Sniff of Death

Sniff of Death

By Phillipa Garson

The scene is an upmarket, trend Johannesburg shebeen: the lights are low, the voices loud. A group of hip-looking thirty-something head for the toilets. One couple goes inside while the other three-a man and two women- wait outside. When the couple emerges, the other three go in together. Soon they’re all back at their table, laughing and chatting louder than ever. What’s going? A quick ritual which involves crouching over the toilet seat where lines’ of white powder are chopped up and then snorted up the nostrils with a rolled-up banknote, then continuing the party with more alcohol;, enhanced energy and confidence. Later, it’s back to the toilet for more lines.

The drug that was the rage in Europe and the US in the ‘80s hit South Africa with a vengeance in the ‘90s. So, too, has its deadly sister, crack cocaine, the substance many believe has led to the decline of a large black America, and could hasten, some even suggest, the breakdown of civilization altogether.

Images of gangs of youths slumped out in the ghettos are no longer a distant, unreal place seen only in the movies. A mere few kilometres away from the upmarket shebeen, in a seedier part of town, a group of guys are squatting on the floor, ‘hitting’ a crack pipe. Whereas a few yeras ago they might have smoked Mandrax, they are now addicted to intense, short-lived rush from smoking crack, a cheaper form of crystallised cocaine pressed into little lumps in secret ‘crack factories’.

Crack, nicknamed ‘the drug from hell’, is highly addictive and experts believe a single smoke on a crack pipe is enough to trigger a dependence. Each crack crystal costs anything between R20 and R100. Thandi is a cocaine addict. ‘I did it for the first time with my boyfriend, Muso. I loved the sudden confidence I felt,’ she says. ‘Nothing could intimidate me and I felt instantly more lively and happy.’ Soon she was scoring her own grams- cocaine powder is purchased in grams ranging...