousands of unemployed and straggling youth in and around Nairobi already interested in consumption.
Instead, good George remitted 2 percent of the vote, cut off his dreadlocked braids and returned to smoky anonymity. Who knows if today actually the free joint might at least allow President William Ruto to pay the back wages to the civil servants who threatened to take to the streets yesterday. That should attempts at reconciliation with senior opposition leader Raila Odinga fail, we would find half of Kenya on the streets next Monday.
But no, the country remains anchored on its somewhat bigoted and anachronistic strongholds compared to even other nations on the continent. Not only does the criminalization of sexual diversity continue, but there are no glimmers for openings that would shock religious communities, common decency and good feelings...but corruption continues to proliferate and the impunity of the political class unfortunately schools more than the schools themselves. Thus, as lawlessness proliferates in other circles, marijuana is grown clandestinely, bribes are turned to shut eyes and suck mouths, and a black trade is nurtured that provides no benefit to the state. Partly for this reason, African countries such as Morocco, Rwanda, Uganda, Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi have allowed the cultivation and trade of cannabis, recreational use of course remaining prohibited, while South Africa has offered the option for its people to get stoned, but only in secret, at home and in slums when the police are not raiding. Smoking in public is strictly prohibited, with even severe penalties.
In the heart of the country, Makueni County between Nairobi and Tsavo East, hectares of grass, "bhang" as it is called in Kiswahili Africa, are being cultivated. The region is strategic not only because of the crops (Italy's ENI also recently began a mega-project there to grow plants from which to make environmentally friendly fuel) but because it is a key transit area for domestic and export trade, overlooking the Nairobi-Mombasa highway.
In recent days, more than 560 kilograms of cannabis sativa have been set on fire in the town of Makindu. The High Court judge and national antinarcotics officials, attended, while hundreds of people nearby cried (some from the smoke in their eyes) and aspired (but not to become officials), and almost all of them were burned pretty badly.
The Narcotics and Psychotropic Substances Control Act, in addition to trafficking, criminalizes the possession and use of "bhang," but also being unknowingly in a place where drugs are consumed (beware, then, of tourists and nostrils always on the alert...), as well as owning a club, hotel or even a rented house where drugs are consumed (watch out for customers you put in your house...).
Needless to take up here the rhetoric of "how many things you can do with hemp" of cures for glaucoma, lowering blood pressure and blood sugar, and so on. Simply, in these times of severe financial crisis, if I were some good Ruto adviser (because there are some, come on...) or some parliamentarian (who knows, just in and around Makueni...) a little thought about drafting a bill I would do it. Otherwise, as Gianni Morandi sang, "you'll find that you'll be left with smoke and nothing more."