Hopelessness in many young people who resort to drugs

Hundreds if not thousands of young people around the townships feel left out as they and their poor and disadvantaged parents stand on the platform and watch the proverbial gravy train zoom past. The few whose confidence I managed to secure and persuade to open up and speak about their hopes or lack thereof voiced their dejection and hopelessness in a world which seems to only favour those with the right connections in the right places to pull them up the difficult ladder of life.

This is despite many of them believing they have done their best at school to break out of the generational boundaries that kept their parents from rising above the poverty perimeters. Take the case of Moremi Tsotsetsi, an intelligent 19-year-old whose only regret in life is to not be born in a wealthy family.

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Rams, as his friends affectionately call him, believes he was destined for the best things in life had he not chosen his current parents to come into this world. He tells me he pushed himself hard enough at school to ensure that he achieved the best marks in his matric results two years ago.

Armed with two distinctions and a hope to make it through university, Rams admits that the lack of money and poor living conditions, coupled with peer pressure and the struggles of his single mother who had three other children to care for cut his road to a good education short. He laments the fact that there was no father figure in his family to take charge of the dire situation at home and that his overwhelmed young mother was finding it hard to care for all of the children.

The family’s only form of income was what his mother brought home from odd jobs as a house cleaner and the meagre monthly government grant payout for her three young children. At first, Rams said he tried hard to hang on to his schooling, but with half his peers in his neighbourhood out of school, he found himself sucked into the ‘kasi vibe’ and fell in line with the rest of them.

Soon, as the old English adage goes ‘an idle mind is the devil’s workshop’, Rams found himself smoking cigarettes to wither away the stress and depression. Within a few months, Rams found himself shifting up the ladder and dabbling in dagga and when the zol ‘highs’ became too low for him, he allowed himself to be seduced into nyaope.

The story of Moremi Rams Tsotetsi is a distress call for help from many other teenagers and young people in our communities which authorities seem not to take seriously. The sad part about this is that it is not only young teenage boys who are caught up in this spiralling drug and alcohol problem. A 22-year-old school drop-out and unmarried young mother of two told Kathorus MAIL her situation was just ‘a tip of the ice berg’.

“Sibaningi (we are many),” she said shamefully in isiZulu with her head trembling from a drug-induced stupor, with saliva dripping from her cracked lips. Asked what grade she finished at school, she proudly told me she passed her matric when she was 16.

“I come from a poor family and both my mother and grandmother did everything to put me through school so I could get a good education. But because they were poor, I allowed my focus to be distracted by useless things and I found myself getting involved in drugs and alcohol.”

How sad!!!

Kathorus MAIL sends it deep felt condolences to the Tshabalala family on the death of their patriarch, Joseph Tshabalala, leader and founder of the world-famous isicathamiya choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Ulale Ngoxolo Mshengu!

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