‘We have to start showing who is boss now’: Constructing methamphetamine use and users in the South African print media

Abstract

This paper critically engages with media representations of the use and users of methamphetamine, or ‘tik’, in South Africa. It makes two primary claims. First, the paper argues that the media has drawn on the themes of criminality, pathology and victimhood in articulating the ‘tik’ phenomenon. Second, it is argued that these themes intersect with much deeper discourses, discourses that are especially pertinent to the South African context – such as race, sex and HIV/AIDS – in order to make meaning. The resulting moral framework encourages punitive approaches to the regulation of ‘tik’, while undermining reductive or rehabilitation-orientated regulation strategies. This occurs despite punitive efforts having never been consistently effective in the country. Consequently, the paper argues that media constructions of ‘tik’ oversimplify a complex socio-political, economic and historically rooted phenomenon, frequently encouraging stigma and the exclusion of the ‘tik’ user from society. This not only prevents more effective measures being thought possible, but frequently also serves to exclude those who already live at the very margins of society.