OK wait a minute...rewind, take a break, deep breath and think. Wow, what a day this has been. I have been working on a big story since Thursday 17 June 2010. I finally finished last night on the 20th and got it Published on the 21st of June 2010 on the front page and background section of the Mercury. It was hard work, but thanks to two whiteys who had balls and were eager to learn, we finally managed to get it done, and well before dead line that is.
There are positives and negatives about this situation I find myself in. You see, I did a story on a drug that has been tearing apart the black community in Durban. The drug called "whoonga" has been eating away at the heart of the future of the black youth in our province. This drug, which is a concoction of the Storicin Anti-retroviral, heroin and rat poison leaves our kids feeling lethargic and amotivational, it takes away ones sense of urgency and well being which results in the user neglecting their personal hygiene. Safe to say we paved the way, for every other journo to write about it today.
Yeah I am a bit impressed about the work we have put in. Now, what leaves me in a malignant schizophrenia is the fact that this story has taken me to a place that I had long forgotten. It opened up old wounds and brought back memories of me as a youth, locked in the chains of poverty, surrounded by amotivational friends whom at one point in time I had felt that they were going to drag me into the depths of failure and unemployment squalor with them if I didn't catch a wake up.
You see, there is this ghetto phenomenon, a phase in life that every black- male township youth goes through. Ah yes, we call it the "merchant" phase of our disadvantaged, petty and limited lives. You see dear friends, every ghetto has its "merchants". Not your merchants of Venice, or spaza shops. No, not even the Indian merchants who wormed their way into our lives to ensure that a black man, according to Fred Khumalo, cannot be successful without his Indian. But the "merchant". The merchant of the hood, yes the one who sells weed at 50c a slope, yes oh wise ones, it is he; he who has an outside room at the back of his mothers/grandmothers match box house.
You see, the "merchant" played a significant part in our street education growing up. In my township at Inanda Newtown A, we looked up to our ''merchant", whether one smoked or didn't smoke, whether one drank liquor or not, the ''merchants'' place was our area of congregation, a place where topics raging from soccer, to girls and sex were discussed. It was a place where local gun-dubula's (gun toting tsotsis) and petty thieves sought refuge from the po-po. A place where we all joked and laughed and if there were quarrels between two parties, it was a place of settlement where an offender would broker peace by extending a "peace pipe".
If one had bunked school in those days, rest assured he could be found at the "merchants" place. We could rely on our merchant, it was innocent...No one would even think of selling stolen goods or contemplated any criminal activities because even the older, responsible working guys whom we looked up to would come after a hard days work and play round after round of the casino card game until we all decided it was time to go home, eat, sleep, shit and face another day.
Today, it pains me to see the new generation infected by this foreign rot that is severely chipping away at the moral integrity of our darkie communities. A rot that you will never find in your uMhlanga rocks, Sandtons and Campsbays of this world. Today when I look at these kids and the new "merchants" that have emerged, I think and wonder how it all went wrong. We always had a few scum bags who would try to corrupt young and Innocent minds, but they were always outnumbered by those who had big dreams and common sense.
But what do we do when all those big dreams get broken by the desire to get rich quick..not even rich quick, but just to have enough money to buy an expansive bottle of whiskey, get a new pair of designer jeans and bang a nice girl on a Friday night...Because that is what these whoonga dealers aspire too. Its all superficial I tell you...And our new generation has sold their souls to what they see on TV...A morally degenerate generation is looming, and I guess we only have our selves to blame. For we too have sold our souls to the superficial in one way or the other.
