Hon Chair, the disadvantage of being the second last speaker is that everything you need to say has already been said.
First of all, let me try and agree with what the Minister said, namely that indeed drugs are becoming a serious problem in South Africa, but also South Africa is becoming a gateway for drugs to some of the African countries. And that in itself is becoming a problem for all of us.
But there is one experience that I need to share: As the Chair indicated, when we visited the institutions on different occasions there was a young girl aged seven who was already dependant on drugs.
One of the questions we asked ourselves was, why? When I come back to her story later you will understand that the ages of experimentation with drugs are indeed dropping and that is a worrying aspect. But also the trade of drugs is becoming even more complicated, because at this moment everything in your kitchen can be changed into a drug, from your cleaning products, to what we drink, to the basic medicines as the Deputy Minister said. One of the most interesting things I learnt as I discussed some issues with young people was that as we expose them to science, they also become experimental as well. So they are able to really concoct many drugs for their day-to-day use.
I would then like to take this opportunity to link the Bill to a number of issues. One of the areas is the need for collaboration because unless departments work together, this Bill will remain meaningless because the Bill requires each and every department to work together.
The Department of Education needs to keep drugs out of schools. The Department of Health needs to facilitate access to detoxing and all related services. And, unless we have that collaboration and we develop programmes that are meaningful, we would continue to really look at this Bill or it would just become a statute on our Statute Book.
What we have introduced in the Bill, which is a phenomenon for the portfolio committee that I have served on, I must say, is some of the guiding principles. I hope, hon Minister, that the officials will take it very seriously; not only those from Social Development, but all the other departments. The departments need to understand that each and every programme they are developing to deal with the issue of the treatment of substance abuse, should also take into consideration the prescriptions that we have.
We introduced community-based services and I hope that our traditional leaders and our traditional healers at a very local level, especially in our rural communities, will be partnering with the department to make the early interventions services a reality, or else they will remain another programme that we would like to introduce.
It was very clear during the public hearings that we need more research into the use of drugs. This became especially clear when the Department of Sport and Recreation was presenting evidence. It became very clear that we need to allocate more resources to be able to respond to the issue of drugs.
With regard to the relationship to HIV/Aids, as the Minister clearly indicated, we still have a dialogue as South Africa that we need to enter into. We also need to find a way of responding to the challenges of harm reduction, especially with regard to exchanging needles because that is one of the areas where we need to do more work.
The relationship of substance abuse with poverty is a serious one and I would like to give an example. If you look at the issue of sex workers, we would have to find a way because for them to do what they do, they rely on drugs. And, unless we do something about their particular situation, we are going to sit with a problem of dealing with this using the wrong approach. We need to deal with issues of easy access to drugs, especially in our own communities.
We need to deal with the issue of the impact of drugs on children. When I spoke about the seven-year-old, one of the key things was that her mother is lying sick at home. She is seven years old and she is already taking care of the three-month-old baby.
She ended up finding hope in the street as a sex worker. And the only way she was going to cope was to be on drugs. If we could deal with poverty as we have committed ourselves to do, I can rest assured that we will be able to respond to the issue of substance abuse.
What was also interesting during the public hearings was the questions that were asked about other addictive behaviours that are harmful. As a portfolio committee we had to take a decision to say no, at this particular moment we are only looking at what goes into the body that is not helpful.
The Minister spoke at length about issues of disability which I won't speak about except to say that we need more programmes for pregnant women, especially prevention programmes. I hope that as anticipated in the Bill they will definitely be implemented, especially in partnership with the Department of Health, at the antenatal clinics so that early intervention can be done and we can minimise the birth of children with fetal alcohol syndrome, because those children become disabled. Therefore, the functioning of and access to services becomes a limitation.
As we move to Youth Month, allow me to say that the Deputy Speaker has already spoken about the Ke Moja programme. I think I wanted to say to young people that it's important as a young person that when that time comes, when the walk or the living becomes very difficult, they should look back. And one of the things that came out clearly was that a lot of service- users rely at that time of need on their inner strength which is their cultural and spiritual values.
We stressed as the portfolio committee that the programmes to be implemented must respond to and respect the cultural, religious and traditional values of that particular community, because half the time we come into communities as government and implement programmes that don't necessarily respect or take into consideration how that particular community feels about drugs.
So, we're saying that the programmes must take into consideration how that community responds to drugs and also alcohol, even the home-brewed alcohol like all the traditional beers that we drink.
I just want to leave you with this quote that I came across when I was reading. It is especially relevant for a lot of our service users out there. And when I read this I thought about this Bill. It says:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous.
Actually, for young people during Youth Month, you must now ask, why not? We are born to make manifest the glory that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. And I would like to say, "Ke Moja, I'm fine without drugs!" I thank you. [Applause.]