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Intimate crimes: heroin and the rise of amaphara in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2021

Mark Hunter
Mark Hunter*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Ontario, M1C 1A4, Canada
*
Email: mark.hunter@utoronto.ca
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Abstract

The term ‘amaphara’, possibly derived from ‘parasites’, burst into South African public culture in the 2010s to refer to petty thieves addicted to a heroin-based drug locally called whoonga/nyaope. Drawing on ethnography and media sources to interrogate the rise of ‘amaphara’, this paper argues that South Africa's heroin epidemic magnifies the attention – criticism but also sympathy – directed toward marginalised black men who have few prospects for social mobility. It locates amaphara in the national context where drug policy is largely punitive and youth unemployment rates are painfully high, but gives particular attention to families’ and communities’ experiences with intimate crimes, especially petty thefts. It further shows that amaphara is a contested term: heroin users are brothers, sons and grandchildren and they gain most of their income not from crime but by undertaking useful piece work in communities.

Keywords

South Africaheroinunemploymentcrimefamily support
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 59 - 79
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am deeply grateful to all of the people in Durban with whom I spoke about this difficult topic, Lwandle Cele for research assistance in Umlazi, and Sibongile Buthelezi for collecting and discussing many of the newspaper sources. The journal's reviewers provided insightful and generous assessments, and I also benefitted greatly from comments by Liz Gunner, Gail Super and Thembisa Waetjen on an early draft. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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