Pubdate: Sun, 16 Sep 2007
Source: Observer, The (UK)
Copyright: 2007 The Observer
Contact:  http://www.observer.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/315
Author: Nick Kotch, in Johannesburg

CAPE TOWN'S WHITE MAYOR GOES TO WAR ON DRUG KINGPINS

Helen Zille, the white mayor of Cape Town trying to make the 
opposition relevant in the new South Africa, will take her campaign 
to root out drug dealers back to the streets today, a week after she 
was arrested over her participation in another protest.

Zille's Democratic Alliance says today's march in the poor community 
of Atlantis, outside Cape Town, has police permission but under the 
same tight conditions that she and a dozen other activists were 
accused of breaching last weekend in the crime-ridden township of 
Mitchells Plain. She will appear in court on 26 October.

Cape Town has become a playground and investment magnet for the 
global rich who are seduced by its stunning scenery, fine wines and 
golfing estates. To outsiders it can appear like another country, 
where wealthy whites congregate and many middle-class black South 
Africans say they feel ill at ease.

But the surrounding Western Cape has the biggest drug problem of 
South Africa's nine provinces, recording 40 per cent of the nation's 
100,000 drugs-related crimes over the past year.

The Cape's mixed-race ethnic group, known as Coloureds, are worst 
affected by the roaring trade in narcotics. Methamphetamine is said 
to be causing the fastest addiction rates ever seen in the townships. 
Local people accuse police of failing to arrest known dealers and 
have recruited the mayor and her supporters to join their protests. 
Police say Zille and community leaders went too far last Sunday, 
knocking at the door of an alleged drug kingpin.

In a weekly newsletter last Friday Zille denied any trespass or 
vigilantism. Instead, she accused the ruling African National 
Congress (ANC) of appointing its cadres to top jobs in the police and 
other government agencies with orders to prevent the opposition from 
gaining support among poor communities.

'In its hunger for total power, the ANC is determined to control all 
community-based initiatives, including the fight against drugs,' she 
wrote. For the ANC, Cape Town is the one that got away. Zille became 
mayor in 2006 after months of horse-trading when representatives of 
Coloured voters, the largest population group, threw their weight 
behind the Democratic Alliance (DA) instead of the ANC. But the 
ruling party, which won an awesome 70 per cent of the national vote 
in the 2004 general elections, still controls the Western Cape 
province and 56-year-old Zille has had to survive repeated attempts 
to unseat her.

In May this year Zille easily won the contest to become leader of the 
Democratic Alliance and thus of the official opposition in the 
National Assembly where, with just 12 per cent of the seats, her 
party is the second-largest.

'Our objective is to keep the opposition alive and hopefully to build 
for the future,' Zille told The Observer last Friday. 'The ANC is a 
massive party.'
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