Thabiso Sekhula
LIMPOPO SECRETS: In the wake of the Enyobeni tragedy Thabiso Sekhula asks why we don’t create safe spaces for young kids to play in and socialise – and where there is no alcohol nor predators lurking around.
In our little corners of the country this week, everyone is talking about the tragic deaths of the 21 Scenery Park teens. How irresponsible their parents must be to let their children go out drinking and how these kids brought this upon themselves.
It’s been a heartbreaking week seeing kids as young as 14 die so horribly and to have no mercy given to their names.
These kids didn’t know that their deaths would be the source of everlasting shame for their parents and communities and even after such a tragedy, we throw blame and curse their names as if this could never happen to us.
Won’t it happen? If you are in a township or village, I dare you to look around and count just two places created for young people. To play sports, learn a skill, spend time with peers in a safe place where kids can be kids without alcohol and predators lurking around them.
It doesn’t exist for poor kids. Only alcohol places cater for them and treat them as VIPs and then we turn and cry that crime is rising and “these kids don’t listen”.
If you want to continue to blame the kids, just remember that we all defied our parents at one or more times in our childhood, even those of us who were raised under tight parental security. We just got lucky enough to return home alive and not have our mistakes live on as a source of shame for our parents after we were gone.
In many communities, there are more than five taverns. They allow kids to enter and drink because they bring in money. This was not a random incident. Why so shocked, Mzansi? You eat your own children for breakfast!
Teens are on street corners playing dice, girls are picked up by older men in cars right from their homes. South Africa is not safe wherever you go. In fact South Africa is a monster.
Kids will be kids and these 21 were unfortunate to have their lives cut short by a bad decision.
The scary thing is, this will most likely not be the last shocking thing that happens to young people in our townships and villages – this month!
