Alcoholic children ensure a drunken future

| Wednesday October 6, 2010 00:00

At the time our reporter and photographer found the children at the Kopong Kgotla, the children were hopelessly drunk.  The answer that one of them gave when asked why they were drinking beer was a curt: 'Ga re tagelwe ruri', meaning we will not remain drunk forever.

Such a statement could not come from a five-year-old unless there was adult input.  We can only deduce that one adult must have complained that the children should not be given beer and another adult retorted: 'Ga ba tagelwe ruri - they will not remain drunk forever'.  This was perhaps accompanied by some obscenity to ensure the grumbler keeps quiet.  The children were heard hurling obscenities at each other whilst fighting over a Chibuku carton.

Inside the Chibuku carton was traditional, home-brewed beer, the children said.  The children represent only a microcosm of a larger picture in the village on Independence Day.

Nay, they were a representation of a bigger national picture that begun playing itself out a week earlier during the popular Toyota 1000 Desert Race.  Several people died during those three days, and most of the deaths were related to booze.

In Thamaga, a group of drunk young boys and girls - mostly high school children - witnessed the cruel death of their friend whose jugular vein was slit with a bottle by one in the group.  He died outside the combi they were riding in.  Elsewhere, a man died because a drunk driver disobeyed a stop sign.  It is heartrending to see children knocked down by vehicles because they were too drunk to see the oncoming car, or because the driver was too drunk to see them.  It is indeed sad when parents learn that their little boy or girl was stabbed to death at a beer party or jumped onto an oncoming truck because he or she was drunk.

What we see here is a pattern, an unwritten practice whereby holiday time is drinking time.  Independence Day is certainly not an exception.  But it is wrong when some adults, in their drunken stupor, give children booze in the belief that they are making them merry. When drunk adults wantonly spew curse words, and equally drunk children repeat the words like a nursery rhyme, then the nation has a problem.

Far from it, we are not calling for banning of beer during holidays.  All we are saying is that communities ought to fight drunkenness, especially when it is visited upon children.

The little ones do not have a choice.  If they are drilled to become alcoholics at a very tender age as appears to be the case with the Kopong babies, a very unpleasant future awaits them. Surely we can arrange a better future for our progeny!

                                                                                 Today's thought

                          'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.'

                                                                         - Holy Bible: Proverbs 20:1