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Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga

THE holidays are here and we are celebrating, right? Let me leave that to sink in, but having the kids causing havoc around the house and neighbourhood isn’t what one would call fun. At least for us adults. Yet there was a time when we wouldn’t care less.

Worrying was the occupation of our parents and the only way they showed their frustration to us was the savage beatings with a belt or the dreaded switch made from the peach tree. Sadists they all were.

Now, we have human rights to prevent us from doing the same to our own kids. Instead, there is far more likelihood of us being beaten up by them. How things change.

We even have kids who drink and engage in sodomite debauchery that would get the devil himself green with envy. Enter the Vuzu party which refuses to go away like a very bad fart.

Parents are terrified when they hear about the tales that have been shared about those dens of iniquity. How we got to this point, one might rhetorically ask. Well first, we grew up, that’s why. We tend to forget that during our childhood, we used to do the same. Albeit, in a different epoch. For instance, during our youth, being found with a condom was a near death sentence. One was condemned by the whole community

You would be sent to the nearest priest to have those demons of fornication cast out. Even when possession did not mean one had the intention to commit prostitution, for the lack of a better way of putting it.

I remember well one incident, I could have shared it here, when as we were boarding the Zupco buses of the time, a friend committed the ultimate sin. 

While reaching for a coin for the bus fare to hand over to the driver, a silver clad condom flew out of his pocket onto the lap of an elderly lady in the front row. Never mind that they were the expensive kind with the brand name that we called condoms during those days.

There was deathly silence on the bus as we walked straight to our favourite back seat as if nothing had happened. One can imagine the thoughts that were cooking in the minds of those passengers. We were paralysed with fear and embarrassment. 

We missed our usual stop trying to avoid the stares that would have accompanied us out of the bus. Until the last stop, that is, where we made a mad dash for the door. 

Before we would get out, the driver, stopped us dead in our tracks like he would if we wouldn’t have paid the fare.

Expecting the worst, he calmly handed the wrapped prophylactic back to its owner. 

“You dropped something mfana,” he bellowed. 

“You must have paid a fortune for it and in any case you may need it!”

We were stunned. You see, there was something heroic about carrying such, let alone use it. But the opposite would be the case if your parents caught you with one. 

They would beat the living daylights out of you then hand you over to the neighbours who would do the same. Then the close relatives and the clan back in the rural areas, if you were that unlucky.

You would be a national embarrassment. Even the headman and the chief would be alarmed. They would all be wondering ukuthi umntwana ungenwe kuyini? 

Which explains why today, we’re all shocked by the tales that come out of the Vuzu phenomenon. That is the territory of consenting adults, not totting toddlers and teens.

What has become of the world? Are these indeed the last days they warned us about in Sunday school? What is even more shocking is the fact that these children have all that cash to buy what has become an expensive commodity for most adults. I am talking about liquor here. 

The social fabric of society has been ripped to shreds. We have too many child- headed families in our communities. I noticed this way back in the early 1990s when we were investigating the explosion of gangs in Bulawayo’s western suburbs. As a senior teacher at Nketa High School, I saw first-hand, how this destroyed the future of innocent children. Parents had been forced to go eGoli to make a living, leaving teenagers to fend for themselves.

Some of the pupils we had thought they were adults. Who would blame them because their parents would just disappear, forcing them to lodge out rooms in their homes to earn the money for food and pay fees for themselves and their siblings. 

The carnage has been immeasurable. Many of the girls from that era have succumbed to the deadly HIV since they were being forced into prostitution. It’s a sad story that needs to be told. Sociologists might even trace some of the errant behaviours to that period. Particularly since the children of that period have become the parents of today.