”My friend Nash and I were tikking the whole weekend. I was high as a Boeing. We walked the streets and not sleeping and not eating. It was day four of not sleeping. Then it was a Sunday night and Nash and I still had a couple of straws, but lost our lolly [the glass tube and ball]. We met up with this guy who said he had a lolly at his wendy house. We went with him and had a few hits. We were chatting in his room and he asked me to come with him to fetch something.
”We went into the house. He pushed me down on a bed. It was very dark and he was strong. He tied my hands above my head. He raped me. First with his penis but then it went pap [limp] and he took a screwdriver and carried on. I don’t know whether I screamed. I don’t know how I got there. I don’t know who untied me. I just remember a white blinding pain.”
This is the story of skinny 17-year-old Leeann, who had to undergo extensive reconstructive surgery after her rape earlier this year. She started smoking tik when she was 15 years old. Within one year of starting, she lost all interest in school work. She eventually failed, and then refused to go back to school. Now she’s at home with a standard six (grade eight) qualification and no prospect of employment.
”My sweet girl changed into a tik monster very quickly. Once she started doing tik, her little brother, who was only 12 years old, also started. Now I have two tik monsters in my house and my baby girl, who is 12, was raped a couple of months ago by Leeann’s boyfriend, Agmat Staggie [gang boss Rashied Staggie’s brother],” says Leeann’s mother, Helen.
Criminal element
Helen’s household is one of probably thousands in Mannenburg that have all but collapsed because of the devastating effects tik is having on the community.
”Both my kids don’t go to school anymore. My camera, telephone, hair dryer, the kettle, pots and the pan, clothes, my shoes — name it, they stole and sold it,” Helen said.
She used to run a small tuck shop from her flat, but stopped after her two kids stole every cent she made and sold the stock. Helen’s family lives in a block of flats with 48 other families — only 11 families in this block are ”tik-free” and only four individuals are employed full time.
The Hard Livings gang control the buying and selling of tik in this area. Because they’ve been controlling the area for many years gang fighting has calmed down considerably. ”We each have our own area where we sell tik. As long as you keep to your turf, life is cool, and we all make a bit of money,” says one of the Hard Livings tik merchants, who controls tik sales in three blocks of flats. The tik demand is high enough for all the gangsters to have a piece of the action — that’s why the fighting has cooled down.
The Mail & Guardian interviewed five people who feed their families thanks to the tik industry. Benjamin Hendriks makes lollies and over a weekend sells up to 600 for R20 a piece in the small area where he lives in Hanover Park. Kariem April does a roaring trade selling lighters, and Raymond and his kids sell used and new lightbulbs and the perspex used to make the tubes — an even cheaper way of smoking than a lolly.
Policemen in Mannenburg, who can’t be named because they’re not allowed to speak to the public or the media, said this week that the area is ”dying because of tik. Every week somebody here dies and mostly it’s tik-related. It makes people aggressive and crazy. People have sex with dogs while they’re on tik; kids throw stones at their ÂÂmothers … it’s destroying us and this community is falling apart,” said a senior police officer from the Mannenburg police station.
Affordable and available
The South African Medical Research Council’s alcohol and drug abuse research group recently released ÂÂstatistics indicating that tik abuse in the Western Cape has been rising faster than anywhere else in the world. Alcohol abuse had been the primary substance problem in the Western Cape from time immemorial, but since the middle of last year, more than 47% of all substance abusers seeking help at one of 26 rehabilitation centres across Cape Town are tik users, an 11% increase on the previous year.
Imraan Muscat, a social worker and addictions councillor at Tabankulu rehabilitation centre, says that eight of every 10 substance abusers in the Western Cape are hooked on tik.
”It’s a pandemic. We’re having entire communities and a whole generation identifying themselves as part of the tik subculture. It’s cheap, readily available and culturally not foreign. It’s acceptable to smoke substances; it’s not acceptable to inject, for instance. Tik is the perfect drug to go with the gang culture, where there’s a need for violence and aggression; where there’s no money and people are unemployed and often hungry,” he said.
A gram of tik, which usually lasts for a night, costs R200 in Mannenburg, and one straw, which is enough for about four hits, costs between R20 and R35.
Leeann has not smoked tik for 10 days; her little brother Charlie has been clean for a couple of days. ”I’m very scared of tik and I want to go back to school. I know that if I carry on smoking, I will die before the end of next year. Four of my friends have been killed because they were on tik. I’m next. I’ve been stabbed three times. I’ve stabbed other boys with knives. When I’m tripping, I’m aggressive and I want to have lots of sex. I rob and steal and I swear at my mother. I don’t like myself but then I just smoke again. And again,” the 14-year-old Charlie said.
”Before my sister and I started doing tik, it was lekker at home. Now it’s a mess. Both my sisters have been raped. My mother is angry all the time and she locks everything up. I don’t want to die young,” he said.