As such, it is a tribute to Irene Fynn’s determination to survive and to succeed under circumstances which saw two of her brothers imprisoned and three die from drug addiction. “The end of life of the young was always brutal,” she observed, citing the killing of a young member of the “gambling school” over a dispute of 50 cents.

The closely packed tenements of Hime Street, adjacent to the industrial area of Jacobs in southern Durban constituted a social pressure cooker of activity – a place where deals were struck and broken, where lives fluctuated amid drunken declarations, where when one fight ended another started. “The conflict among people was like a Western movie… the only brave creatures to enter Hime Street were the pigeons.”

Exposed from a tender age to brutality, violence and death, even attending school was hardly a reprieve from Hime Street. For many it was preferable to stay in their flats than have to walk through “enemy territory” of an opposing gang which would trash one’s school books. The result was infrequent attendance and dropping out.

Deprived of, if not denied, a childhood of nurtured parenting and learning, aspiring to gangsterism and succumbing to alcoholism and drug addiction for most youngsters was what life in “the decaying hole” of Hime Street meant.

Hime Street is a harrowing, eye-opening sociology lesson which deserves to be read in order to attain something of an understanding of life in areas within and contiguous to our cities. – Dr Duncan Du Bois

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