Vusi Shongwe
Johannesburg - Compatriots, allow me to express my heartfelt condolences to all the families who have lost their loved ones in the Enyobeni Tavern Tragedy.
We all have been stunned by the news of their tragic death. The sky is crying. Our hearts are broken. It is a sad, sad week. With the passing of our compatriots, we are left with a profound sadness and a conscious awareness of a void that shall remain irreplaceable.
Cornelius Castoriadis, as cited by Bauman Zygmunt, in his paper ‘Pedagogy of the Depressed: Beyond the New Politics of Cynicism, asserts that “The problem with our civilisation is that it has stopped questioning itself. No society which forgets the art of asking questions or allows this art to fall into disuse can count on finding answers to the problems that besets it – certainly not before it is too late and the answers, however correct, have become irrelevant.”
Castoriadis’ observation in this regard is best exemplified by the conspicuous lack of a robust public discourse on the moral decay that is bedevilling South African society. The feeling of cynicism and indifference that has engulfed South Africa is best illustrated by the absence of a widespread debate on the social ills that continue to beset our beautiful country. South African society has stopped questioning itself, and this does not augur well for our democracy.
Throughout the world, there are prominent levels of alcohol consumption among adolescents. The single most contributing factor of high rates of teenage alcohol use is the unfettered general ease of access to alcohol.
The problem of underage drinking has always been swept under the carpet. This tragedy suggests that the extent of implementation of the drinks industry's programme of self-regulation through the “Prove It” age advert is hardly adhered to.
Drinking is a ticking bomb among the adolescent cohort, and the number of teenage drinking has tripled in recent times and has led to several unplanned pregnancies and all sorts of sexually transmitted diseases.
Some of the consequences of this problem drinking are brutally immediate and tragic, as exemplified by the Enyobeni Tragedy. But other consequences are long-term: not only chronic alcoholism and the disorders it spawns but drinking habits that intensify with later stress and erupt in later crisis, emotional and physical.
Psychologists tell us that at adolescent age, young people are just beginning to sort out their identity. The task facing them has never been more challenging and complex.
In his address, “Important Role of Business in our Teenage Crisis”, Bruce A. Lipshy believes that today’s adolescent lives in a generation of stress with little time for bridging the period between childhood and adult responsibility.
Young people simply do not have the time needed to put together a workable theory of self. Lipshy further says we no longer live in a society of straightforward and simple values. There is a crossfire of social philosophies.
The information age has bombarded young people with conflicting values. For adolescents, argues Lipshy, choices are difficult, and tensions are commonplace.
Years ago, adolescence was recognised as a distinct stage in the life cycle. Now, in the post-industrial age, continues Lipshy, we hear from psychologists and sociologists that there is a “denial of adolescence.”
“We hurry young people as children. Then as teenagers, they seem displaced. For adolescents today, there is no clear role or adequate recognition in our hurry-up world. The fabric of our society is a major factor in the adolescent crisis. For too many, it results in despair and substance abuse, and both are killing the young ones”. Compatriots, though these views are expressed from an American vantage point, few would disagree with me that they resonate perfectly with our South African environment.
Underage drinking is a serious, even deadly, problem. Alcohol use is a contributing factor to the four leading causes of death for young people: Accidents, vehicle deaths, homicides, and suicides.
Nearly 40 000 young people aged 15 to 24 die from one of these four causes each year. The deleterious effects of underage drinking could be likened to an insidious and cancerous disease that slowly wipes out a population of a country every year, with every person who died never having the chance to reach their full potential.
In his address, “Standing Tall Against Underage Drinking,” Hill J. Edward believes that the trouble is that even the most well-meaning people of all - parents - do not have the facts about underage drinking. Nor do they understand how the environment kids live in can encourage such drinking.
“Most folks work hard to be good parents. But one dangerous chemical, alcohol, is harming and even killing our children. Still, parents do not recognise the scope of the problem or its roots”.
Edward further believes that parents seriously underestimate the amount and severity of underage drinking. Most parents guess that young people take their first drink by age 16 or 17. Today's parents are stunned to learn that, on average, kids today have their first drink by age 12. What parents once considered a high school rite of passage is now daily life at middle school, and it is incredibly dangerous, says Edward.
Studies show children can develop alcohol dependency in as little as six months. A growing body of evidence suggests that even modest alcohol consumption in late childhood and adolescence results in brain damage – possibly permanent brain damage.
Edward is instructive when he points out that the problem is compounded by the facts that most kids do not get the kind of comprehensive health education they need to get the facts. Instead, they see ads where drinking is portrayed as adult, glamorous and sexy. They see this kind of advertising every day on billboards and buses. They watch beer ads on television and thumb through liquor ads in magazines.
According to Edward, advertising is like water; it seeps in gradually, through the cracks you cannot see. It slips inside our kids' consciousness and that of their peers. Given that one of the most critical factors for at-risk behaviour in a child is the behaviour of his or her friends, this is a danger we cannot afford to ignore.
The problem goes beyond just advertising of the products themselves. Brewers produce so-called "alcopops" with a sweet, fruity taste specifically designed to mask the taste of beer because most kids do not like the taste of it.
However, the Nyobeni tragedy has raised a few ethical and moral issues, which could be attributed to a complete breakdown of family values. To put it bluntly, this tragedy poignantly epitomises lack of parenting. A sizeable number of parents have abdicated their responsibilities of parenting.
Parents need to ask themselves some hard and soul-searching questions. It is the job of parents to tutor their children about the ills of society so that when they grow up, they can make good choices in life.
Girl children, for example, in the full gaze of their parents, leave home shortly after the setting of the sun to nightclubs, wearing skimpy dresses and come back during the wee hours of the morning.
Why do parents allow this, knowing very well that we live in a depraved society? How does a parent sleep peacefully when his or her underage girl child, or any underage child for that matter, is out partying and would come home at five in the morning? At the risk of sounding insensitive, these are moral questions all parents should grapple with.
As we go forward, no ideal approach to dealing with adolescents, especially their drinking, has been found. The temptation has been, unfortunately, to deal with adolescents in fragments.
Given the relative ineffectiveness of alcohol prevention policies in decreasing the uptake of alcohol by young people, restricting their access to alcohol may be a crucial prevention strategy. Taverners or alcohol vendors do not operate an implicit moral rule under which alcohol is provided less readily to younger children. More potent law enforcement interventions are needed if children's access to alcohol is to be decreased.
The time has come to move past all finger pointing and work together, with one voice, to solve this complex problem.
As Marvin A. Block put it in his title "Alcohol" the general prohibition of alcohol by law is not worthy of consideration.
The failure of that approach is a matter of record. What is needed is a progressive, self- germinating change in our environment, based on enlightenment, group conscience and even self-interest- a change of attitude toward drinking so that individuals who know they ought not to drink will be free to abstain without discomfort or recrimination. The way ahead may be long and tortuous, but a change of social attitude and environment need not represent an impossible dream. It is a problem we cannot afford to ignore.
A solution must be found. The goal is clearly before us. It is to be hoped that we have the initiative required to respond to its challenge, for our responsibility is clearly defined."
We need an action plan. We need a team effort – a multidisciplinary team effort. And we need community involvement.
We have a moral duty to prevent other Enyobeni Tavern tragedies. We have the responsibility to be intolerant of underage drinking and to be forceful in our intolerance.
Dr Shongwe is from Pietermaritzburg.