When the story of how cheap sachet liquor destroyed lives in the Mt Kenya region is written, Keroche Breweries and Fai Amario Company Limited will always stick out like a sore thumb.
The two Naivasha-based outfits were the first main suppliers of cheap vodka, wine and spirits and Parliament was once told that their products left thousands of victims in zombie state. Kenya Bureau of Standards tried to fight them in court: they pushed back.
LIMITED OUTLETS
Before the cheap hard drinks – laced with either ethanol or methanol – had been brought to the market, the lower market segment was dominated by sorghum and maize products such as Chibuku (made by Udi Gecaga’s Umoja Breweries) and Kibuku (made by Mathira politician Peter Kuguru).
Actually, Udi Gecaga was not the pioneer here. But whether he had inherited the franchise from Tiny Rowland’s Lonhro – as it was once suggested in Parliament – is not clear. All we know is that he ran the show together with his uncle Nyoike Njoroge and that Chibuku was a subsidiary of Heinrich’s Syndicate, which was operating in Zambia.
Chibuku had a long history in Southern Africa, ever since South African industrialist Max Heinrich founded the sorghum beer brewery in 1955 to serve the Copperbelt mines and in five years, he had nine breweries in Zambia alone. Also, Chibuku had turned out to be the most popular drink in Zambia (by then Northern Rhodesia). That is how the British buccaneer, Tiny Rowland, came on board and tried to introduce the drink to Kenya and Malawi but with little success. Udi Gecaga was his local manager.
These busaa-like drinks were advertised as Chakula Kinywaji and were sold in limited outlets, leaving the middle-market segment to East African Breweries Limited, which dominated the bottled beer market – by edging out its rivals – since its entry in the 1920s.
Other brands that had been introduced for the lower segment included Kuguru’s Sorghum Sake, and Umoja’s Tembo, Nyuki and Nyati. For the record, Nyati was the first local product packed in Tetra Rex, a gable-topped packaging then only used in western countries for liquid products. It is today used by milk and juice producers.
REGULAR ADVERTISER
While the hygienic storage of Chibuku was regularly questioned – it was normally distributed in specialised mini-tankers and stored in drums – it could never match the lethargy of Keroche’s fortified wines such as Vienna, Vertican, and Cheers. The other was Sahara. It could also not compete with Fai Amario’s Pooler, Amario’s Sherry, Medusa Moto Moto, Uhuru 2000, Kata Pingu, Mahewa and Cantata.
Fai, a flamboyant and eccentric crook, was a regular advertiser. His catch line was: “Drink Amario’s Sherry and understand why bird’s fly” and it was the most popular on telly. He was also a thief and was charged with murder.
The Naivasha micro-breweries – and their national copycats – had started with Fai Amario, a former Starehe Boys Centre dropout whose love for biochemistry was epic. From his base in Naivasha, he had built a micro-brewery and changed his name from Gabriel Njoroge. Overnight, he was distilling low-end brands and making enough money to advertise on radio and television and buy goodwill. Nobody would touch him in Naivasha and his palatial house was a no-go zone even to security agents.
It is with this low-end segment in mind that Tabitha Karanja decided to invest her money after her polygamous husband divided his wealth among the three wives. As such, and as the High Court determined in 2013, Keroche Breweries does not belong to Karanja’s family – which claimed in court to have been neglected with some of his children abandoning school at primary level – but to the shareholders.
MICRO-BREWERY
Both Tabitha and her husband told the High Court they had no obligation to provide for grown-up children in a case that exposed the family wrangles within their home.
Before Tabitha, a former librarian, and her husband ventured into brewing, they were running a struggling hardware store in Naivasha town. From a three-room micro-brewery with only five employees, Tabitha put her money and faith into a product that would later become the second largest brewery in the country. But at a cost.
Both Keroche and Fai Amario Company used ethanol and methanol to make a potent brew. Handled dangerously, methanol once consumed converts to formaldehyde in the human body. Formaldehyde is the same substance in embalming fluid — and it turns into formic acid, which is highly toxic to body cells. Those who continued taking these products either in small or huge doses eventually died of Cirrhosis; or were socially wasted. Some unscrupulous manufacturers – and in search for potency, did not remove methanol and the drinks turned poisonous.
That these Naivasha micro-breweries and their latter-day copycats, including London Distillers, managed to throw the country back to the 1860s is now well known and documented.
Those who read history recall the words of the British explorer John Hanning Speke –who was the first European to reach Lake Victoria on August 3, 1858. One of the things that he noted as he travelled through East Africa – together with Richard Burton -– was the low level of sobriety among the locals.
SH10 SACHETS
He wrote of men: “Unless when fighting for the property of others, (the African man) contents himself with drinking, singing and dancing like a baboon.”
Of course the “baboon” aspect was an insult. For his part, Burton would write about the excesses he found: “The men are idle and debauched, spending their days in unbroken crapulence and drunkenness… after midday, it would be difficult throughout the country to find a chief without the thick voice, fiery eyes and eccentric manners, which prove that he is either drinking or drunk.”
While all these were harshly judgemental – they all agreed that drinking was only for older men and “drunkenness was not common among young men” and “hardly witnessed” among women.
While the arrival of the colony saw the introduction of Native Liquor Ordnance of 1921, which set drinking hours and banned breakfast drinking, these regulations were ignored at the tail-end of the 1990s as unregulated moonshine outfits were registered. By early 2000, the country was awash with cheap hard drinks that changed the drinking habits of the youth in the country.
In 2002, another major brand, London Distillers, entered the market with Safari Whisky, Safari Dry Gin, Safari Vodka, Safari Cane and Safari Cocktail Rum. It was owned by Asian tycoon Mohan Galot in a big empire that also owned Mohan Meakin. Their sachets, and those of Keroche and Fai, dominated rural Kenya to the extent that Parliament called for control of these sachets whose cost was Sh10.
SCHOOL CHILDREN
These sachets became popular with school children too and were sold in unregulated places. None of the brewers cared and when challenged, they would argue that they were being fought by Kenya Breweries, which was also trying to get into that market with products such as Kenbrew and Senator keg.
In the Mt Kenya region, where the dumping of cheap brews was notorious, the provincial administration in 2003 closed down 10 Keroche depots and the company was taken to court by Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) which was demanding that Keroche should stop producing Viena, Vertican, Sahara and Sheer wines.
Kebs, Parliament was informed by Trade minister Mukhisa Kituyi, had tested eight of Keroche products and six failed the quality test.
“Keroche Industries Limited opted to mislead the public by purporting that Kebs had cleared its drinks for public consumption,” said Dr Kituyi.
In 2004, MPs from central Kenya accused the brewer of distributing poisonous drinks. “You will find that people who take these drinks become sickly and their eyes turn yellow… what is the government doing about big industries like Keroche which produce these drinks?” asked Gatundu North MP Kariuki Muiruri.
CARJACKING RACKET
Another battle that Keroche faced was on the taxation base of fortified wines. While the taxes imposed in 2007 by Finance minister Amos Kimunya wiped several of the low-end products from the shelves, Keroche returned with a mainstream beer product, Summit – and mainstreamed its other products.
While Keroche has survived this far, Fai Amario did not.
During his funeral on a late afternoon in May 2010, mourners and boda boda riders did a round of honour in Naivasha town as Frank Sinatra’s song ‘My Way’ was played for all and sundry.
At the final bend, his business acumen had been eclipsed by criminal convictions on charges ranging from murder and handling stolen goods to running a carjacking racket.
Fai was first arrested on suspicion of murdering his estranged wife Sarah Wanjiru, who went missing in 1996 and police had suspected that she was buried in Amario’s compound. One morning, they arrived with earthmovers, dug up the compound and emptied septic tanks. There was nothing, apart stolen motor vehicle parts.
WINERY COLLAPSED
He had also been suspected of killing Gitau Karago, a deputy manager at Fai Amario’s depot whose body was found with six-inch nails hammered into his head. Karago had called Amario on December 26, 1995 and told him that Sh212,000 was missing. Fai called the Murang’a depot manager, Makimei Njoroge, and demanded his money. Karago was found dead a week after his sacking in Naivasha and an unconscious Njoroge beside him.
That is how the industry was run. Amario had apparently lied to the police that Karago was mauled by hyenas while walking home in the Mirera area of Naivasha.
While Amario was charged with murder in January 1996, the State dropped the charges five months later. Why? Nobody knows.
He was later charged with robbing businessman Mulraj Kanji Patel of his Toyota Land Cruiser and other personal effects all valued at Sh2.8 million and with being the head of a car theft syndicate based in Naivasha. He was sentenced to nine years at Kamiti Prison.
With all this drama following him, his winery collapsed and later died.
But that is how Naivasha became a moonshine brews paradise. And with Kenya Revenue Authority’s demand for tax arrears from Keroche, it appears that we have not heard the last on this brewer – the maker of the “truly Kenyan Summit Lager”. A long walk from the days they sold sachets.