/ 15 February 2008

Zille plans another march against drug lords

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille, the mayor of Cape Town, is once again going to challenge the authorities by marching against gangsterism and drugs in a community where the drug lords are thriving.

She announced that on Sunday she would conduct a march through the streets of Macassar in the east of the city, near Somerset West.

A statement issued on Friday by her party said: ”Macassar is one of the many communities in the Western Cape that have been ravaged by drug abuse and gangsterism.”

In September last year, Zille was arrested while leading a gathering outside a police station in Woodlands, Mitchells Plain, where she had also been marching against the drug lords.

Seven weeks later the charges against her were dropped. ”These were always trumped up charges, and I do not believe that they were the result of ineptitude by the South African Police Service, but rather of something more sinister,” she said.

”To arrest people when they have not contravened any law or regulation demonstrates, once again, the growing tendency by the authorities to undermine the Constitution and treat people’s rights as if they were arbitrary favours granted by the police and the ruling party.” — I-Net Bridge