The Noupoort Christian Care Centre (NCCC), the controversial drug rehabilitation facility, is to ask the High Court to review a decision by Director General of Social Development Vusi Madonsela to close it down.
Briefing the media in Cape Town on Tuesday, NCCC attorney Werner Prinsloo said the application will be made within a week or two. The centre will also apply for a further temporary registration.
He said the NCCC has been treated unfairly by the department and will oppose its closure ”all the way”.
Last Wednesday, the department announced the centre was ordered to close after failing to provide convincing reasons why it should not be shut down.
”The department has no choice but to close down the centre in the interest of ensuring that human rights are upheld by such centres in their operations,” Madonsela said.
On Tuesday, Prinsloo said the centre has yet to receive reasons from the department for its decision, which is ”illegitimate” and not in line with administrative justice.
He said the investigation team sent to inspect the centre in July was clearly biased from the start and had spent only a day-and-a-half at the centre, neglecting even to interview the NCCC’s director, pastor Sophos Nissiotis.
Yet, the department had accepted the team’s biased and one-sided report as the basis for the decision to close the centre.
Madonsela and the department had not gathered all the facts or applied their minds.
The human rights violations referred to in the report included issues such as opening patients’ post and keeping boys and girls apart.
Prinsloo said post obviously has to be searched for smuggled drugs, and putting boys and girls together in such a centre would cause problems.
NCCC spokesperson Lukie Carelsen said the centre is not looking for confrontation, and it is not in the interests of the government, South Africa, the 160 patients undergoing treatment, or future patients to close it.
With its success rate of about 76%, the NCCC is the most successful rehabilitation centre in the country, if not the world.
The NCCC will also raise the issue with the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities.
However, ”our door is still open to government”, and the centre will negotiate on anything, barring ”our Christian beliefs”, Prinsloo said.
Nissiotis said the centre has complied with all of the government’s specified regulations and requirements, and the only reason behind its closure has to be its methodology, which is based on Christian and biblical principles. — Sapa