I live in the area where when we were growing up, the elders will be telling you that is the peaceful place of them all. The name of the place was called Phomolong at first then the name was changed to Intabazwe on the late nineties. And the reason was that as we live at top of 42nd hill there has to be a Zulu o Sotho name that will compliment 42nd hill and the name was Intabazwe.

During Phomolong time, our area was so peaceful; people walking throughout the night without being victimized in anyway. Older brothers and sisters will tell you that during that time most of the people were active in different activities being sports and other activities like choirs, gumboots dancing, traditional dancing, cycling and marathon to name the few. We role models in our location like the late Mr. Tshabalala AKA 14 (pictured below) who was an artist singing Maskandi music, we had soccer teams that participated in the BOB SAVE Super Bowl competitions every year and we saw life diski in our kasi. Gone are those years now, and if you are told that we had this and that over here and there you will never believe them and even the reasons they give you sometime you will not believe them, but we who grew up here know how the our area was before. Fewer incidents took place during that time, as most of the people were united and having common goals for the community, we even had a lady called Sis Mama who was taking care or orphans, street kids she even won a national award named Community Builder of the year in 1994, I remember I was 14 years running bare-footed in the streets of Phomolong (by that time) celebrating with all the community for Sis Mama and it was live on  TV - the community celebrated all night long.

The name changed to Intabazwe and even the attitude of our community changed from good to bad, people seemed to care less about each other and most of those who had nothing we never looked at. The places which were used to play sports like Litsika ground that had multi activity places was destroyed for a swimming pool. Youth tend to drugs and some dropped out at school, more taverns were established less activities like choirs, soccer, dancing etc. were no more. Only boozing, robbery burglary started as well as drug abuse. We experienced this while were at high school as most of the youth participated less in sports and other activities and tend to drugs and alcohol.

Today we crime is higher than I thought it could be as newly developed drugs like NYAOPE, TICK and some of those we don't know about had tackled the lifes of our youth so bad that everyone around our kasi feel unsafe, everyday we get report either from facebook (Harrismith news) or by word of mouth from community members that someone has lost certain items, or someone has been murdered or is in hospital because there were thugs who were trying to rob him/her, if it is nor murder is robbery we loose someone everyday due to that most of the youth is in crime and drugs is the influence.

Underneath in the picture of Mr. Tshabalala AKA 14 during his days while he was performing around the location. May his soul rest in peace.

ALL THAT IS NEEDED NOW, IS FOR US WHO ARE STILL WILLING TO MAKE A CHANGE IN OUR COMMUNITY TO COME TOGETHER AND TAKE OUT THIS STIGMA THAT HAS MADE INTABAZWE LOOKS SO BAD.