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INTRODUCTION
This article considers the rise of the derogatory term amaphara, roughly heroin-addicted criminals. The 2000s, and especially the 2010s, saw an explosion of a heroin-based drug on the streets of South Africa locally called whoonga/wunga or nyaope (the former more typical in this study's research area, the KwaZulu-Natal province, and the latter more typical in Gauteng). Although it is inherently difficult to trace the origins of words, internet searches suggest that amaphara (or the singular iphara) was first used online around 2013. Supporting this timeline, the popular isiZulu-medium newspaper Isolezwe surrounded the term with quotation marks (‘amaphara’) in 2014, before dropping this qualification in later articles.1 Today, twitter feeds are called #amaphara and #amapharamustfall.2 Radio stations even play a song ‘amaphara’ by DJ Tira and DJ Sox.
The 2017 cartoon by Isolezwe's popular contributor Qap's Mngadi (Figure 1) captures important aspects of amaphara's personification. The young man with iphara written on his t-shirt is dressed in dirty clothes and looks toward a voluptuous woman. The iphara does not, however, seem to see her as a sexual object; he is eying her wig, which she is protecting as she reflects on how tired she is of amaphara. The humorous image portrays the audacity of a group of young criminals who are willing to disrupt the intimate routines of everyday life – even a person's hair is not safe from petty thieves!
Figure 1.
Cartoon by Qap's Mngadi, May 2017. Reproduced with permission from Isolezwe.
[Figure omitted. See PDF]
In this article I consider the rise of ‘amaphara’ and use the term as a window into the lives of young marginalised ‘black African’ (in South Africa's prevailing racial terminology) men who use heroin. Amaphara is first and foremost a derisory term, but in addition to giving context to this meaning I want to show the tensions and ambiguities inherent in the term. Berated for losing their humanness because they steal from families and neglect their appearance, heroin users may also invite sympathy. They are typically not violent criminals but are neighbours and family members who undertake piece work to attain money to buy R25 (US$1.50) ‘capsules’ of whoonga (pill capsules containing the drug). As I have documented elsewhere...