“If your love for him ebbs away, he reignites it with violence. You will never break away from him. A rough guy is a no-no,” decent girls will tell each other when one of them is asking for their advice whether to accept a love proposal of Baghdad.
“Sies! What kind of a name is that?” a friend would ask.
“His real name is Abantu,” she says trying to explain. “Anyway what’s in a name? It is this crazy hysteria about matters of nonentity that led Romeo and Juliet to death,” she adds as an afterthought.
“Oh! I see…” says one of her friends. “He said he will love you until all his heart is empty, promised to love none but you and you didn’t even doubt his words? He said he will buy you a house in Sandton and you believed him? He said he will paint the ocean red with blazing love so that your love can be one for all seasons, so that you may swim even in winter? Ok! But soon—very soon— that same red ocean of love will be a pool of your own blood!”
“Me? I will rather be caught dead than date a “rough-rider”. Their love is rough and evil,” says another clearly convinced that a rough guy is a bad guy for a coconut like her. She would rather wait for her own present from Venus, goddess of love, her own Romeo; the one who is worth waiting for, the one who is worth dying for.
Yes! She will wait for the Romeo who will love her right and show her the true meaning of love and not lust at her thighs and make her pregnant.
In the streets of Kimberley teenage pregnancy became a norm; a sort of competition amongst the floozies. Young girls made babies left, right and center. If you were not dating or didn’t have a baby at the age of twenty, at least, you are a snobbish coconut and people start hating you.
If you are a boy and your trousers are not hanging below your ass as if you’ve got stones sacked in there, and you don’t carry an Three-star jack-knife in your pocket or even worse you don’t smoke or drink they call you a “situation”.
Sooner or later they will get rid of you. Who are they but the men of the streets discriminating against the weaklings, those who are different from them?
“Disgrace to the dignity of manhood!” they utter with disgust. “Smokolos, bharies, moegoes and two-timing ghosts. “Wat is julle se flop, maan, Huh? You don’t wanna fuck, you want it to yourself…jou focken chocolate box.”
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Tell us what you think: What do you think is the major contributor to teenage pregnancy and violence/gangsterism in our communities?