Stop the taboo kids ‘sleep over’ culture

Ekasi Stories with Clifford Kalibo

“BUT that it doth presage some evil event. ’Tis much when scepters are in children’s hands, but more when envy breeds unkind division: there comes the ruin, there begins confusion.”

This line by The Duke of Exeter in William Shakespeare’s King Henry VI, Part One, could not be further from the truth and is indeed reminiscent of the wayward, awkward and wild behaviours of today’s children. Children have become so untouchable and uncontrollable, such that they will not take any advice from their parents or their elders.

Today’s youth have taken to the bottle at a very tender age. They also are now addicted not only to strong alcohol, ‘‘hot stuff’’, popularly known as ‘‘injengu’’, but also to drugs, the likes of marijuana, or ‘‘imbanje’’, crystal-meth also known as ‘‘mutoriro’’. As if this was not enough many youths in the townships are also taking a cough mixture popularly known as ‘‘ingoma.’’  This is quite a shocking and unwholesome trend being undertaken by both boys and girl.

Is this because we as parents are failing to control the youth, have we spared the rod for too long, or are we simply lazy to admonish our children, or are we too preoccupied with other things? This issue is seemingly leaving society with more questions than answers. There is a school of thought that talks of the fact that society has changed, and in a modern society parents should not be ‘‘too strict’’ as was the case in the 1960s and 1970s.

Some parents will venture forth an argument that this thing about ‘‘Constitutional Rights’’ is inhibiting them from properly discipling their children, because a child will tell of you of his or her rights.
Nowadays children will come home as late as midnight, reeking of alcohol and reeling from drunkenness. What a shame, what a disgrace for a school child to knock at his or parents’ house at such a late hour.  Over and above that, there is now this nonsensical thing called ‘‘sleep over’’.

You will find a girl child putting up for the night at her classmate’s home. This was unheard of in the yesteryears. This ‘‘sleep over’’ thing is a very dirty and terrible practice and indeed akin to taboo.
Schoolchildren are to be seen milling around town, more particularly around Bulawayo City Hall and Bulawayo Centre. You will find them carrying satchels on their backs, the contents of which are bottles of alcohol, and not school books.

After the youths have taken their alcohol and smoked weed, all hell breaks loose in town. You witness fights among the schoolchildren. Unruly and boisterous behaviour become the order of the day. At times you will find some of these children vomiting and lying on the pavements unable to walk due to drunkenness, with some whose sphincters just become lose, leading one to defecate on oneself! What an embarrassment! Their dressing is just dreadful and distasteful!

The trousers or jeans are worn loosely with no belt, such that the trouser waist droops and the buttocks are in clear view of everyone. This is satanic and barbaric and a disrespect for society. Etiquette just does not exist in the youth of today.
Schoolchildren have formed gangs whereby students from one school will fight with others from another school.

These fights happen in broad daylight after school, and some of the fights take place right inside town. Some of these fights are so fierce and brutal such that some of these kids have at times been hospitalised with serious bodily injuries. These fights, whose real cause is not clear in most cases, are just senseless and uncalled for. The youth have abandoned the libraries where they should be reading books and doing school assignments, but they have resorted to meeting at fight arenas to display their boxing, judo and karate skills.

Society has now seen the advent of the infamous “vuzu” parties. These are parties thrown by schoolchildren, boys and girls, in their teens, and adults are not welcome at such parties. The writer has it on strong authority that the ongoings at “vuzu” parties are so shocking and some of the events are so lurid and of such grossly scurrilous nature whose description cannot be put on print.
I am told that kids as young as 13 years attend ‘‘vuzu’’ parties.

The kids would be engaged in such nefarious activities such as smoking shisha, sniffing glue, smoking of dagga, “imbanje,” and other harmful substances and drinking all types of alcohol. It then becomes apparent that in a few years these kids will have no qualms in smoking cigarettes and dagga, and drinking alcohol full time.

I was so appalled to hear of the lascivious and dirty dance moves that the children make at ‘‘vuzu” parties, not to mention other immoral and sinful acts. These parties must be banned, and the authorities must impose stiff penalties for children who are found to be attending such dirty parties. That kind of behaviour is unacceptable and must be treated with the uttermost contempt that it deserves.

For how long should we allow the children to hold the scepters that the Duke of Exeter spoke of in King Henry VI Part One? Is this the beginning of the end of the world, or is it the end of the beginning of the world, or is it both the beginning and the end? Yet again we remain with more questions than answers.
Till we meet again next Sunday.
Feedback:  Clifford Kalibo, Phone: 0783856228/0719856228/whatsApp:  0779146957/Email: [email protected]