When you exit the national N2 freeway and enter the Cape Flats in Cape Town, you’re in a new world. The eviscerating effects of apartheid still manifest themselves here more than anywhere in South Africa. Black and “coloured” people were systematically and forcibly relocated under the abusive apartheid regime from “white” neighborhoods to this sandy, arid plane of barren bedrock. It’s a constant struggle to not only meet your basic human needs of food and shelter, but to survive the crime, rape, and gang violence that eclipses daily in this community. If you’re from here, no description is necessary; but if you’ve never been, none will ever suffice.

South African Tik User

The derivation of the local problems like violence, crime, and perpetual desperation often circles back to one word: tik. Tik is the colloquial name for methamphetamine or “meth” that exploded in the Cape Flats after the fall of apartheid. This white, crystalline stimulant is smoked out of a makeshift glass pipe and receives its name from the “tiking” sound when it is smoked. As a coping mechanism for the overall sense of hopelessness and despondency in the community, people turn to this addictive psychostimulant for feelings of euphoria and strengthened vitality. However, the brief repose from life’s troubles that accompanies the high ultimately spurs more problems. Tik users often drain their savings, are forced to steal to feed their habit, get involved in insidious gangs, and even sell their bodies. As they crave their daily fix, they lose control and stability of their lives.

This past year, I had the privilege of working in the Delft South Matrix clinic assisting staff and conducting research. This is one of five outpatient drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers in Cape Town. Delft is one of the peri-urban townships in the Cape Flats where its population of 150,000 people experience high rates of poverty, unemployment, and crime. Immediately, I witnessed first hand the direct impact this tik has had on the lives of South Africans. I encountered children as young as 10 using meth, women who had been assaulted and raped while high, fights breaking out among gang members, and young adults entering dark bouts of depression that manifested themselves in suicide attempts. Where could one find any fragment of optimism or inspiration in such a context?

Delft Township just outside the Delft South Matrix Clinic

My disheartened sentiment was first rattled one afternoon when a newer client named Porcia came in for her fourth therapy session. I was performing her urine drug test according to Matrix protocol, when the ruddy-brown shadow on the device indicating “tik positive” that I was so accustomed to observing failed to appear; the results were negative. When I told her the outcome, a beaming, golden smile materialized, and tears plunged down her cheekbones. She radiated an enormous aura of pride and expressed how she had been clean for four days for the first time in over six years. Porcia conveyed that she maintained sobriety using the skills she learned at Matrix, despite her tumultuous living circumstances with a thieving sister and an unsupportive, neglectful husband.

I noticed that when a client broke their addictive tik habit for even just one day, optimism and pride arose that was truly transcendent. For in the moment that an individual receives their first “negative” drug test, they no longer see themselves as just another tik addict, but as someone who persevered, overcame the odds, and realized their own dignity.

The success of this program is rooted in the hard work and dedication of the Matrix staff themselves. They employ the peer-reviewed and empirically endorsed Matrix Model developed in the United States that takes an outpatient treatment approach to drug addiction. The team epitomizes the tenants of task-sharing, where each staff member has a unique role to play. There are the administrators at the city level, university trained therapists offering their psychological expertise, receptionists from the local community who screen all new clients, and former tik users who have completed the program for community outreach. The staff themselves represents the multitude of races, languages, cultures, and backgrounds present in the diverse city of Cape Town. They produce a supportive, inclusive environment that diminishes all of the shame and stigma associated with tik use. Constant affirmation is given to the clients to bolster their journey to sobriety and encourage those who inevitably relapse to persist. It was refreshing to be part of a team that was exceptionally diverse and cohesive, while also able to achieve remarkable results.

At the end of my work experience, I attended the City of Cape Town’s Matrix rehabilitation graduation ceremony to honor all who had successfully completed the Matrix treatment program from the five sites. This was a spectacular affair honoring the success of the clients and their supportive families with awards, festivity, and a banquet. Although South Africa still struggles to dismantle segregation and shatter the legacy of apartheid, I felt witness to a bright future of a nonracial, cooperative South Africa. Clients of all races, faiths, and cultures came together to celebrate their accomplishments and the challenges they overcame. Whites, coloureds, blacks with origins in multiple tribes, Muslims, and Christians celebrated together, an image that would have been unconscionable in the pre-1994 apartheid South Africa. The clients offered the entertainment themselves in the form of breathtaking Xhosa choruses, captivating poetry in Afrikaans, philosophical prayers evoking the resilient spirituality of their Khoisan forefathers, as well as other distinctly South African cultural performances.

Crime, gang violence, and drug addiction are still a reality of the Cape Flats. But these Matrix clients are now returning to their communities as men and women with a message of hope to bring. They remind their comrades, who may be at their lowest, that the community wants to support their journey to self-betterment, but the battle starts with their own perseverance and commitment to overcome.

***All names have been changed for confidentiality.