Drugs 'destroying communities'

2009-03-17 09:51

Dries Liebenberg

Durban - Police need to investigate the ties between the wife of Siyabonga Cwele, the minister of intelligence, and an alleged drug trafficker, without any interference from anyone, and then it should go to court.

Otherwise South Africa is already a banana republic, said Helen Zille, leader of the DA, on Monday.

She spoke outside the magistrate's court in the Durban residential area of Chatsworth, were she praised pensioner Dawn Philemon, 71, who has been single-handedly fighting against local drug lords for the past eight years.

Tessa Beetge, a friend of Sheryl Cwele, the minister's wife, was apparently caught with 9kg of cocaine in Sao Paolo, Brazil at the end of last year. A weekend newspaper reported that the two women sent each other SMSes and e-mails while Beetge was in Peru and in Brazil.

Police had to investigate the matter independent of any party, said Zille. Then the law had to take its course.

"You don't want another Zuma case," she said, referring to the drawn-out court case between the State and Jacob Zuma, the ANC leader, on charges of corruption, among others.

80% of crime drug-related

She said drugs were destroying South African communities: In Cape Town it was tik and it Durban it was sugars (a mixture of heroine and dagga).

Zille said more than 80% of crime in Cape Town was drug-related and one couldn't tackle crime without taking on drugs as well.

The DA is trying to reinstate the narcotics agency. A special drugs unit, founded by the Cape Town city council after a long battle with the ANC, had arrested 115 drug dealers and closed down 19 distribution points over the past six months.

According to Rocky Naidoo, a DA council member in Chatsworth, 70% of the 100 cases in the local magistrate's court on Monday, were drug-related.

Philemon's campaign started in 1999 when she discovered that her only child, then only 13, was addicted to drugs.

Drug dealers had assaulted her, stolen her belongings and burnt down her flat, but she helps families going through the same ordeal every day. Philemon puts together petitions to prevent suspected drug dealers from getting bail.

"They (the drug dealers) are getting richer by the day and us poorer," said this former KZN netball star. "But I would rather be poor and honest than rich and corrupt," she said.

Her son was now in rehab and had not used drugs for the past three months.

- Beeld