The story of Luvo Manyonga, who overcame a tik addiction to become an Olympic silver medalist, offers real hope where often there is none, writes Mike Wills.
Wayde was wonderful, but Luvo Manyonga from Mbekweni near Paarl is the uplifting hero of these Games. It’s a well-told story by now how the 25-year-old Manyonga broke a tik addiction to become an Olympic silver medallist in the long jump, but it is one that cannot be told often enough. Because it genuinely brings hope where none usually lives.
The terror of tik is almost a Cape cliche. Cheap, quick, accessible, brutal and intensely addictive. There is, the common wisdom holds, no coming back from that dark hole.
Well, Manyonga has proven that wrong. He is, by his own admission, lucky. Blessed with a sublime talent and helped beyond the call of duty by several people along the way, his journey is scarcely average, but it shows what can be done. And, most importantly, it boosts every family, social worker, friend, police officer, counsellor, coach, teacher or nurse wrestling with someone in the grip of crystal meth.
Manyonga’s experience shows there is a chance of a decent life being rescued from the carnage.
A recent visit to a tradesman’s home in Mitchells Plain brought home to me just how important this all is.
His was a relatively prosperous neighbourhood and he had several generations of family living happily around him, yet the first and proudest claim he volunteered on their behalf was that none had succumbed to drugs. That, he considered almost a miracle. Tik, he said, was everywhere.
Which made me think about what I would do if I caught someone selling the stuff to my kids.
I would love to believe my liberal self would prevail and I would follow some kind of due process, but I seriously doubt that would be the case.
If I lacked conviction that the system would deal effectively with the dealer, I would be ripe for vigilantism of the kind that Pagad drove 20 years ago.
The Sunday Argus carried an excellent piece by Henriette Geldenhuys marking the two-decade anniversary of the very public execution of Rashaad Staggie on the streets of Salt River in 1996. The burning images of that murder went around the world. It was a seminal moment in the history of this city.
For a brief time I think every parent sympathised to a degree with Pagad.We got the anger, the despair and the intensity of the need to protect children from what seemed like a one-way trip to hell with a ticket sold by scumbags on the make.
But, like every vigilante group anywhere, Pagad was also providing a degree of legitimacy for psychopaths, thugs and other scumbags on the make.
They never solved the problem and in the process became a big part of the problem themselves.
Pagad, apart from the odd flutter of a revival, seems to be history, but the issue they initially tackled is still a monstrous beast in our community. That’s why the shaft of light into the darkness that Luvo Manyonga’s medal provided, matters so much.