Notes on context and methods

The ethnography presented in this article is based on Anelisa Ndamase’s master’s fieldwork, which was conducted over six months during 2023 in rural Pondoland. As one drives towards Port St Johns, along the hilly R61 ‘economic corridor’ of the Eastern Cape, scattered homesteads mark Emalangeni and Jambeni villages,Footnote ³ the main fieldwork sites. These villages form part of rural Pondoland; under the apartheid administration, this was designated a labour sending area and earmarked for removals and resettlement by the 1951 Bantu Authorities Act. Despite widespread resistance during the Pondoland Revolt (in the 1950s and 1960s), arable, grazing and residential land was separated through ‘betterment schemes’. While migrant labour was implemented later in Pondoland than in other areas, dependency on migrant wages nonetheless became entrenched in social structures. Subsistence livelihoods based on crops and livestock dwindled, increasing dependency on participation in the wage labour economy (Sharp and Spiegel Reference Sharp and Spiegel1985).

By the 1980s and early 1990s, deindustrialization and the closure of mines had resulted in migrant livelihoods becoming increasingly precarious. The motor vehicle industry, once the economic basis of development in the province, collapsed, destabilizing local economies (Bank Reference Bank2019). Unemployment is prevalent, particularly among young men,Footnote ⁴ who live ‘almost totally dependent lives … left hanging at the side of the road’ (ka Canham Reference ka Canham2023: 135). Marginalized by the neoliberal state and post-industrial capitalism, they form a society forged through resisting the violent extraction and ‘unhumaning’ of Black people (ka Canham Reference ka Canham2023). Few young men complete school, they regularly encounter hunger,Footnote ⁵ and they struggle to meet the cultural and political economic expectations of the initiated man (ndoda). Instead, they are treated like ‘coarse boys’ (inkwenkwe). Our interlocutors were mostly in their early thirties; few had ever worked except for ‘piece’ jobs as labourers. The Eastern Cape is one of the poorest provinces in South Africa. As a result, it experiences a significant outflow of people seeking work on the farms of the Western Cape and industries in Gauteng, doing what our interlocutors called ‘work for whites’ (ukusebenzela abelungu).

In Emalangeni and Jambeni villages, young unemployed men spend their days doing unskilled labour or piece jobs (washing cars, cutting grass), and occasionally successfully stealing cash, mobile phones and televisions. Throughout the night they smoke the synthetic stimulant crystal methamphetamine (tik), chased with a pacifying mix of marijuana (dagga or cheese) and methaqualone (Mandrax). They are unwelcome in their own homes, barred from community ritual and ceremony, and subjected to vigilante violence and harassment.

Anelisa Ndamase grew up and went to school in rural Pondoland and is well acquainted with the area and the characters we write about. However, the enyobeni is a secret space and access is curtailed for those who lack experience of incarceration. Anelisa’s initial forays aroused suspicion and uncertainty regarding his intentions. He was also hesitant to enter the enyobeni, aware that he could be suspected of being an informer or a ‘fake’. Garvey,Footnote ⁶ a thirty-four-year-old former prisoner and the ‘boss’ (ibakhulu) of the enyobeni, facilitated Anelisa’s access and introduced him to the other young men. Like Phillip Bourgois’ relationship with Primo, the crack house owner in East Harlem’s El Barrio (Bourgois Reference Bourgois2003), Garvey befriended Anelisa and engendered the support of the addicts and dealers. Garvey vocalized his support for Anelisa’s research, challenging anyone who objected. ‘Where have you seen someone, as educated as Anelisa, coming to ask you questions?’ Another member, Zenzo, framed the research as documenting ‘our story’ (icala lethu). He developed a warm friendship with Anelisa and frequently visited him at his home to seek advice, trusting Anelisa because he is ‘educated’. Matt, the oldest of the group, asked Anelisa what he expected to gain from spending time with people ‘like them’, who have ‘nothing to offer’. He nicknamed Anelisa ‘Vandal’ (Vandali) because Anelisa associated himself with society’s outcasts. Mbongeni was Anelisa’s childhood friend. At their reunion in the enyobeni, Mbongeni remarked: ‘You are fat now, my friend’ (Usisidudla ngoku mnagani wam) – a poignant comparison with the gaunt bodies of the addicts. Establishing these connections and investing in friendships, Anelisa became intimately engaged in the lives of the young men. He practised ‘deep hanging out’ (see Geertz Reference Geertz1998) in the enyobeni on a regular basis over a six-month period and conducted life history interviews with a selection of members of the group.

Echoing Zenzo’s words, we aim to offer an empathetic reading of our interlocutors’ lives. We adopt O’Neill’s (Reference O’Neill2017) ‘ethnographic negative’; inspired by photography, the ‘negative’ image reveals those aspects of life that are obscured in etic discourses of social situations and are therefore ‘undeveloped’. Viewing the ‘ethnographic negative’, our comprehension of the worlds of our interlocutors shows them to be agentive and purposeful, challenging the dehumanizing stereotypes of addicts as wasted bodies and social parasites. We seek to reveal our interlocutors’ cultural creativity, imaginations and memories, through which they construct new forms of social identity, establish rules and hierarchies, and cope with the stigma, exclusion and violence. Unlike the photograph of the ‘addict’ that portrays the dangerous other, the ethnographic images we present reveal young men’s cultural creativity and productivity.

Parasites on the periphery

Ethnographies of substance addiction sketch political, economic and cultural geographies of marginalization, poverty and racism, highlighting how political economy and power structure the ‘intimate experiences of place, personhood, and addiction’ (Fast and Cunningham Reference Fast and Cunningham2018: 238). For instance, in the USA, anthropologists recognize the entanglement of economic marginalization, poverty, racism and gender (Bourgois et al. Reference Bourgois, Prince and Moss2004; Singer Reference Singer2007). The Puerto Rican immigrant drug dealers documented by Bourgois (Reference Bourgois2003) fashion their lives around the opiate economy to acquire wealth and reforge the ‘respect’ that is denied to immigrants in racist America. In San Francisco, heroin addiction is intimately tied to homelessness and social exclusion (Bourgois and Schonberg Reference Bourgois and Schonberg2009), while Pine’s meth cooks and addicts in Missouri represent the utter desolation and precarity of life in the American countryside in the midst of economic collapse (Pine Reference Pine2016). However, addiction to synthetic stimulants is not limited to impoverished communities, as evidenced by amphetamine use among students and professionals.Footnote ⁷ Yet, as Singer (Reference Singer2007) notes, drug control policies and policing disproportionately target poorer and less powerful communities. This is most evident in South Africa, where segregation and racism have shaped the policies and policing of the opiate economy and addiction.

Prior to the 1950s, colonial authorities tolerated cannabis cultivation and use in the ‘tribal areas’ of South Africa. It was only after World War Two that the policing of cannabis intensified and expanded to regulate new synthetic tranquillizers and sedatives. Drug policing aimed to protect white youth from the dangers of hard drugs and to reinforce racial segregation. Drug use and trafficking brought people from different racial groups together in the same spaces, often on equal terms, contradicting the apartheid state’s vision of racial and ethnic separation (Howell and Shelly Reference Howell, Shelly and Koram2019: 160). In 1971, the apartheid government introduced the Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act, which tasked authorities with enforcing punitive measures against drug possession and use (Waetjen Reference Waetjen, Richert and Mills2021). These punitive powers disproportionately targeted Black people. Synthetics, especially Mandrax, were entangled with urban gangs and criminality. While cannabis cultivation and its use were decriminalized in 2018 (Waetjen Reference Waetjen2024: 152), synthetics such as Mandrax and street drugs including heroin and tik continue to be policed under the terms of the 1992 Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act. After 1994, the majority of voters approved government ‘crackdowns’ on a perceived drug ‘evil’ (Waetjen Reference Waetjen, Richert and Mills2021).

Anthropological research has begun to disentangle the cultural meanings of the new drug economies and the social relationships these engender. Peete’s ethnography of the bomtsubi in Soweto focuses on young unemployed men who are criminalized for smoking nyaope, a heroin-based and highly addictive opiate that creates a state of euphoria that users describe as pikara, usually followed by debilitating withdrawal or ‘downs’ (Peete Reference Peete and Waetjen2019). The bomtsubi, like amaphara, are framed as threats to community well-being, although many provide services to residents; they refer to this work as ‘ukuphanda’ or hustling, doing jobs that others are loath to do (Hunter Reference Hunter2021: 76). These observations shift the narrative from criminality to a more sympathetic understanding of young men who in contexts of unemployment face discrimination and require support (Hunter Reference Hunter2021; Waetjen Reference Waetjen2019).

In the public spaces of Emalangeni and Jambeni villages, addicts such as Garvey and his peers have lost the respect of their families and fellow villagers. At thirty-five years old, Garvey earned a reputation based on his frequent stays in prison for petty theft and drug possession. He recently served three months awaiting trial for drug possession but the case was withdrawn and he sued the state for unlawful unrest; he was rewarded 60,000 South African Rands (R) (approximately US$3,000) in damages. Zenzo, in his early thirties, has never been incarcerated but often appears at the village headman’s court on charges of theft. Elvis, Garvey’s closest ally and the main provider of drugs for the group, has never been incarcerated but left home at age thirteen and lived on the streets of Mthatha City for four years, until his grandmother and uncle took him in. When his grandmother died, Elvis struggled to survive; his uncle was an alcoholic and did not buy food. He became friends with Garvey and smoked tik to cope with hunger. Matt, at thirty-seven years old, was the oldest of the group and had spent the most time in prison – four years of a seven-year sentence for assault with a knife. With a criminal record he is unemployable and spends most of his time getting high. Another of Anelisa’s former schoolfriends, Amaza, was thirty years old, a local football star and widely considered the ‘people’s favourite’, having appeared in a Xhosa television drama. After completing his secondary education, Amaza started to smoke tik and gave up football, but continued to claim that he was ‘world class’. He often fought with his mother, who reported him to the police. Lifa was born and raised in town, but, after consistently failing at school, he was taken in by his aunt to live in the village, where he re-enrolled in high school. Despite this fresh start, Lifa struggled academically and eventually dropped out altogether. He returned to town, where he started to trade in drugs.

Garvey and his peers often find themselves without support and no one to care for them in their vulnerable state. Regarded as irresponsible and barred from the family home, Garvey complained: ‘You have lost their respect even if you are thirty-four years old. Your family locks up the rooms because you are not trusted.’ Garvey felt ‘naked’ in the eyes of the community and likened himself to the mentally ill who wander the streets unclothed. But he noted that while the ill are cared for, addicts are abandoned and left ‘uncovered’: ‘When you see a mentally ill person naked, the first thing people do is cover him up to protect his dignity.’ Facing the mundane, everyday life of joblessness, and reliance on recipients of state welfare grants,Footnote ⁸ young men spend their days ‘doing nothing’ (ndihleli nje andenzi nto). Sustained by the perpetual waiting for opportunities, hope itself becomes precarious, undermined by disappointment (Mujere Reference Mujere2020). Prospects for jobs in construction and road work vanish, consumed by corrupt government officials and illegal tenders.

Addiction rehabilitation does little to resolve the structural violence and inequities that shape everyday realities of unemployment, hunger and hopelessness. Elvis, who often faced hunger, noted: ‘When you are hungry with no hope of food, you become even hungrier.’ Yet, their suffering is ignored by neighbours and kin. As Das (Reference Das2015: 1) argues, suffering that is ‘assimilated within the normal and yet not fully absorbed in it is much more difficult to decipher’. And, like the inmates of shelters for the mentally ill, rather than experiencing life in the phenomenological sense, young jobless men just ‘struggle along’ (Desjarlais Reference Desjarlais1994). The boredom, inactivity and constant hunger are intractable from the potential of liberation and healing contained within synthetic stimulants. Crystal methamphetamine manufactures purposeful, energized and focused bodies. Pine observes:

Working piece jobs as unskilled labourers, weeding and cutting grass and washing cars, addicts use meth to stimulate their bodies, sustain their energy and strength. Meth offers a way of escaping suffering, refashioning bodies regarded by others as useless and unproductive. Tik bodies are active, can go without food and rest, and resist the ‘boredom’ (isithukuthezi) of everyday life and the mundane violence of being cast aside. The drug transforms the monotony of endless waiting into productive time (see also Bourgois Reference Bourgois2003: 319). Mbongeni and his peers ‘lived for the weekends’ and talked animatedly about ‘big weekends’ when they could smoke.

Crystal meth is a recent, but increasingly popular, addition to South African street drugs,Footnote ⁹ part of a new wave of opiates and stimulants that started to travel into poorer communities in the post-apartheid era. By the early 2000s, nyaope, whoonga or sugars dominated drug consumption mainly in urban South Africa (Hunter Reference Hunter2021). Replacing heroin due to its increased cost, methamphetamine emerged initially in the Western Cape in the 1990s and spread to South Africa’s interior in the early 2000s, reaching the Eastern Cape almost a decade later. Smoked in pipes (igoza) fashioned from light bulbs, crystal meth ‘ticks’ as it burns, hence its South African moniker ‘tik’ (Leggett Reference Leggett2003) (see Figure 1). For our interlocutors, the drugs were relatively cheap. A bank bag of tik cost R50, it was R20 for marijuana, while Mandrax was more expensive at R50 a pill.

Figure 1.

Garvey smoking tik in the front room of his house. Photograph by Anelisa Ndamase.

Figure 1. Long description

A man is seated on a bed, smoking a pipe. He is shirtless and wearing a headwrap. The room is bathed in sunlight streaming through a window with sheer curtains. The bed is unmade, with pillows and blankets scattered around. The man appears to be in a state of contemplation or relaxation.

Labelled as parasites, addicts are perceived as failures, unable to live up to the expectations of manhood, demonized as burdens on their families and communities, and regarded as responsible for misfortune and the erosion of the moral economy. The term amaphara, derived from the English ‘parasites’, belongs to a class of nouns reserved for non-human animals such as ‘rats or mosquitoes’ (Hunter Reference Hunter2021: 69). The stigma of amaphara approximates the ‘urban menace’ of the ‘skollie’, the historically deep, racist stereotype of unemployed ‘Coloured’ men in the Western Cape (Jensen Reference Jensen2008). The ‘wageless life’ (Denning Reference Denning2010) that Garvey and his peers led was well beyond their control but attracted moral opprobrium, and implicated them in criminality and gangs (see also Hunter Reference Hunter2021; Kapp Reference Kapp2008).

Our interlocutors described amaphara as ‘dead men walking’ (onyana bethu bafe behamba). Feeding off the limited resources available to impoverished households and creating misfortune, they are considered a threat to the already precarious lives of impoverished residents. Lifa remembered when he was younger that his mother berated him while beating him: ‘I will never have anything that is good because I gave birth to a parasite’ (Soze ndibenanto intle oko ndazala iphara). Accused of ‘intimate crimes’ (Hunter Reference Hunter2021) by family members and neighbours, reports of thefts of mobile phones, televisions and cash led to accusations and violent retribution against young, jobless men.

The idea of the human parasite signals a ‘crisis in social reproduction’. In the context of high unemployment and the rapid decline in formal traditional and civil marriage, young men struggle to acquire the resources needed to pay bridewealth and build the homestead (Hunter Reference Hunter2007). This poses a threat to the reproduction of future generations. As a metaphorical analogy, the human parasite invokes the occult imaginary of blood-sucking witch familiars that accrue wealth at the expense of the lives of family members (Niehaus Reference Niehaus1995). Accusations of witchcraft and crime are often bracketed together as both carry similar reputational damage (Heald Reference Heald1986). Likewise, populist movements such as those mounted against ‘foreigners’ in South Africa are informed by local perceptions of witchcraft. These movements seek to recreate moral personhood and re-establish the conditions for social reproduction (Hickel Reference Hickel2014).

Dehumanizing young men as the dangerous other legitimizes their exclusion from the protection of kin and community, and sanctions populist movements that mobilize against those who are believed to transgress the moral boundaries of the community. In the next section, we see how the imagery of the parasite comes to life, sparking a moral panic, and how it legitimized the politics of exclusion and violence against young men targeted as criminals and addicts.

Moral panics and exclusionary politics

Casting addicts and thieves as non-human has real-life consequences. Unlike physical violence, forms of assault against personhood are often hidden from view, legitimizing the ‘policies and institutions that politically impose suffering on the socially vulnerable’ (Bourgois Reference Bourgois, Rylko-Bauer, Whiteford and Farmer2009: 17). As an extreme form of symbolic violence, young men were threatened with being ‘cut’ (uzosikwa), whereby their status as initiated men (ndoda) is withdrawn and their status reversed to that of an uninitiated boy. This irreversible act of emasculation was immensely shameful, condemning young men to a perpetual life of immaturity and ambiguity as neither boy nor man. An infrequent occurrence, decisions to uzosikwa are made by a council (elityeni) of village elders and other initiated men. Members of the elityeni discuss specific young men who are deemed responsible for moral transgressions. Garvey’s case illustrates this process.

Garvey is considered a ‘lord’ according to prison gang hierarchy, and is a prominent member of the enyobeni. Over the course of a few years, Garvey became well known as the supplier of tik and Mandrax and gained substantial experience as a drug trader or mejent (derived from the English ‘merchant’).

Garvey is also a known thief. In 2016, he and a friend robbed a local village tavern. When he was found out, his mother paid for the damages and told her neighbours, ‘Garvey is going to kill me with a heart attack.’ She was found dead the following day, having died in her sleep. Garvey’s father was a harsh disciplinarian, often subjecting him to brutal punishments. He tied Garvey to a pole, stripped him naked and beat him with a sjambok for smoking marijuana. On other occasions his father withheld food and made him sleep outside. He believed that Garvey lacked morals, was lazy, and should be working in the mines as he had done. His mother, sympathetic to her son, snuck food out to Garvey after dark. Garvey was shunned by his siblings, and after she died, he was alone in the world without his mother’s support. As his notoriety grew, villagers tried to stop their sons from hanging out with him.

In December 2022, the age cohort (ntanga) who had attended initiation with Garvey were called to attend the elityeni. Anelisa was a member of the ntanga. At the gathering, the elders ordered Garvey to sit facing them, assuming the position of the accused (emfenene). Speaking directly to Garvey, an elder stood up and accused him of ‘being disruptive’. When Garvey asked what he had done to warrant being treated like a ‘lawbreaker’, a second elder spoke up, and referring to Garvey’s conduct, stated: ‘For a long time we have put up with it, here in the village.’ The drugs that Garvey sold and distributed were ‘ruining the youth’ and this was not setting a good example to young children. The first speaker said, ‘We will have the final words on this.’ According to their law, Garvey’s crimes were committed knowingly by his actions (esokwenza), as distinct from ‘verbal crimes’ such as insults. While the latter could be forgiven, this was not the case for Garvey’s conduct. The elders pronounced that Garvey was ‘cut off from manhood’ (usikiwe esidodeni) and would no longer be regarded as an ndoda. At this moment, Garvey’s head dropped to his chest; cut off, Garvey suffered incredible shame. Whenever Anelisa tried to talk to him about how he felt, Garvey changed the topic.

Being symbolically ‘cut’ meant exclusion from village rituals such as communal beer drinking; these events usually involve neighbours and kin and are held as celebrations, such as on the return of a migrant, but are ultimately staged to offer hospitality. They are rituals in which everyday politics are performed and reinforced (McAllister Reference McAllister1997), and the exclusion of individual young men was a potent form of social and political rejection. Barred from the sacred spaces surrounding the cattle byre (esibayeni) where the initiated men (amadoda) eat meat and drink alcohol, young men such as Garvey hung about on the outskirts of the homestead. In contrast, the elders regarded Anelisa as a potential provider; he was invited to sit with other men around the cattle byre, but was chastised for wanting to socialize with Garvey and others like him. ‘Why are you drinking with parasites?’ (Sekutheni wasela namaphara?) the old men reproached. Unlike employed men who bought beer, paid bridewealth and built the homestead, the amaphara were despised by the elders, and their alienation from the ritual space in the homestead reinforced their exclusion from village politics and the moral economy.

The social, political and cultural exclusion of amaphara, targeted by the authorities, reflected growing anxieties and uncertainties about security and safety in the villages and towns. The amaphara were not solely petty criminals and addicts; they also posed threats to community prosperity.Footnote ¹⁰ The village Ndhuna (headman) declared that ‘the parasites have finished off our village’ (amaphara ayigqibile ilali yethu). He denounced unemployed young men as ‘lazy’. Like his contemporaries, during the 1970s, he was recruited by mining company employment agencies. After signing labour contracts, migrants travelled by bus and train from Pondoland to the mining compounds of the Witwatersrand. Their migrant earnings, used to purchase cattle for bridewealth, were critical to the reproduction of the household (Beinart Reference Beinart1979) and in maintaining gerontocratic authority (see, for example, Harries Reference Harries1994). In contrast to this idealized image of the life course of a man, Garvey and others in his group were unemployable, incapable of contributing to the growth and development of the household and negligent in providing support for their offspring. They contradicted these expectations and foretold a ‘future stillborn’ (Comaroff and Comaroff Reference Comaroff, Comaroff and Weiss2004: 336).

Later, seeking forgiveness and reintegration into village society, Garvey purchased a bottle of Commando brandyFootnote ¹¹ as a gift for the elders, seeking to be cleansed of his offences. However, forgiveness depended on the elders’ assessment of Garvey’s worthiness. While writing this article, we heard that Garvey had found temporary work on road construction. After receiving his wages he called his friends to smoke tik. He said: ‘I want them to remember when I do not have money that when I do have money, I make sure that everyone smokes.’ Garvey’s investment in the relationships forged within the enyobeni sustained his rejection of the world of the elders and ‘of Ramaphosa’.

Popular sentiments against the amaphara that had been growing for some time were suddenly animated by a moral panicFootnote ¹² that swept through the coastal towns and villages. Cohen notes: ‘Fully-fledged moral panics need an extreme or especially dramatic case to get going’ (Cohen Reference Cohen1972: xiii). In 2017, residents were shocked by the gruesome story of a young man from Tombo Village who allegedly cannibalized his nephew. The headline of the Tribune newspaper declared: ‘How uncle killed 4-year-old nephew, drank his blood, ate his heart’. The article described how ‘30-year-old Mandisi Ngwanya slaughtered his five-year-old nephew like a sacrificial lamb, ate his heart and brains, and drank his blood’ (Davies Wande Reference Davies Wande2017). Mandisi was arrested and the court found him unfit to stand trial due to his compromised mental state. Journalists dubbed him the ‘Port St Johns cannibal’ (Ntshobane Reference Ntshobane2018), and drug addiction was cited as an underlying factor behind the crime. According to a village elder, Mte Saleni, speaking to journalists from the Daily Mail (Pyatt Reference Pyatt2017), ‘When people are on drugs, they are uncontrollable.’ A Daily Sun article similarly linked drugs to horror: ‘nyaope had turned her 24-year-old son into a monster’ (Tau Reference Tau2018). A villager interviewed by the South African Broadcasting Corporation said that the government should use psychologists and social workers to support addicts, adding that ‘their sons’ are ‘very, very addicted to drugs’. The incident also prompted narratives of satanism and witchcraft. A close relative said she feared Mandisi was ‘in the grip of Satan’, while others alleged that the cannibalistic acts were due to witchcraft. Adding to the drama, these reports included photographs of the victim, a sweet-looking young boy, leaving the reader to imagine his mutilated corpse. This incident hardened residents’ perceptions of and attitudes towards drug users, culminating in a public campaign to rid the towns and villages of the amaphara.Footnote ¹³

Soon after this incident, the Port St Johns Community Policing Forum (CPF), led by the chief, called for the expulsion of amaphara from the town and their repatriation to their home villages, where, supposedly, drugs were less available. Called Operation Goqulula (‘to search’), residents and parents were given a week to come forward with the identities of suspected drug users and criminals. After the deadline passed, the CPF was tasked with ‘cleaning the streets’. Anyone found using drugs or hanging out in places where drugs were consumed were assaulted and evicted. Lifa, known to have affiliations with drug suppliers in town, was tortured by the police who wanted him to reveal the identities of his dealers. Lifa recalled: ‘I was given my clothes and forcefully dragged to catch a taxi to the village. They gave the taxi fare to the driver. I felt so humiliated.’ He harboured a deep fear of the authorities and claimed that the police were responsible for the murder of his friend, whose decomposed body was discovered in June 2022. The memory of being tortured by the CFP continued to plague Lifa. His paranoia (bayondakhela), exacerbated by the effects of tik, caused him to hallucinate that a mob was after him. In his panic he ran and hid inside his neighbour’s outdoor pit toilet. He heard the mob chanting, ‘We want the multi-coloured one’, identifying Lifa by his facial birthmark; he hallucinated his mother shouting, ‘Run boy, run.’ Sprinting from the toilet, he hid in the bush, where he slept until late. Amaza likewise was forced out of town, but he had nowhere else to go as he had no friends in his home village and feared that his fellow villagers would stigmatize him. Carrying a black garbage bag containing his clothes, he joined Garvey until Operation Goqulula was over. The campaign was successful in driving the amaphara out of town; many of their popular hangouts were empty.

The harassment of young men believed to be criminals and addicts escalated and arbitrary acts of violence against suspected thieves, thugs and addicts followed. Early one morning, after an evening of smoking tik, Zenzo was spotted by a member of the CPF. The next day one of the villagers reported that his television had been stolen the previous evening. Zenzo was picked up by CPF members and, with a rope tied around his neck, was marched like an animal to the chief’s court (enkundleni). Here, he was tortured: men placed termites in his pants and sprayed him with water, causing the ants to pinch his skin. His torturers said, ‘You will have to speak with “these men” [the termites] because you do not want to talk to us.’ When he remained unresponsive, they used a procedure called the mask (isifonyo), forcing his head into a plastic bag filled with water until he choked, in an approximation of waterboarding. The violence against young men targeted in these campaigns had dire consequences. In July 2024, following a particularly violent argument with his uncle over money, the CPF expelled Elvis from his village. The village headman accused Elvis of disrespect towards his uncle, who was his elder. Months later, Elvis’s sister discovered that Elvis had died in Mthatha hospital, suffering from severe injuries, the results of a beating.

In the light of the harsh and violent punishments meted out to young men labelled as amaphara, many retreated to the villages, establishing secret spaces for safety and to escape from the unsympathetic and harsh world that had rejected them. In the following, we delve into the enyobeni.

‘Our space with our rules’

The dressing rooms at the abandoned sports ground were originally painted a shade of institutional yellow, but this had long since faded; the windows were shattered and the door was missing. Goats and cattle use the rooms as shelter when it rains and forage off shrubs growing inside. Apart from being hit by the stench of cow dung, those entering the building risked lice infestations. The number ‘28’ and the single word ‘SEX’ are inscribed on a wall (Figure 2). For some time, Garvey and other young men, driven from their homes, used the disused building as a space where they could hang out, smoke and socialize in secret. This was a secure space, where villagers and the CPF were unlikely to venture. Dirt, smell and toxicity created a ‘membrane’ around the enyobeni, protecting its occupants by establishing ‘impermeable boundaries between the outside and inside’ (Roberts Reference Roberts2017: 611). Villagers were wary of approaching the site at night, fearful of random attacks. For the young men who gathered in the changing rooms, this was their private space where carceral culture, rituals and rules of respect prevailed. The enyobeni transported those who entered into the world of the imaginary prison gang. Mbongeni said he felt that when he is inside the enyobeni it is as if he is actually in prison because of the dirt, the drawings and the graffiti on the wall. Although he had never been incarcerated, those who were former prisoners and number men (the intsizwa) graffitied the walls, giving an aura of authenticity to the illusion. Garvey and Matt agreed that the intsizwa had the ‘power’ (amagunya) to transform ordinary physical structures.

Figure 2.

Graffiti on the walls of the enyobeni. Photograph by Anelisa Ndamase.

Figure 2. Long description

The image shows a wall with various forms of graffiti, including handprints and symbols. The graffiti appears to be created with black paint, and the wall itself is white with some visible damage and holes. The graffiti includes a prominent star symbol and other abstract markings. The setting appears to be an indoor space with a window allowing natural light to enter.

The enyobeni is not a fixed structure; over the period of this research, Garvey’s group changed its location several times. One of the first sites was an abandoned red shipping container that was previously a little shop (spaza) or telephone kiosk. No one was sure who owned the container, but it had sat unused for several years. As it was located close to several supermarkets, young men could earn tips by parking cars and carrying groceries. The container was uncomfortable; there was nowhere to sit, no windows, and when the door was closed it was airless and dark, filled with smoke from Mandrax and marijuana pipes. One day, the container vanished without a trace and the group moved to hang out at a local car wash. But this was short-lived after customers accused them of stealing from their cars. The group then moved to the Emalangeni community hall toilets. The community hall was shut; it was previously used as a computer centre but when the machines broke down, residents petitioned the chief to use the space for community events, such as weddings and funerals. The chief rejected the proposal and the hall remained unused. After a short time, Garvey and his group were evicted by municipal cleaners and they moved to portable offices used by road workers. Abandoned on the embankment of the new highway, the offices had been vandalized and no one claimed the structures. This new location was close to the Emalangeni retail precinct, which meant access to piece jobs; however, the place was not secure and eventually the group moved to the changing rooms at the Emalangeni sports ground. The choice of location for the enyobeni is pragmatic; secrecy and privacy were paramount, as well as access to piece work. It was possible to earn up to R20 a day by helping shoppers with their trolleys. These locations are also imbued with meaning: public toilets and abandoned structures, dirty and broken, were unwanted and peripheral, on the margins. Like the young men who occupied them, they were liminal and precarious, unanchored and cast adrift.

After a time, a more permanent dwelling was identified for the group. Garvey’s house provided a location to buy and sell drugs, to smoke, and to sleep. Garvey lived with his younger brother in a two-bedroom house that his siblings had abandoned several years ago after their mother died. At night, Garvey’s group smoked and napped on the two large sofas in the sitting room. The floor was covered in broken glass, remnants of light bulbs and bottles. Also on the floor were an enamel plate used to crush Mandrax pills and empty plastic bank bags for tik and marijuana. When tik and Mandrax were available, the group held a ‘cross night’, a term used for all-night studying for exams, but in this context meaning to smoke until daybreak. Elvis spent most of his days in the house without going home.

Having spent time in prison, Garvey was a number gang member and possessed authority within the enyobeni. This was in stark contrast to his positionality in the village and the town, where he had been cut off, derided and scorned as an amaphara. Like Garvey, Mbongeni’s personhood was spoilt in the world outside the enyobeni. Amaza carved his world into two spheres; the world outside – of work, tradition, family and neighbourhood – was a social sphere distinct from the enyobeni. Reciprocity produces moral personhood (see Strathern Reference Strathern2005; Wagner Reference Wagner, Godelier and Strathern1991), and young men’s exclusion from ritual and the reciprocal exchange of gifts meant that Garvey and the others were incomplete, disrespected and unmade persons. However, within the enyobeni, they were made whole, by virtue of their relationships with each other and the rituals performed there. In these hidden spaces, men commanded respect by virtue of the gang hierarchy, while mini-rituals and customary observances created genuine bonds between them and promoted the exclusivity and secrecy of the group.

Within the enyobeni, intsizwa (number gang men) communicate using Sabela, an unwritten prison language. Sabela originated in the 1930s as a register combining the verbal and non-verbal, symbols and colours, and English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu words. Initially a code identifying membership of a prison gang, the language is widely adopted by street gangs as a marker of criminality. In prison, Sabela is used to avoid the gaze of the warders (Pinnock Reference Pinnock2016: 122); in the enyobeni, it sustains the imaginary of the prison gang. Here, members greet each other with ‘Yes, gazi!’ (Yes, blood) and respond, ‘Yes, ndoda yakuthi!’ (Yes, my home man) and ‘Correct magazi?’ (Correct, my blood), giving two thumbs up. Although anyone can learn these simple greetings and gestures, imposters are easily detected and risk being beaten, stabbed or robbed.

The hierarchy of the enyobeni is structured according to the prescriptions of the number gang and is unrelated to life outside the enyobeni. The ‘fools’ (impatha) are those who have no gang affiliation or no number, and no experience of incarceration. For instance, Anelisa is respected in his home village. As a graduate student he represents the importance of education in securing employment and building a future. His neighbours and fellow villagers are perplexed by his friendships with the amaphara. Yet, in the enyobeni, Anelisa is an impatha, a fool who is ignorant of prison life. Garvey elaborated: ‘There are impatha – a person who knows nothing. You see, Anelisa, you are impatha, but you are right [alright].’ Garvey warned against imposters and frauds, those who ‘have knowledge of the number but have collected it in the wrong way. It is said that those people are some danger, and you must not come close to them if you are not strong, because they can harm you.’ The word ‘danger’ is part of the Sabela code, and is used to warn of risks or threats to gang members.

The enyobeni was not a façade; while it was imaginary, the same rules were applied as those in the number gangs. Garvey emphasized the symbolic markers that separated frauds from genuine number men. He explained:

As Garvey indicated, tattoos are important markers of gang membership, but these are not easily acquired: ‘[T]he number symbols enter the body with difficulty.’ Number men do not use conventional tattoo dyes. They collect amaso beads that can be found growing near rivers, roast and crush them into a fine powder, then mix the powder with water to form a black pigment. The tattoo is made by puncturing the skin with a sharpened wire. After some time the tattoo turns green. Tattoos, secret languages and rules are critical boundary work to maintain the illusion of the enyobeni as an imagined gang space.

Within the enyobeni, individual status in the gang hierarchy is measured according to experiential knowledge. Strict disciplinary codes (disaplini) enforce the hierarchical structure and respect for seniors. Everyone stands to attention when Garvey enters the room and ordinary isisebenzi and impatha give up their seats. Garvey is also first in line to smoke from the tik pipe, which he then passes to others lower in the hierarchy. The rules of respect and individual roles structure the acquisition and consumption of tik and other drugs. Zenzo is ‘the healer of pipes’ (inyangi indoda yemibhobho). He is responsible for preparing and correctly maintaining the pipes (igoza is used for tik and inqawe for Mandrax) and for crushing and cutting the Mandrax with marijuana. Zenzo performs the work of healing by preparing marijuana and Mandrax to alleviate the symptoms of tik withdrawal. Lords and judges occupy senior positions in the hierarchy and dictate who purchases drugs and which dealer to buy from. They are also responsible for resolving disputes between members of the enyobeni. Mejents negotiate drug deals with dealers. As a mejent, Elvis uses his wages from herding cattle to purchase Mandrax and tik from dealers in Mthatha; after assessing their quality, he hands them over to Garvey, who in turn gives them to Zenzo to prepare.

This hierarchy is faithful to the prison and labour compound gangs of the early twentieth century (van Onselen Reference van Onselen1984: 23) and the prison gangs of contemporary South Africa (Steinberg Reference Steinberg2010), demonstrating continuities in rules and tradition. Knowledge of gang rules and hierarchy is critical to performing the identity of the number man. Garvey confirmed his status by reciting the story of Po, a mythical figure who taught Ngelekejane and Nongoloza the differences between the 27s and 28s and the same-sex sexual practices among the 28s. Similarly, the telling and retelling of the number gang origin stories occur repeatedly in prison (Steinberg Reference Steinberg2010). By narrating these stories, Garvey also performs his intimate knowledge of prison culture and lends an aura of authenticity to the enyobeni.

Members of the enyobeni embraced the ideology that ‘the number’, like respect and power, could not be commodified; ‘the number cannot be bought’ (inombolo ayithengwa). Membership could be conferred only upon those who had experience of imprisonment and ‘knew the number’. Knowledge of the number was acquired by experiencing the harsh realities of prison life; one knows ‘through the body’, and the source of knowledge is through bodily practice (see Farquhar and Lock Reference Farquhar and Lock2007; Lock Reference Lock1993). Authenticity is critical to successful and persuasive performances in the enyobeni, to invoke the reality of the imaginary. It starts with the scars and inscriptions on the skin that display the symbols of the number; it continues in the spoken word and unspoken gestures of the secret language, Sabela, and the recitation and retelling of the history of the number gang. Embodied knowledge separates the ‘fools’ from the number men. It is also critical in identifying the ‘fakes’ and ‘frauds’, those who lack the proper credentials to join the gang.

While membership is exclusive and guarded, our interlocutors stressed that the hierarchy was neither oppressive nor exclusionary, unlike traditional initiation rituals. The process for becoming a traditionally initiated man requires finances for initiation school fees, alcohol, and the sacrifice of beasts that some criticize as the commercialization of initiation (Qambela Reference Qambela2021). While ‘fools’ were regarded as ignorant, lacking the experience of prison time, those who could demonstrate strength were introduced to the number gang through gang initiation (intshayelo).

Elvis was an impatha, but due to his insider knowledge of the drug trade, Garvey decided to sponsor his initiation as a number gang man. For his initiation, Garvey sent Elvis to buy Mandrax from dealers in Mthatha. Elvis was accustomed to life in Mthatha, having spent his childhood living on the streets, and was familiar with the town’s dealers. Upon his return, Elvis produced a crisp packet containing Mandrax tablets from inside his Charmza-branded sports bag. Using an empty packet to carry the drugs symbolized the openness of gang members towards each other: number men’s imaginary uniforms do not possess pockets, signifying that they have nothing to hide from each other. During the short ceremony that followed, Garvey recited the rules of the number gang: to march as a soldier, to dress like a soldier, and to be disciplined. At the end, Garvey awarded Elvis invisible badges of honour.