School principal concerned over growing number of ‘amaphara’

Zwelonke High School principal Philani Makhathini has expressed concern over increasing number of youths who join what he described as the “amaphara nation” in South Africa.

“Phara” refers to a drug addict who often terrorises the community through criminal activities.

“As we are people involved in teaching and learning, we have a problem of the nation that is growing commonly referred to as amaphara,” Makhathini said.

He was addressing the gathering at the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure’s bursary awards ceremony held at St George’s Hotel and Conference Centre in Centurion on Tuesday.

The event saw more than 40 deserving learners, who had passed their 2021 matric exams, receiving bursaries.

Makhathini said a frustrating part was lack of adequate programmes to stop South African youth from being destroyed by drugs in the streets.

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According to Makhathini the problem was robbing the nation of talented youth who have potential to learn and play critical roles in developing the nation and its economy.

He said there were no programmes from the education department to deal with the problem of amaphara and, therefore, called on various relevant stakeholders including the education department to fight from the frontline against the problem, which he said was a huge threat to the nation.

“There are no effective government’s programmes in place to deal with things like these.”

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He said as educators and school leaders, they often saw young people roaming around the street instead of attending schools, saying that it was beyond their powers to try and solve the problem.

He said the perfect method to solve the problem of amaphara was to deal with it from the source.

“If, for an example, the roof of the house is leaking, keeping on wiping water on the floor does not solve the problem. You will wipe that water until the rain stops because the roof will continue to leak. The best solution to the problem is to close the leaks from the roof.”

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He said it was, therefore, important to find out the reason young learners opted to go to the street and take drugs.

“We know that some of them come from good homes but they still prefer to go to the street and live there.”

He said beating or taking them to jail was not the solution, “because that is not dealing with the source of the problem. It is the same as wiping water on the floor without closing the leak on the roof”.

He said this brought the need to properly identify the cause of the problem in order to solve it effectively.

Sunnyside CPF chairperson Sandile Dube said the problem of so called amaphara is massive in Sunnyside and surroundings and it contributes to a problem of homelessness.

“I support the idea of finding the cause of the problem and deal with it from the source.”

He said it was also important for various government departments to align programmes that met the same objectives, citing that government should have an integrated approach in order to achieve best results.

“It does not help the nation when various departments do their own things in dealing with similar issues or problems,” he said.

He said the problem of so-called amaphara was similar to a cancer in the society.

“It is a type of life that destroys the youth, who are the future of our country.”

He said the nation should protect the youth and the future of the country.

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