It starts as an experiment, grows to a habit and matures into a behaviour.
This best describes how some within the current breed of budding musicians in Zimbabwe are exchanging their potentially golden music carriers with the temporary pleasures purportedly found in substance abuse.
Despite being lauded as pen slingers who exhibit melodious prowess through rich lyrics and catchy rhymes, some of the emerging musicians have also become a harbinger of drug and substance abuse, putting their promising carriers and music genres in jeopardy.
From afflicted Dobba Don, who has been to drug rehabilitation and now the promising Takura Chiwoniso AKA Blot, who was recently arrested after allegedly being found red handed smoking crystal meth, locally known as guka makafela or mutoriro.
Last Wednesday Zim Dancehall musician Blot was nabbed in Sunningdale, after allegedly being caught using crystal meth aka mutoriro in a car.
The “Ndinoikwira Ndege” hitmaker seems to be following in the footsteps of Dumisani Mehlomakhulu (Dobba Don) who in recent years has been in and out of rehab due to drug addiction.
The “Mudendere” hit maker, who was once poised for greatness has all but lost his carreer.
Some say the young musicians are failing to manage fame, but the blame shifting is not a winning strategy as these artists need to take full responsibility for their actions and seek assistance. It must be fully impressed upon these artists that they are role models to multitudes of young people and they influence behavior by their conduct.
The drug scourge has become cancerous as it ravages society and with little serious and concerted governmental intervention, the future looks bleak.
Executive director for Youths By Youths anti-drug organisation Wilfred Jena said “anti-drug campaigns should also be held in recording studios to conscientise musicians on the repercussions of substance abuse.”
Jena said this will mitigate the soaring cases of substance abuse that he said are killing a future generation.
There has been a marked increase in drugs and substance abuse in the country, with the most commonly used being glue, cough mixtures as well as the more dangerous crystal meth commonly known as gukamakhafella or mutoriro.
Reasons given for such ranges from poverty, boredom, unemployment, low self-esteem among others.
