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.' - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom