Dealing In Death. Ellen Pakkies and a Community's Struggle with Tik

Dealing in Death looks at the global and local drugs culture in South Africa based on the case Ellen Pakkies and a Community's Struggle with Tik.
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9781770200319
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19,80 € *
Title: Dealing In Death
Subtitle: Ellen Pakkies and a Community's Struggle with Tik
Authors: Sylvia Walker
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Zebra Press
Cape Town, South Africa 2009
ISBN 9781770200319 / ISBN 978-1-77020-031-9
Softcover, 15x23 cm, 252 pages, several colour photos


Description:

In September 2007, Ellen Pakkies, a working mother from Lavender Hill on the Cape Flats, strangled her son to death. The judge in the subsequent trial sentenced her to community service for her crime. What had driven Ellen to this horrific deed, and why the ostensibly light sentence for such a heinous crime? And why did Ellen’s tragic story grip the imagination of the country?

The scourge of drug addiction has swept across South Africa in recent years, affecting every level of society. The use of tik, particularly in the Western Cape, has skyrocketed over a short period of time, unlike anything else ever experienced. It was Abie Pakkies’s addiction to this drug and the horrendous impact it had on his and his family’s lives that drove Ellen to murder.

Her trial exposed the dark underbelly of a community crippled by drug and alcohol abuse and focused attention on the plight of those who live in poverty and do not have recourse to drug rehabilitation centres and other measures effective in the treatment of drug addicts. Dealing in Death looks at the global and local drugs culture, the predicament of Ellen Pakkies and other mothers like her, and an impoverished community and the apartheid laws that gave birth to it.


Content:

Acknowledgements
Foreword by Helen Zille
Preface
Neglect is a way of life
Thrust into adulthood
Raising Abie
Gangs, drugs and Lavender Hill
The illicit drug menu in South Africa
Speed kills
'This is Lavender Hill, not Bishopscourt'
Tik takes its toll
Nowhere to turn
The safety net that'failed'
Reaching the limit
Living with addiction
Any outcome is possible
The rocky road of addiction (and recovery)
The trial
'Pakkles goes free'
'The sentence should not be construed as a licence to kill'
Waging the drug war
Against all odds