Drugged Mzantsi(South Africa) - A People In The Grip And Clutches Of A Drug Pandemic: What's To Be Done? Culture And Us
Not All Of Us See politics in the same way... But we all Undergo The same Experiences...
According to Jose Marti:"We must state categorically that there is no salvation for our people unless we turn our backs on all the models that charlatans of all types have tried to sell us for twenty years. There is no salvation outside of this rejection. There is no development separate from a rupture of this kind. All those new intellectual giants who are emerging from their slumber -- awakened by the dizzying rise of billions of men in rags, aghast at the threat of this hunger-driven multitude weighing on their digestion -- are beginning to rework their speeches/[writings].
"Far it being for me to ridicule the patient efforts of honest intellectuals who, because they have eyes to see, are discovering the terrible consequences of the devastation imposed on us by so-called specialists in the development of the Third World. My fear is to see the fruits of so much energy co-opted by Prosperos of all kinds who -- with a wave of their magic wand -- spirit us to world of slavery dressed up in today's "fashions.
"My fear is justified even more by the fact that the educated petty bourgeoisie of Africa - if not the entire world -- is not prepared to give up its privileges, either because of intellectual laziness or simply because it has tasted the Western way of life. Because of these petty bourgeois forget that all genuine political struggle requires rigorous, theoretical debate, and they refuse to rise to the intellectual effort of conceiving new concepts equal to the murderous struggle that lies ahead of us. Passive and pathetic consumers, they wallow in terminology Fetishized by The West, Just As They Wallow In Western Whiskey And Champagne In Shady-Looking Lounges.
"Ever since the concepts of negritude and African Personality, now showing their age, the search for ideas that are genuinely new produced by the brains of our "great" intellectuals is in vain. Our vocabulary and our ideas come from elsewhere. Our professors, engineers, and economists are content to simply add color -- from often the only things they brought back with them from European/American universities that have produced them are their degrees and their velvety adjectives and superlatives!(Sankara is confirming what Andre Gunder Frank was saying above).Sankara:
"It is both necessary and urgent that our trained personnel and those who work with the pen learn that there is no such thing as neutral writing. In these stormy times we cannot give today's and yesterday's enemies monopoly over "thought," "imagination," and "creativity."Before it too late -- and it is already late -- this elite, these men of Africa and of the Third World, must come home to themselves, that is, to their societies and to the miseries we inherited.
They must understand that the battle for ideology that serves the needs of the disinherited masses is not in vain. but they must understand, too, that they can only become credible on an international level by being genuinely creative -- by "Portraying A Faithful Image Of Their People, An Image Conducive to Carrying Out Fundamental Change In Political And social Conditions And To Wrenching Our Countries From Foreign Domination And Exploitation, Which Leave Us No Other Perspective Than bankruptcy.
"The citation above is an introduction to the piece I am posting below. The Drugs are decimating our people and everything, worse than Aids, with the same powerful destructive effect/affect, and devastating impact on us: especially in the community I am about to talk about.
Before I do, I want to preface my comments on the article above by saying: we might try very hard to play the game of the Ostrich burying its head in the sand, but, we are even more exposed by doing that, and cannot even see and deal with the dangers facing us, today.
In the Township of Orlando, the oldest one of all the various Soweto Townships that expand from it; drugs are wreaking havoc, and piercing at the core of the community more than many here on all the Social Media are willing to accede or acknowledge. I have written extensively here on Facebook about the drug pandemic that has assailed us, and promised will come back with new information and update about the Nyaope that is wiping us out. Seriously.
I will post the earlier post on Maponya again, at the end of this piece.I have posted the fact that the ANC government has acknowledged that ''drug abuse'' poses an even bigger threat to its young people'(the children and youth of Mzantsi), than the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I think both are huge, and are really furiously gnawing away at our people and us. Many diss and deride these users, but many of us today, who have to live with and amongst our African people in Orlando and witnessing first hand what is going down-We feel/see it; what is happening to us on a much grander and macabre state that many really nor care to know-it is what is our reality...
When I write such articles, the supposed-elite-African-intelligentsia and other such opportunists, keep quite, and do not even do anything. Some pick up ideas and apply themselves and their newly found ideas in trying to do something for the people. Be as it may, this present article is present a report, news that is not reported, and stories from the Township of Orlando, that are swirling throughout the denizens of Orlando, but are tangentially known by the rest of our edumacated elite-and they are national in scope.
Orlando is but just a window into the whole cesspool and morass that is our decrepit existence, That is why I will not stop writing about these sad chapters in our lives, but, am writing them for posterity, and to preserve them as historical record for our children and people/Nation.There are two things I would like to take a look at, and lastly try and interrogate the whole social miasma as it is shaped, to date.We have a rat-rodent problem which is being exacerbated by the corrugated iron shacks patched/made of boards, plastics and anything to build a dwelling for our people.
Orlando is very well-known to have legions of this structures in their yards, and these have created this formidable rat invasion and other creatures, which causes that the people say things about their presence bordering on conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, it is a fact that these rats and rodents are biting the people's doors; also, they are biting the children sleeping and creating a host of other ailments we have not even begun to deal with.
The most recent posts I have dropped on all sorts of Social Media, are geared towards us beginning to write about our real realities and maybe many of us will begin to learn and see something that we had not even thought about, before. Creating a literature from the grassroots reporting as I am about to do, is one way to go, of the many that can used. I am going to make sure that this disaster that the people of Orlando are facing, as I am onto this article, is exposed and written about as clearly, and as much in a raw way as I can conjure and write it down.
I have waxed political and theoretical enough on the most recent two pieces I have posted here on Facebook and elsewhere. Now, I want to delve into the environment I live and exist in and to make an attempt to caricature its reality and effects/affects on us. What is happening as I am onto this article in our Township is unconscionable. There is no moral justification as to what is happening to our youth, and the adult(children, baby population). This is a very serious thing happening to us here, and I think I will talk about it now.Here in Orlando we are facing a deadly and serious drug epidemic.
Drugs are so rife, that we have several drug potentates planted throughout the whole Township and in many contemporary youth social events. Pretext of an event is a carte blanche operation for the drug dealers and distributors. Drugs have a unique and not so sophisticated way the travel and are disseminated in our community here in the Kasi(Township). It would at one time help us to deal with this problem better if this were to followed up and exposed.Here in Orlando, we customarily call areas within Our Township of Orlando, by the first numbers of their street, in one part of Orlando, and others have their names for a general group of areas, but being Orlando too.
So, in the areas of the street known as '20, we have chaos that is replicated throughout Soweto and the whole hinterland of South Africa with similar ghettoes and decrepit life-style existences. These are the throw-back and creation of Apartheid, and from these enclaves, we find similar scenes and realities that I am describing below in Orlando.This is news that is not news in the traditionally White owned media and nor in the dialogue going on inside the country. What it is I am saying this is not important for no reporters ever take time to sit down and look at, participate in and try their darnest to bring this situation into light.
We as the grown up residents and former students who were involved in the 1970 Student Revolution, are looking at our and within our own Townships, and what we are seeing is some kind of carnage: Drugs destroying and decimating our famous, friends, society and the African race. This is what is happening now as I am onto this article.One of the general terms given to this devastating drug, it is called "Nyaope," a generic name for a killer drug that has left our youth being spooks and walking skeletons right in front of us. What a mess we are in as a people today in Orlando.. So sad to see... Heartbreaking and discouraging.
What we have to live with everyday is spiritually.- soulfully taxing and seriously soul and spirit bruising. I think one has to see it to grasp my meaning. I am going to try and get some pictures, very soon. Optics do serve a relevant tool and technique in what we have to try and contain and at the moment, are at loss what we can or should do.Nyaope Hell Holes And Meat GrindersAs I had said above, in the area of the Streets known as 20(this includes street No. 19) in Orlando, there is this wheelchair drug dealer thug called Nkesi.
He runs a drug-dealing den in plain sight with tight security to go. His hirelings are destitute and jobless and lacking in education or dropouts, both girls and boys, who, even go to his hovel(home if one may say so) which is a terrible and a hell for drug-addicted girl teenagers, who would do anything for a fix. That is where we get to see many victims come out/thrown from or these hell holes with HIV/AIDS, and other STDs that are still dismally afflicting and affecting our people, children, youth and elderly-either dead or sickly.
When you see these youth and grown ups pining and crazily craving the drug, they steal water taps, fenced gates, copper wires from the electric poles and houses-ones heart and soul/spirit sinks to its lowest ebb. They have a favorite on their menu, which is these new Plasma TV Screen. It is said if they do not sell them, they imbibe the white powder they find therein, which is fatally destructive, but it is their high pick on the menu of drugs. They also sell them to earn money to go back and buy the Nyaope.
Known as 'Grootie'(Big Brother) or Ketsi, on his wheelchair is loathed by many of the this youth, and those brave enough, tell all about him. They talk of his crude and cruel ways of their treatment by him and many others of his foot-soldiers who run the errands of buying drugs from HIV/Aids patients-they are also enforcers. Some of these people afflicted with the HIV/AIDS disease, collect their rations of the ARV's from different hospitals and outlets, using various means, by moving from one place to the other-collecting the pills.
So that, In the end, they sell these pills to the dug-lords foot-soldiers, who in turn sell them to the distributors and providers of this Nyaope for a fee. This is the cycle, of how this whole operation gets done.Many people are affected in various dire and unknown ways by these burgeoning drugs. There are crews that operate in our midst in the trade of dealing or distributing drugs and raking in millions of Rands in their operations.
The houses that they use for such illicit and illegal operations, are houses that the family in that house might have disappeared/wiped out, or is complicit in the trade, and there is no order, and some like Ketsi, have security tight operations that everyone knows, and have installed within their dens, the State Of The Art Cameras driven by some new and sophisticated technology.
So that, as these mini-factories churn out corpses and walking spooks/zombies, we have to live with the scourge-and all the time feeling downright helpless.The police are on the top of the pecking totem pole and order The bribes they get makes them look askance, and their drug-lords/partners in crime and genocide, are never arrested, but if they do, sit in front with the cop driving, and are out in a matter of hours.
Bodies of young girls are found strewn in the street corners or the middle of the road, having been ravaged and no one investigates, and yet the locals know who did it-but the locals state that they are bodies thrown out of these caverns. They dare not talk, for even the innocent ones have been killed for no other reason than that they were innocent and were never involved in anything of the kind of operations/drug-dealing or drug use, I have briefly discussed above.
If one were to see these kids and elderly, they have this menacing/angry look, and the people say they are even more wild and daring/bold when they have not smoked their stuff/Nyaope. So that, this leads them to carrying out dastardly deeds, murder and what it takes just to get a fix. They are jaded, ashen and very 'blackened' and gaunt-looking-Ghost-like, and never ever wash.
The local lore has it that they no more beat them, once they catch them stealing, they simply pour water over them, and they end up howling like wild creatures with all the water coming down on them. Some say that this water acts like acid on them. There is some kernel of truth in that, but as to the validity of the claim, the jury is still out on that one.The behavior of these strung-up youth is appalling and galling. It is also sad to see a wasted life moving like an ogre or zombie out of whack and stone to the max.
This something to behold and it is devastating and crushing on some of our souls, mind and bodies. Our kids talk like they are having speech deformities, and they are bent and very wild-eyed-looking and are always on the prowl in search of another theft or robberies-to get another fix/high. Hooded thugs prowl the hood and rape and abduct and rob women as they are headed off to work in the wee hours of the mornings.
So many rapes, so many muggings-men are also mugged, and most times shot; assaults, murders and all kids of undeclared war on the our polity is causing a costly blow we will take many centuries to recover from, that I come here onto the Facebook collective and ask that something be done before it's too late, of which it is beginning to look like it is very late.As a temporary tangent, we have drug dealing in the coughing medicines sold in the Pharmacies or Chemist that are laced with cocaine, and now they are selling all over the place for around R15.00-are the hot item that is proliferating in our midst.
The name of that guy is Adcock Ingram, and the cough syrup is manufactured by the famous 'Broncleer' according to the presenter, and whose name, the journalist or hostess of the show is Nkepile Mabuse and the name of the show is "Check Point" on e-TV it was aired on 02. 06. 15 at 10:00 pm-and that is where I got this bit of information from. People are now addicted to this concoction, and it is marketed by a person, whose company name appears of the cough drops for infants, and only our Ancestors know what they are putting in this old cures for babies.
This is another issue I will be talking a bit about whenever I complete my researches.In the manufactories spotting and dotting the landscape, some of these youth are telling of how they have to wear latex gloves when making this Nyaope or some obscure drug mix-because it is hot and burns the skin; they even volunteer information as to the fact that they make it inside some tires, for they do not destruct just as quickly and for whatever reason. There's a whole of deadly mixes of rat poison, Dagga, some disinfectant, ARV's Mandrax tablets and other natural salts/chemicals and an assortment of everything to produce this drug or drugs of the same ilk.
As I am onto this piece, one of my friends just walked in complaining about the lack of electricity for the pas so many hours. He says that rumors has it that a copper cable has been stolen, just as I am writing about this issue here on this piece. We are under an attack and deluge of thefts perpetrated by these Nyaope users, and that is why some houses and sections of Orlando do not have electricity now-this was not due to power-load sharing. People even steal water, that is in those locations that have these water meters.
People are not working, and cannot afford pre-paid electricity, and metered water, which have been outsourced to foreign corporation/countries, and they are fleecing us so badly and leave us always in the cold and literally dry.Both youthful but shredded and emaciated looks of youth, girls and boys are dropping out of schools in droves and headed into these drug dens, they are emaciated, blackened, dry-deadened physiques, drooling and zombie-like spook-looking walking dead.
The poor once youthful great looking girls are smoking anything, have HIV/AIDS, sleep around with anyone and thoroughly abused sexually, sickly and bony looking with eyes drooping out of their sockets, very thin-looking, breasts sagging and wasted and gaunt faces; hair falling off, this for us is watching death incalculable and very dumbing and numbing-Daily.Then there's Madambi. The character too lives around the 20s Street, and he too is into high tech, eking money out of the inhabitants, and he too is destroying the youth for he has created a well organized enterprise and has his henchmen, but he is not bigger than Nektsi.
Funked-Up Society - A People On The Precipe Of The Dark Hole
This brings us to the "Hell House". So dubbed because in it everything and anything happens or takes place. This is where the meat-grinder modus operandi is churning out corpses, Murders are routine and there is a general sense of intimidation that is the norm and credo. As for the Cops, they are nowhere to be seen, or the same thing happens when they arrest the Drug-lords, the thugs are always let go and they bribe their way out.
Bribery is another scourge that is endemic amongst law-enforcement people in south Africa-it has become a sort of a culture of laissez fair and a carte balance spirit that has prevailed for some decades now. In the Noordgesig Colored Township, there are Old ladies who sell what they call "Space Cookies". These are bought and eaten by the students of Noordgesig High School, and this leaves the kids High And smoked out/High.
Thus the persisting problem of school drop-out rate as I have just touched upon above.At night, the poor working women, early risers and leavers headed to work in the dark, are susceptible to lurking murderers and rapist as they walk alone towards the required transportation to work. There were patrols by local guys, but this has been sparse and sporadic at best, and the issues of being paid take precedence before anything else, let alone local people's safety. So, we have less patrols in the ungodly hours of the morning.
Some Youth in our Block have been encouraged to do this till 6 am. This is not always the case, but the area is better now, for now.The other underlying but not oft looked important issue, is the fact that we as a people have already beed deadened and conditioned by Apartheid that we are having a hard time coming out of that Stalag and mental Gulag. Of course we have long been in the Concentration Camps and prisons of Apartheid functioning and operating like the aforementioned Stalag and Gulag meatgiinders and psyche-hospitals that have contributed immensely to our present state of being and existence of our African of South African people.
We now have events called Marikana, a ruse and guise to distribute the drugs and consume liquor and carry on sex by its organizers, that in the end, these place end up with armies of these drug dealers: foot soldiers-who advertise and sell their drugs in these events, the illicit drugs and all forms of booze, and this ends up being an orgy of drugged-out and highly intoxicated youth, which is a setting for other things beyond the pale.Ketsi's children and other such-like people, have their children going to the best schools in the land.
This is unconscionable. This Ketsi self-styled potentate drive all sorts of cars(sits on a wheelchair, mind you) and has many girlfriends... go figure. We have no power to fight against these interlopers, and destroyers of our youth and communities. There needs to be something the people of goodwill here in Mzantsi can do. This is going on as I speak and is not abating.It is a fact that the drugs have decimated families, youth and elderly people. It has left destruction and ruin in the townships throughout Soweto, but in this case, I will focus on Orlando.
Drugs like Cocaine and Mandrax pills started proliferating in the Township around the early eighties and has now become a pandemic throughout different communities of Africans, Coloreds and Whites. In Orlando East(Soweto), the inhabitants have been watching with dread and fear as their youth became zombies, sick, and died from this drug-which, when imbibed, makes its victims froth at the mouth and tear-up incessantly, walking unsteadily zombie-like walk and creates an ever increasing crave, leading to all sorts of crime that has this drug-besieged Township of Orlando teetering on the brink of lunacy and genocide.
This is a problem which has been thus far so utterly ignored that the residents of Orlando, rallied by the members of the CPF(Community Police Forum which was formed by the local Orlando station police force) along with and run by the local residents-who patrol and try to keep crime at a low minimum. On the second Major Saturday of August 2013, a coalition of local Orlando residents, Their CPF Team and several policemen in their cars descended on the drug dens dotting the Township in each and every street.
Recapping and reposting of the Maponya Saga [I penned many moons ago]:
What The Citizens Of Orlando Have Attempted To Do Fighting Drugs In Their communities"Community Action and and Exhumation of Crime/Drugs" - Drug Ground Zero Soweto and Durban and Cape Town....
As the article above aptly shows we take note on this part of the article that the same sound of singing, became protestations when the coalition I had described above descended onto to the drug houses and dens within Orlando. A very disturbing picture began to emerge.The Jo'burg Metro police gave permission to the marchers, and provided the police force, and it was explained to the marchers that the agreement, and permission to approach the drug dealers was given. With placards and a huge number of people began advancing to the 'known' Drug dens, and those who sold from street corners or shop stoops.
The people went to the houses, containers used as phone phones booths and other illicit activities including the selling of "Nyaope"; The mob advised the police that the Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Pakistanis, and some Coloreds[along with locals] should be arrested and searched for drugs. In some houses in Orlando, they found drugs on the bodies of Old grannies, who were used as carriers. Heading the large group was Councilor Matlaka(Councilor of Dube), along with 8(eight) police cars, about 15 policemen ant eh CPF patrollers were about 30, and the rest of the group consisted of a large number of undisclosed members of the local resident.
Five young boys were arrested and were found to have drugs on their persons. Some of these dealers were women who had come from the rural areas and were very secretive as to who their suppliers were. Others were resistant to the mob but caved in when they saw the mob's menacing bearing and intent.In the part of the Township called "Roma"[which is still Orlando], two houses were searched and drug paraphernalia was found; they also found a lot of stolen IDs and Marijuana in bags, along with credit cards and guns.
Some of this stuff was found under the beds in some of these houses, or carelessly strewn all over the dirty and unkempt houses.In another areas of Orlando around a store called "Goodluck" several houses were without owners, and all sorts of evil and illicit and sordid activities have been taken place in plain sight and nobody could anything about it... In one "Pink" Big House, the occupants tried to run away, but were apprehended had had on their person both 'Nyaope' and Marijuana and two guns.
Maponya - (The Nyaope Potentate whose fiefdom is Orlando)
In the area around the Grounds and Tennis Courts(Known Generally as 'Escort'(Still in Orlando) is the headquarters of the Nyaope sales. Hoards of youth and well-off middle class Africans, along with cops(who are in the pay of this guy), who has in his employ, his grandmother, and siblings-the Police and local ANC honchos. One of the 'carriers' who serves his customers on his behalf, was found with six plastics bags and she was in a close to comatose state...
The locals who were in the march, alerted the police that Maponya's grandmother had all the drugs hidden in her body, underneath her clothes. She was very rude and arrogant and dared the police to touch her. She was arrested and searched on arrival in that the police station On seeing what's happening, Maponya attempted to escape, put on a disguise but the citizens saw to it that he was apprehended.
When he was brought into the parked police cars, he insisted that he should sit in the front with the police driver. All the time he was wagging his finger and berating the police, and none responded to his charade. From this incident it was apparent that the Police Commander and his side-kicks(police grunts) were in the pay of this lilliputian drug potentate.The community, who have been seeing the police and other people of note come to buy or get paid by him over a period of time, lost their cool.
They threatened to riot and demanded that Maponya be put in the back of the squad car with all other arrestees. Eventually he was put in the back with all other small-time drug dealers, and he was clearly miffed about this and he carried on his protestations.What got him off the hook, was the directive the police said that he could not be arrested if he did not have any drugs on him. Those who worked for him refused to snitch or rat out on him. They all denied having received or brought this stuff from him-and the junkies were intimidated into denying that he supplied or sold them the "Nyaope"...
This technicality, helped set him free and he was released without being charged.The crowd moved to an area in Orlando too, called 'Paramount,' and they went into the ramshackle shacks filling up the yards of most houses in Orlando, and in them they found and routed drug dens , prostitution harems, and 3 people were arrested there-considered to be the main bosses. As far as one can tell, "Nyaope" is sold in each and every street in Orlando.
The denizens of Orlando were disgruntled and felt betrayed, because everyone knew who(Maponya) was really distributing drugs wholesale in the Township, and he walked scot-free, due to a flimsy technicality in the law so that, in the end, the people wanted the Minister of the Police, Mrs. Raphiyega and the government to become involved.
The people finally decided to call a meeting in a week of two, to report back to the community these events, and have decided to take the case to the Provincial government and they want the Premier to take this case over.
Most of those residents who partook in the raid, have to go around the Township armed"Drug And Chemical Warfare On the People Of Mzantsi"Below I will link an article which no longer talks about "Nyaope, but "Whoonga" which is a potent and highly addictive mixture of Marijuana, heroin, and HIV Medications.
The same with "Nyaope" and other concoctions, which also include the life-saving pills for HIV-Aids, and literally makes waste of the users and death, sickness, crime, homicide, rape and so forth have spiked. This is a crisis, and it needs to be addressed aggressively, or we stand to loose not only generations, but a whole nation of people high on home-made designer drugs which are decimating communities throughout South Africa with unequaled impunity.
Until the day we Africans of Mzantsi stop thinking of and for our individual selves only, until they day we Africans of Mzantsi say enough is enough; and, until we come to our senses and go and see for ourselves what I am talking about or everyone is writing about what these drugs are doing to us, our people, relatives and communities[Nation], we will forever be in our cocoons and do nothing, and we are clearly facing something more dangerous than HIV AIDs(Which is still battering and wiping the core of our communities), we will in the end taken-snuffed by the genocide we are now facing.
There is more to the story as to how these drugs came into the country, and I will be writing an article tracing the origins of this scourge and addiction.We are really much better than this, lest we forget that.... We can all 'wax political' to our egos content.. But this, is not going away, instead, it is threatening our very existence as the indigenous of the country of South Africa... We are in the clutches of a very dangerous and deadly grip of a drug epidemic whose likes has never been seen before in our country.
We need to begin to help ourselves and come to these communities and route the drugs and dealers consistently and brutally, or it is they, as we are seeing, who will run our Townships(they already are) or either its us who will have the finally say, and control and run our townships and communities... Whither Mzantsi....The article above was made possible by the people of Orlando I talked to. All I did was cobble up all the interviews, and these are what I formed into the narrative above.
This is seriously Grassroots news and Grassroots intelligence, which is out there for all who wish to report on the events and issues that are taking place amongst our own people. The newspaper will not put it in the way that Malcolm explained above as I cited him. We have to begin to write our own news and stories, and talk to the people Face-To-Face, and can then afterwards post it on Facebook. Our people have the information as to what's going down in the Township... We just need to get out there, be amongst them, and write these stories, and show them what we have written, in order to get even more gruesome accounts of the lives of our African People Of Mzantsi, today,here on the Viral soup.
According to Jose Marti:"We must state categorically that there is no salvation for our people unless we turn our backs on all the models that charlatans of all types have tried to sell us for twenty years. There is no salvation outside of this rejection. There is no development separate from a rupture of this kind. All those new intellectual giants who are emerging from their slumber -- awakened by the dizzying rise of billions of men in rags, aghast at the threat of this hunger-driven multitude weighing on their digestion -- are beginning to rework their speeches/[writings].
"Far it being for me to ridicule the patient efforts of honest intellectuals who, because they have eyes to see, are discovering the terrible consequences of the devastation imposed on us by so-called specialists in the development of the Third World. My fear is to see the fruits of so much energy co-opted by Prosperos of all kinds who -- with a wave of their magic wand -- spirit us to world of slavery dressed up in today's "fashions.
"My fear is justified even more by the fact that the educated petty bourgeoisie of Africa - if not the entire world -- is not prepared to give up its privileges, either because of intellectual laziness or simply because it has tasted the Western way of life. Because of these petty bourgeois forget that all genuine political struggle requires rigorous, theoretical debate, and they refuse to rise to the intellectual effort of conceiving new concepts equal to the murderous struggle that lies ahead of us. Passive and pathetic consumers, they wallow in terminology Fetishized by The West, Just As They Wallow In Western Whiskey And Champagne In Shady-Looking Lounges.
"Ever since the concepts of negritude and African Personality, now showing their age, the search for ideas that are genuinely new produced by the brains of our "great" intellectuals is in vain. Our vocabulary and our ideas come from elsewhere. Our professors, engineers, and economists are content to simply add color -- from often the only things they brought back with them from European/American universities that have produced them are their degrees and their velvety adjectives and superlatives!(Sankara is confirming what Andre Gunder Frank was saying above).Sankara:
"It is both necessary and urgent that our trained personnel and those who work with the pen learn that there is no such thing as neutral writing. In these stormy times we cannot give today's and yesterday's enemies monopoly over "thought," "imagination," and "creativity."Before it too late -- and it is already late -- this elite, these men of Africa and of the Third World, must come home to themselves, that is, to their societies and to the miseries we inherited.
They must understand that the battle for ideology that serves the needs of the disinherited masses is not in vain. but they must understand, too, that they can only become credible on an international level by being genuinely creative -- by "Portraying A Faithful Image Of Their People, An Image Conducive to Carrying Out Fundamental Change In Political And social Conditions And To Wrenching Our Countries From Foreign Domination And Exploitation, Which Leave Us No Other Perspective Than bankruptcy.
"The citation above is an introduction to the piece I am posting below. The Drugs are decimating our people and everything, worse than Aids, with the same powerful destructive effect/affect, and devastating impact on us: especially in the community I am about to talk about.
Before I do, I want to preface my comments on the article above by saying: we might try very hard to play the game of the Ostrich burying its head in the sand, but, we are even more exposed by doing that, and cannot even see and deal with the dangers facing us, today.
In the Township of Orlando, the oldest one of all the various Soweto Townships that expand from it; drugs are wreaking havoc, and piercing at the core of the community more than many here on all the Social Media are willing to accede or acknowledge. I have written extensively here on Facebook about the drug pandemic that has assailed us, and promised will come back with new information and update about the Nyaope that is wiping us out. Seriously.
I will post the earlier post on Maponya again, at the end of this piece.I have posted the fact that the ANC government has acknowledged that ''drug abuse'' poses an even bigger threat to its young people'(the children and youth of Mzantsi), than the HIV/AIDS pandemic. I think both are huge, and are really furiously gnawing away at our people and us. Many diss and deride these users, but many of us today, who have to live with and amongst our African people in Orlando and witnessing first hand what is going down-We feel/see it; what is happening to us on a much grander and macabre state that many really nor care to know-it is what is our reality...
When I write such articles, the supposed-elite-African-intelligentsia and other such opportunists, keep quite, and do not even do anything. Some pick up ideas and apply themselves and their newly found ideas in trying to do something for the people. Be as it may, this present article is present a report, news that is not reported, and stories from the Township of Orlando, that are swirling throughout the denizens of Orlando, but are tangentially known by the rest of our edumacated elite-and they are national in scope.
Orlando is but just a window into the whole cesspool and morass that is our decrepit existence, That is why I will not stop writing about these sad chapters in our lives, but, am writing them for posterity, and to preserve them as historical record for our children and people/Nation.There are two things I would like to take a look at, and lastly try and interrogate the whole social miasma as it is shaped, to date.We have a rat-rodent problem which is being exacerbated by the corrugated iron shacks patched/made of boards, plastics and anything to build a dwelling for our people.
Orlando is very well-known to have legions of this structures in their yards, and these have created this formidable rat invasion and other creatures, which causes that the people say things about their presence bordering on conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, it is a fact that these rats and rodents are biting the people's doors; also, they are biting the children sleeping and creating a host of other ailments we have not even begun to deal with.
The most recent posts I have dropped on all sorts of Social Media, are geared towards us beginning to write about our real realities and maybe many of us will begin to learn and see something that we had not even thought about, before. Creating a literature from the grassroots reporting as I am about to do, is one way to go, of the many that can used. I am going to make sure that this disaster that the people of Orlando are facing, as I am onto this article, is exposed and written about as clearly, and as much in a raw way as I can conjure and write it down.
I have waxed political and theoretical enough on the most recent two pieces I have posted here on Facebook and elsewhere. Now, I want to delve into the environment I live and exist in and to make an attempt to caricature its reality and effects/affects on us. What is happening as I am onto this article in our Township is unconscionable. There is no moral justification as to what is happening to our youth, and the adult(children, baby population). This is a very serious thing happening to us here, and I think I will talk about it now.Here in Orlando we are facing a deadly and serious drug epidemic.
Drugs are so rife, that we have several drug potentates planted throughout the whole Township and in many contemporary youth social events. Pretext of an event is a carte blanche operation for the drug dealers and distributors. Drugs have a unique and not so sophisticated way the travel and are disseminated in our community here in the Kasi(Township). It would at one time help us to deal with this problem better if this were to followed up and exposed.Here in Orlando, we customarily call areas within Our Township of Orlando, by the first numbers of their street, in one part of Orlando, and others have their names for a general group of areas, but being Orlando too.
So, in the areas of the street known as '20, we have chaos that is replicated throughout Soweto and the whole hinterland of South Africa with similar ghettoes and decrepit life-style existences. These are the throw-back and creation of Apartheid, and from these enclaves, we find similar scenes and realities that I am describing below in Orlando.This is news that is not news in the traditionally White owned media and nor in the dialogue going on inside the country. What it is I am saying this is not important for no reporters ever take time to sit down and look at, participate in and try their darnest to bring this situation into light.
We as the grown up residents and former students who were involved in the 1970 Student Revolution, are looking at our and within our own Townships, and what we are seeing is some kind of carnage: Drugs destroying and decimating our famous, friends, society and the African race. This is what is happening now as I am onto this article.One of the general terms given to this devastating drug, it is called "Nyaope," a generic name for a killer drug that has left our youth being spooks and walking skeletons right in front of us. What a mess we are in as a people today in Orlando.. So sad to see... Heartbreaking and discouraging.
What we have to live with everyday is spiritually.- soulfully taxing and seriously soul and spirit bruising. I think one has to see it to grasp my meaning. I am going to try and get some pictures, very soon. Optics do serve a relevant tool and technique in what we have to try and contain and at the moment, are at loss what we can or should do.Nyaope Hell Holes And Meat GrindersAs I had said above, in the area of the Streets known as 20(this includes street No. 19) in Orlando, there is this wheelchair drug dealer thug called Nkesi.
He runs a drug-dealing den in plain sight with tight security to go. His hirelings are destitute and jobless and lacking in education or dropouts, both girls and boys, who, even go to his hovel(home if one may say so) which is a terrible and a hell for drug-addicted girl teenagers, who would do anything for a fix. That is where we get to see many victims come out/thrown from or these hell holes with HIV/AIDS, and other STDs that are still dismally afflicting and affecting our people, children, youth and elderly-either dead or sickly.
When you see these youth and grown ups pining and crazily craving the drug, they steal water taps, fenced gates, copper wires from the electric poles and houses-ones heart and soul/spirit sinks to its lowest ebb. They have a favorite on their menu, which is these new Plasma TV Screen. It is said if they do not sell them, they imbibe the white powder they find therein, which is fatally destructive, but it is their high pick on the menu of drugs. They also sell them to earn money to go back and buy the Nyaope.
Known as 'Grootie'(Big Brother) or Ketsi, on his wheelchair is loathed by many of the this youth, and those brave enough, tell all about him. They talk of his crude and cruel ways of their treatment by him and many others of his foot-soldiers who run the errands of buying drugs from HIV/Aids patients-they are also enforcers. Some of these people afflicted with the HIV/AIDS disease, collect their rations of the ARV's from different hospitals and outlets, using various means, by moving from one place to the other-collecting the pills.
So that, In the end, they sell these pills to the dug-lords foot-soldiers, who in turn sell them to the distributors and providers of this Nyaope for a fee. This is the cycle, of how this whole operation gets done.Many people are affected in various dire and unknown ways by these burgeoning drugs. There are crews that operate in our midst in the trade of dealing or distributing drugs and raking in millions of Rands in their operations.
The houses that they use for such illicit and illegal operations, are houses that the family in that house might have disappeared/wiped out, or is complicit in the trade, and there is no order, and some like Ketsi, have security tight operations that everyone knows, and have installed within their dens, the State Of The Art Cameras driven by some new and sophisticated technology.
So that, as these mini-factories churn out corpses and walking spooks/zombies, we have to live with the scourge-and all the time feeling downright helpless.The police are on the top of the pecking totem pole and order The bribes they get makes them look askance, and their drug-lords/partners in crime and genocide, are never arrested, but if they do, sit in front with the cop driving, and are out in a matter of hours.
Bodies of young girls are found strewn in the street corners or the middle of the road, having been ravaged and no one investigates, and yet the locals know who did it-but the locals state that they are bodies thrown out of these caverns. They dare not talk, for even the innocent ones have been killed for no other reason than that they were innocent and were never involved in anything of the kind of operations/drug-dealing or drug use, I have briefly discussed above.
If one were to see these kids and elderly, they have this menacing/angry look, and the people say they are even more wild and daring/bold when they have not smoked their stuff/Nyaope. So that, this leads them to carrying out dastardly deeds, murder and what it takes just to get a fix. They are jaded, ashen and very 'blackened' and gaunt-looking-Ghost-like, and never ever wash.
The local lore has it that they no more beat them, once they catch them stealing, they simply pour water over them, and they end up howling like wild creatures with all the water coming down on them. Some say that this water acts like acid on them. There is some kernel of truth in that, but as to the validity of the claim, the jury is still out on that one.The behavior of these strung-up youth is appalling and galling. It is also sad to see a wasted life moving like an ogre or zombie out of whack and stone to the max.
This something to behold and it is devastating and crushing on some of our souls, mind and bodies. Our kids talk like they are having speech deformities, and they are bent and very wild-eyed-looking and are always on the prowl in search of another theft or robberies-to get another fix/high. Hooded thugs prowl the hood and rape and abduct and rob women as they are headed off to work in the wee hours of the mornings.
So many rapes, so many muggings-men are also mugged, and most times shot; assaults, murders and all kids of undeclared war on the our polity is causing a costly blow we will take many centuries to recover from, that I come here onto the Facebook collective and ask that something be done before it's too late, of which it is beginning to look like it is very late.As a temporary tangent, we have drug dealing in the coughing medicines sold in the Pharmacies or Chemist that are laced with cocaine, and now they are selling all over the place for around R15.00-are the hot item that is proliferating in our midst.
The name of that guy is Adcock Ingram, and the cough syrup is manufactured by the famous 'Broncleer' according to the presenter, and whose name, the journalist or hostess of the show is Nkepile Mabuse and the name of the show is "Check Point" on e-TV it was aired on 02. 06. 15 at 10:00 pm-and that is where I got this bit of information from. People are now addicted to this concoction, and it is marketed by a person, whose company name appears of the cough drops for infants, and only our Ancestors know what they are putting in this old cures for babies.
This is another issue I will be talking a bit about whenever I complete my researches.In the manufactories spotting and dotting the landscape, some of these youth are telling of how they have to wear latex gloves when making this Nyaope or some obscure drug mix-because it is hot and burns the skin; they even volunteer information as to the fact that they make it inside some tires, for they do not destruct just as quickly and for whatever reason. There's a whole of deadly mixes of rat poison, Dagga, some disinfectant, ARV's Mandrax tablets and other natural salts/chemicals and an assortment of everything to produce this drug or drugs of the same ilk.
As I am onto this piece, one of my friends just walked in complaining about the lack of electricity for the pas so many hours. He says that rumors has it that a copper cable has been stolen, just as I am writing about this issue here on this piece. We are under an attack and deluge of thefts perpetrated by these Nyaope users, and that is why some houses and sections of Orlando do not have electricity now-this was not due to power-load sharing. People even steal water, that is in those locations that have these water meters.
People are not working, and cannot afford pre-paid electricity, and metered water, which have been outsourced to foreign corporation/countries, and they are fleecing us so badly and leave us always in the cold and literally dry.Both youthful but shredded and emaciated looks of youth, girls and boys are dropping out of schools in droves and headed into these drug dens, they are emaciated, blackened, dry-deadened physiques, drooling and zombie-like spook-looking walking dead.
The poor once youthful great looking girls are smoking anything, have HIV/AIDS, sleep around with anyone and thoroughly abused sexually, sickly and bony looking with eyes drooping out of their sockets, very thin-looking, breasts sagging and wasted and gaunt faces; hair falling off, this for us is watching death incalculable and very dumbing and numbing-Daily.Then there's Madambi. The character too lives around the 20s Street, and he too is into high tech, eking money out of the inhabitants, and he too is destroying the youth for he has created a well organized enterprise and has his henchmen, but he is not bigger than Nektsi.
Funked-Up Society - A People On The Precipe Of The Dark Hole
This brings us to the "Hell House". So dubbed because in it everything and anything happens or takes place. This is where the meat-grinder modus operandi is churning out corpses, Murders are routine and there is a general sense of intimidation that is the norm and credo. As for the Cops, they are nowhere to be seen, or the same thing happens when they arrest the Drug-lords, the thugs are always let go and they bribe their way out.
Bribery is another scourge that is endemic amongst law-enforcement people in south Africa-it has become a sort of a culture of laissez fair and a carte balance spirit that has prevailed for some decades now. In the Noordgesig Colored Township, there are Old ladies who sell what they call "Space Cookies". These are bought and eaten by the students of Noordgesig High School, and this leaves the kids High And smoked out/High.
Thus the persisting problem of school drop-out rate as I have just touched upon above.At night, the poor working women, early risers and leavers headed to work in the dark, are susceptible to lurking murderers and rapist as they walk alone towards the required transportation to work. There were patrols by local guys, but this has been sparse and sporadic at best, and the issues of being paid take precedence before anything else, let alone local people's safety. So, we have less patrols in the ungodly hours of the morning.
Some Youth in our Block have been encouraged to do this till 6 am. This is not always the case, but the area is better now, for now.The other underlying but not oft looked important issue, is the fact that we as a people have already beed deadened and conditioned by Apartheid that we are having a hard time coming out of that Stalag and mental Gulag. Of course we have long been in the Concentration Camps and prisons of Apartheid functioning and operating like the aforementioned Stalag and Gulag meatgiinders and psyche-hospitals that have contributed immensely to our present state of being and existence of our African of South African people.
We now have events called Marikana, a ruse and guise to distribute the drugs and consume liquor and carry on sex by its organizers, that in the end, these place end up with armies of these drug dealers: foot soldiers-who advertise and sell their drugs in these events, the illicit drugs and all forms of booze, and this ends up being an orgy of drugged-out and highly intoxicated youth, which is a setting for other things beyond the pale.Ketsi's children and other such-like people, have their children going to the best schools in the land.
This is unconscionable. This Ketsi self-styled potentate drive all sorts of cars(sits on a wheelchair, mind you) and has many girlfriends... go figure. We have no power to fight against these interlopers, and destroyers of our youth and communities. There needs to be something the people of goodwill here in Mzantsi can do. This is going on as I speak and is not abating.It is a fact that the drugs have decimated families, youth and elderly people. It has left destruction and ruin in the townships throughout Soweto, but in this case, I will focus on Orlando.
Drugs like Cocaine and Mandrax pills started proliferating in the Township around the early eighties and has now become a pandemic throughout different communities of Africans, Coloreds and Whites. In Orlando East(Soweto), the inhabitants have been watching with dread and fear as their youth became zombies, sick, and died from this drug-which, when imbibed, makes its victims froth at the mouth and tear-up incessantly, walking unsteadily zombie-like walk and creates an ever increasing crave, leading to all sorts of crime that has this drug-besieged Township of Orlando teetering on the brink of lunacy and genocide.
This is a problem which has been thus far so utterly ignored that the residents of Orlando, rallied by the members of the CPF(Community Police Forum which was formed by the local Orlando station police force) along with and run by the local residents-who patrol and try to keep crime at a low minimum. On the second Major Saturday of August 2013, a coalition of local Orlando residents, Their CPF Team and several policemen in their cars descended on the drug dens dotting the Township in each and every street.
Recapping and reposting of the Maponya Saga [I penned many moons ago]:
What The Citizens Of Orlando Have Attempted To Do Fighting Drugs In Their communities"Community Action and and Exhumation of Crime/Drugs" - Drug Ground Zero Soweto and Durban and Cape Town....
As the article above aptly shows we take note on this part of the article that the same sound of singing, became protestations when the coalition I had described above descended onto to the drug houses and dens within Orlando. A very disturbing picture began to emerge.The Jo'burg Metro police gave permission to the marchers, and provided the police force, and it was explained to the marchers that the agreement, and permission to approach the drug dealers was given. With placards and a huge number of people began advancing to the 'known' Drug dens, and those who sold from street corners or shop stoops.
The people went to the houses, containers used as phone phones booths and other illicit activities including the selling of "Nyaope"; The mob advised the police that the Zimbabweans, Nigerians, Pakistanis, and some Coloreds[along with locals] should be arrested and searched for drugs. In some houses in Orlando, they found drugs on the bodies of Old grannies, who were used as carriers. Heading the large group was Councilor Matlaka(Councilor of Dube), along with 8(eight) police cars, about 15 policemen ant eh CPF patrollers were about 30, and the rest of the group consisted of a large number of undisclosed members of the local resident.
Five young boys were arrested and were found to have drugs on their persons. Some of these dealers were women who had come from the rural areas and were very secretive as to who their suppliers were. Others were resistant to the mob but caved in when they saw the mob's menacing bearing and intent.In the part of the Township called "Roma"[which is still Orlando], two houses were searched and drug paraphernalia was found; they also found a lot of stolen IDs and Marijuana in bags, along with credit cards and guns.
Some of this stuff was found under the beds in some of these houses, or carelessly strewn all over the dirty and unkempt houses.In another areas of Orlando around a store called "Goodluck" several houses were without owners, and all sorts of evil and illicit and sordid activities have been taken place in plain sight and nobody could anything about it... In one "Pink" Big House, the occupants tried to run away, but were apprehended had had on their person both 'Nyaope' and Marijuana and two guns.
Maponya - (The Nyaope Potentate whose fiefdom is Orlando)
In the area around the Grounds and Tennis Courts(Known Generally as 'Escort'(Still in Orlando) is the headquarters of the Nyaope sales. Hoards of youth and well-off middle class Africans, along with cops(who are in the pay of this guy), who has in his employ, his grandmother, and siblings-the Police and local ANC honchos. One of the 'carriers' who serves his customers on his behalf, was found with six plastics bags and she was in a close to comatose state...
The locals who were in the march, alerted the police that Maponya's grandmother had all the drugs hidden in her body, underneath her clothes. She was very rude and arrogant and dared the police to touch her. She was arrested and searched on arrival in that the police station On seeing what's happening, Maponya attempted to escape, put on a disguise but the citizens saw to it that he was apprehended.
When he was brought into the parked police cars, he insisted that he should sit in the front with the police driver. All the time he was wagging his finger and berating the police, and none responded to his charade. From this incident it was apparent that the Police Commander and his side-kicks(police grunts) were in the pay of this lilliputian drug potentate.The community, who have been seeing the police and other people of note come to buy or get paid by him over a period of time, lost their cool.
They threatened to riot and demanded that Maponya be put in the back of the squad car with all other arrestees. Eventually he was put in the back with all other small-time drug dealers, and he was clearly miffed about this and he carried on his protestations.What got him off the hook, was the directive the police said that he could not be arrested if he did not have any drugs on him. Those who worked for him refused to snitch or rat out on him. They all denied having received or brought this stuff from him-and the junkies were intimidated into denying that he supplied or sold them the "Nyaope"...
This technicality, helped set him free and he was released without being charged.The crowd moved to an area in Orlando too, called 'Paramount,' and they went into the ramshackle shacks filling up the yards of most houses in Orlando, and in them they found and routed drug dens , prostitution harems, and 3 people were arrested there-considered to be the main bosses. As far as one can tell, "Nyaope" is sold in each and every street in Orlando.
The denizens of Orlando were disgruntled and felt betrayed, because everyone knew who(Maponya) was really distributing drugs wholesale in the Township, and he walked scot-free, due to a flimsy technicality in the law so that, in the end, the people wanted the Minister of the Police, Mrs. Raphiyega and the government to become involved.
The people finally decided to call a meeting in a week of two, to report back to the community these events, and have decided to take the case to the Provincial government and they want the Premier to take this case over.
Most of those residents who partook in the raid, have to go around the Township armed"Drug And Chemical Warfare On the People Of Mzantsi"Below I will link an article which no longer talks about "Nyaope, but "Whoonga" which is a potent and highly addictive mixture of Marijuana, heroin, and HIV Medications.
The same with "Nyaope" and other concoctions, which also include the life-saving pills for HIV-Aids, and literally makes waste of the users and death, sickness, crime, homicide, rape and so forth have spiked. This is a crisis, and it needs to be addressed aggressively, or we stand to loose not only generations, but a whole nation of people high on home-made designer drugs which are decimating communities throughout South Africa with unequaled impunity.
Until the day we Africans of Mzantsi stop thinking of and for our individual selves only, until they day we Africans of Mzantsi say enough is enough; and, until we come to our senses and go and see for ourselves what I am talking about or everyone is writing about what these drugs are doing to us, our people, relatives and communities[Nation], we will forever be in our cocoons and do nothing, and we are clearly facing something more dangerous than HIV AIDs(Which is still battering and wiping the core of our communities), we will in the end taken-snuffed by the genocide we are now facing.
There is more to the story as to how these drugs came into the country, and I will be writing an article tracing the origins of this scourge and addiction.We are really much better than this, lest we forget that.... We can all 'wax political' to our egos content.. But this, is not going away, instead, it is threatening our very existence as the indigenous of the country of South Africa... We are in the clutches of a very dangerous and deadly grip of a drug epidemic whose likes has never been seen before in our country.
We need to begin to help ourselves and come to these communities and route the drugs and dealers consistently and brutally, or it is they, as we are seeing, who will run our Townships(they already are) or either its us who will have the finally say, and control and run our townships and communities... Whither Mzantsi....The article above was made possible by the people of Orlando I talked to. All I did was cobble up all the interviews, and these are what I formed into the narrative above.
This is seriously Grassroots news and Grassroots intelligence, which is out there for all who wish to report on the events and issues that are taking place amongst our own people. The newspaper will not put it in the way that Malcolm explained above as I cited him. We have to begin to write our own news and stories, and talk to the people Face-To-Face, and can then afterwards post it on Facebook. Our people have the information as to what's going down in the Township... We just need to get out there, be amongst them, and write these stories, and show them what we have written, in order to get even more gruesome accounts of the lives of our African People Of Mzantsi, today,here on the Viral soup.
