Online Reporter
Mthokozisi Ncube
IN 2018, I was in Form Three.
I was a bright pupil and everyone believed I would achieve my dream of becoming a pilot.
Then came an invitation that changed everything.
A popular school friend invited me to a Vuzu Party. We heard about the parties in whispers and knew only selected pupils were allowed to attend.
My first party was at a house in Richmond.
There were about 30 of us, mostly schoolchildren, and four older men arrived later. They were introduced as the people funding the party.
“We had wild fun and I drank alcohol for the first time,” recalled Gozhorai ChiBumbo (not his real name).
When schools were about to reopen, the same friend invited him to another party, saying he had earned the right because he had kept quiet about the first one.
That second party introduced him to something far more dangerous.
“We were given a bluish substance and told it would make the day great fun. Later I discovered it was crystal meth.”
He remembers the rush, an overwhelming euphoria that made him feel invincible.
“I felt like I was on top of the world, like Superman.”
Looking back, he now believes that was the beginning of his addiction.
Alcohol, which had started as experimentation, soon became part of the same downward spiral. Drugs initially handed out for free eventually became something he had to pay for.
And the teenager who once dreamed of flying began losing altitude.
At a third party in Hillside, he had sex for the first time while high. He describes it as another sign of how quickly his judgment was disappearing.
His grades collapsed. He eventually scraped through O-Level studies with one A, two Bs and six Cs.
By the time he entered A-Level, he says, he was already dependent on alcohol and drugs.
Then came the moment he realised just how much he had lost.
In Form Five, he dropped out of school.
“It was painful because I knew I had destroyed my future,” he said.
His dream of becoming a pilot, once so real, was suddenly out of reach.
The addiction also began consuming everything around him. Household property was sold to obtain drugs. His relationship with his family deteriorated and, at one point, he was forced out of his home.
Yet his family never stopped loving him.
That is what weighs most heavily on him today.
“I regret hurting my family. They loved me without a doubt, but I kept disappointing them.”
He says the hardest part of addiction is wanting to stop while feeling powerless when the craving arrives.
“I would tell myself that I was done with drugs, but the craving would come and I would relapse.”
He has now gone through rehabilitation three times in four years in Zimbabwe. Each time, he returned believing he had defeated the addiction.
Each time, he eventually relapsed.
Now he is preparing to enter rehabilitation for the fourth time, this time in South Africa.
This time, he says, he is going in with a different understanding of what he has been fighting.
“It is no longer fun. It has taken my education, my dream and hurt the people who love me.”
However, he still has hope that if he can overcome addiction, he can pick up the pieces and achieve his dream.
He wants young people to understand that addiction does not necessarily begin with a conscious decision to become a drug addict.
Sometimes, he says, it begins with wanting to belong.
“If I could sit with the Form Three me for five minutes before he went to that first Vuzu Party, I would tell him not to go.”
He advises schoolchildren starting out not to assume they are too clever to become addicted.
“You can go once, twice or three times and think you are in control. I thought I was in control too.”
Today, he says he would avoid Vuzu parties “like poison”.
Police have warned that such gatherings can become a breeding ground for drug misuse, sexual exploitation, violence and other criminal behaviour, while Zimbabwe’s anti-drug campaign continues targeting dangerous substances.
For a young man who once dreamed of flying, the journey back to sobriety has become his most important flight yet.
