POLICE and the courts have been accused of complicity in the drug problem afflicting communities.
POLICE and the courts have been accused of complicity in the drug problem afflicting communities.
Operation Thiba Nyaope, a non-profit organisation focused on combating the scourge, accused police of knowing the dealers and drug dens in their areas but collecting "protection money" instead of arresting them and thus in effect "having dealers working for them".
On Sunday, members of the Community Policing Forum (CPF) in Phola Park, Thokoza, on the East Rand confirmed that local police stopped them from tackling drug dealers.
Terrence Dzeli, president of Operation Thiba Nyaope, said: "There are officers who say 'leave that man alone, he is my guy' when CPF members want to arrest dealers."
He was speaking at the launch of a new branch of Thiba Nyaope. He also announced a task team including the local CPF that will be aligned to his organisation.
All CPF members present confirmed the statement.
Dzeli said in his experience there are peddlers of nyaope who have appeared in court several times and got off with a simple fine after pleading guilty.
"Some of these people are in court every other day. Why do the magistrates not ask why they are dealing with the same faces?
"Prosecutors also say they struggle to prosecute on nyaope as it is not classified as a drug. This thing has been on the market so long. So many lives have been destroyed but authorities have the audacity to tell us this," said an angry Dzeli.
Operation Thiba Nyaope started in Ivory Park four years ago, with branches in Finetown, Waterburg in Mpumalanga and is soon to launch in Zamdela and Frankfort in Free State.
Thiba Nyaope general secretary, Bulelani Mbuthisi, said that the organisation steps in to help where parents express helplessness.
"We find a situation in which a teenager calls a van, packs almost all the household goods at home and asks for a mere R200," he said.
In such a case they would help the distraught parents recover their goods and would then take the child in, sometimes by force, to participate in counselling and life skills programmes.
Deputy president of the organisation Audrey Maseko said she joined because of her own challenges with her son who was hooked drugs.
Thokoza police spokesman Captain Godfrey Maditsi confirmed that nyaope was such a serious problem in the area that it was always discussed at their weekly Station Crime Combating Forum. He said the allegations of the police's complicity and prevention of arrests by CPF members has never been raised in meetings with the CPF.
- moengk@sowetan.co.za
'Police not fighting against nyaope'
POLICE and the courts have been accused of complicity in the drug problem afflicting communities.
POLICE and the courts have been accused of complicity in the drug problem afflicting communities.
Operation Thiba Nyaope, a non-profit organisation focused on combating the scourge, accused police of knowing the dealers and drug dens in their areas but collecting "protection money" instead of arresting them and thus in effect "having dealers working for them".
On Sunday, members of the Community Policing Forum (CPF) in Phola Park, Thokoza, on the East Rand confirmed that local police stopped them from tackling drug dealers.
Terrence Dzeli, president of Operation Thiba Nyaope, said: "There are officers who say 'leave that man alone, he is my guy' when CPF members want to arrest dealers."
He was speaking at the launch of a new branch of Thiba Nyaope. He also announced a task team including the local CPF that will be aligned to his organisation.
All CPF members present confirmed the statement.
Dzeli said in his experience there are peddlers of nyaope who have appeared in court several times and got off with a simple fine after pleading guilty.
"Some of these people are in court every other day. Why do the magistrates not ask why they are dealing with the same faces?
"Prosecutors also say they struggle to prosecute on nyaope as it is not classified as a drug. This thing has been on the market so long. So many lives have been destroyed but authorities have the audacity to tell us this," said an angry Dzeli.
Operation Thiba Nyaope started in Ivory Park four years ago, with branches in Finetown, Waterburg in Mpumalanga and is soon to launch in Zamdela and Frankfort in Free State.
Thiba Nyaope general secretary, Bulelani Mbuthisi, said that the organisation steps in to help where parents express helplessness.
"We find a situation in which a teenager calls a van, packs almost all the household goods at home and asks for a mere R200," he said.
In such a case they would help the distraught parents recover their goods and would then take the child in, sometimes by force, to participate in counselling and life skills programmes.
Deputy president of the organisation Audrey Maseko said she joined because of her own challenges with her son who was hooked drugs.
Thokoza police spokesman Captain Godfrey Maditsi confirmed that nyaope was such a serious problem in the area that it was always discussed at their weekly Station Crime Combating Forum. He said the allegations of the police's complicity and prevention of arrests by CPF members has never been raised in meetings with the CPF.
- moengk@sowetan.co.za
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