Last week Saturday, February 10, a dear friend and his family buried their young son who died from taking drugs. This is a tragic and widespread problem that is destroying our country, especially our young.
We all know many families in our communities who have witnessed their sons and daughters wasting away under the deadly spell of this scourge. I have seen a few youngsters in my extended family dying or suffering addiction to nyaope, tik or any of these easily accessible drugs.
On Monday the 12th, just two days after the burial of the friend’s son, television screens beamed into our living rooms, footage of a sophisticated but filthy laboratory in Krugersdorp manufacturing methamphetamine on an industrial scale.
Just one look at that illegal laboratory tells you that if the consumer of the drugs does not die from the drug itself, then it might be from the contaminants infiltrating the manufacturing process.
Add to the illegal drug problem the fact that we simply drink too much alcohol in this country. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) report of 2019, South Africans consume 7,2 litres of pure alcohol per capita. My late older brother used to complain bitterly about the fact that it did not matter how small a village is, you will encounter a board advertising a brand of alcohol, shebeen or tavern.
He observed that it is only in townships and villages where shebeens, taverns and brands of alcohol are aggressively advertised. You would not see the same in suburbs, especially the affluent ones.
Why is it that in the Sandtons, Constantias and Waterkloofs of this world where people have cash to spare, there are no boards advertising taverns or liquor brands? The democratic government inherited this phenomenon and simply allowed it to continue.
Moving around in our townships and villages, you will not fail to encounter young men walking around or staggering with a bottle of beer in hand. It should be shameful. But no, we have normalised it.
A woman acquaintance expressed her shock to me at the number of drunk youth she encountered when she drove into a deep rural area in Vhembe in Limpopo in the small hours of the morning to attend a funeral.
She said some were wild and menacing.
Does that not remind us of Enyobeni Tavern in East London, where 21 teenagers died in 2022 deep into the night when they were supposed to be asleep in their beds?
Imagine what the mixture of the consumption of alcohol and the taking of drugs is doing every weekend in the shebeens, taverns and streets.
Imagine what this does to the number of teenage pregnancies the country is grappling with.
Imagine what it does to school and university dropout rates. What it does to car accident statistics.
There is no way our country would be able to deal with widespread crimes of murder, rape, assaults, gender-based violence and others without having a firm handle on drugs and alcohol availability and excessive consumption in the country.
With enough political will, we can do a few things to save ourselves from the ravages of too much alcohol consumption in our country:
First, stop glamorising liquor. Every other advert on TV is about alcohol. Ban alcohol advertising anywhere.
Second, drastically reduce the number of licences for taverns and shebeens.
Third, severely punish public drinking, and selling of alcohol to under-age drinkers and ensure drinking holes are far from schools and churches.
Fourth, embark on a rigorous campaign to eradicate drugs in our communities, which should be accompanied by robust education programme about the dangers of drug taking.
Our future is in jeopardy if we don’t do enough in this direction.
- Mangena is former president of Azapo and former cabinet minister
