Bar owners and other purveyors of alcoholic drinks are on clear notice - they risk their licences being revoked if they allow people below 18 years of age to drink from their premises and if they do not observe the liquor trading hours.
Licensing authorities are making no secret of the fact that they will not hesitate to pounce on any public drinking place, which allows young people to drink. Municipal authorities have indicated that they will carry out random inspections to ensure that alcohol is not sold to anybody under the legal drinking age of 18 years. There has been a growing laxity in recent years and alcohol has been freely available to anybody who could pay for it. Bars tended to open earlier than the hours stipulated on the licences and there was no real enforcement of the minimum drinking age. The result has been that many of the patrons have been school-going age children or young people below 18. The predominant view is that this isn't in agreement with the country's traditional values and that it tends to promote promiscuity among the youth at a time when HIV/AIDS is the country's number one health problem. At the end of June, the president himself took up the issues at a press conference. He expressed concern about declining moral standards in the society, the adverse effect that this was having on the youth and of the need to protect young people from certain practices and activities that were eroding the country's moral values.
