Of
course I once smoked a joint. I still remember the day, it was
towards the end of 1996 and I was in Mudzi district of Zimbabwe
closer to the Mozambique border and that was during my first year of
teaching. I could only smoke or drink alcohol once I had left my
mother’s house. My late mum was a no-nonsense person and growing up
in her home, I honestly believed that she would kill me if I ever did
anything stupid. My mum would frequently say, “Dabbie ndokuuraya
ini, vanhu vanongoti ihuku yadya mazai ayo”(Dabbie, I can kill you
and I will get away with it as the society will say it is a hen that
has decided to eat its own eggs). My cousin sisters would come from
the village to stay at our house whilst looking for work as domestic
workers in the town. One cousin sister once threatened to hang
herself and my mother went to fetch a rope and gave to her and
that was the last time my cousin ever threatened to commit suicide.
The
day I smoked the joint was during a weekend and we started smoking
around mid day at the teachers’ residences and after we were done,
we prepared a meal of pap and relish. We then decided to walk to
Suswe business centre along the Harare- Nyamapanda road to buy
alcohol. The distance to the shops is about 3km from the school.
Somehow on that day, we decided to take the longer route and I
suspect this was the result of being high on the drug. The next
morning when I was cleaning the pots, I could not believe that we had
eaten such a poorly prepared meal.
The
last time, I got really drunk was also around that time. We had an
end of year party at the school on a Friday afternoon. After drinking
for a few hours a decision was made that we had to walk to the shops
to buy more liquor. I remember walking to the shops and after that
everything was blank. When I woke up in the morning, I was sleeping
on the veranda of one of the shops next to a madman who always slept
outside. I was told that by the time we got to the shop, I was so
drunk that I could no longer walk, hence the other teachers left me
there. The previous day an O’Level exam had been written and I was
the teacher on duty to take the exam answer sheets to the post office
at Kotwa in order to post them to Harare via registered mail. I can
still remember the heat in the post office, there was no
air-conditioning whilst I struggled with babalaas. Mudzi district is generally very hot in summer like most arid places. I then promised
myself that I would drink in moderation from there onwards.
My
attitude towards alcohol and smoking tobacco growing up was shaped
from also watching my late father battling with alcoholism. I always
told myself that I would not drink alcohol. During my A’ Level
studies in Biology I chose the option on drugs. I still remember part
of the definition I learnt then over 23 years ago which starts like,
“A drug is an externally administered substance.........) I still
remember learning somewhere that alcohol was as bad as other drugs to
the extent that if it had been recently been discovered, it would
have been banned like other drugs. During Organic Chemistry lessons
most boys in my class would get excited when we learnt about alcohol.
I knew it for a fact that some of the Physics guys whom I would meet
during Mathematics and Chemistry lessons were already drinking
alcohol as some days they would be clearly intoxicated.
At
the end of 1997, I would then join the insurance industry in Harare.
After each and every payday, I would see brilliant professionals
battling with alcoholism leading to absent ism. End of 2002, I got a
job as a junior manager in an insurance broking firm and one of my
roles was to entertain client. One of my big clients was a parastatal
and the gentleman who controlled the account expected to be
entertained and some Saturdays, I would take him for a braai and
drinks. I would also drink with him. In 2004 I would join an
insurance company starting as an underwriting manager and later as a
branch manager and in those roles, I would take some insurance
brokers for a braai and drinks and I would also drink with them.
When
I moved to South Africa in 2007, I started drinking on rare
occasions. As a foreigner it will be even more trickier being
arrested for drunken driving. I once read an account of guy who was
always being arrested for drunken driving in Zimbabwe. The guy
relocated to New Zealand and he stopped drinking and driving and when
he was asked, his answer was that he feared being deported being
deported back to Zimbabwe should he ever be caught driving under the influence! At times I would go for two years without
even drinking one glass of alcohol. A few years ago I watched the
movie Flight starring Denzel Washington when it premièred on MNET on
a Sunday evening. That movie had such an effect on me that I went to
the fridge that night and threw away all the alcohol I had and ever
since I do not stock any alcohol at home. A few years ago, in my
brief period as a caretaker of our body corporate, I used to have
problems with two gentlemen who smoked dagga in their flat and other
residents would complain. We ended up having a gentlemen agreement
that they would go and smoke in their garage away from the
residences.
Now
that the apex court has spoken and legalised marijuana, it is up to
the society to pick up the pieces from the effects of the addiction
and the societal ills that will flow from this decision. On an
individual’s level we need to know that with rights comes
responsibilities. The best advice that I can think of is what Judge
Willem van der Merwe told the then ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma
after the conclusion of the rape trial, “Had Rudyard Kipling known
of this case at the time he wrote his poem if he might have added the
following: “And if you can control your body and your sexual urges,
then you are a man my son”.
I
worry as a parent to two teenager boys who are at a critical age
where they can be easily influenced. This ruling has just made my job as a parent a little bit much more harder as I worry they can succumb to peer
pressure and acquire addictions that will follow them for the rest of
the life. On a society level law enforcement authorities will have
their work cut out for them when it comes to crimes such as driving
under the influence, there will also be implications for social
services as well as the health departments. There will be
implications for employers as well who will have to deal with the
fallout. On the economy front it has a
potential of generating income if the government licences producers
and properly taxes the growers and also there might be tourism
benefits since only a few countries have legalised marijuana
though-out the world.
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