MBEKI URGES COMMUNITIES TO TURN IN GANGSTERS

President Thabo Mbeki has appealed to communities not to protect gangsters,
especially those who are selling drugs to children.

Instead of adopting the attitude that crime was a problem to be dealt with
exclusively by the police, communities should expose gangsters and other
criminals, he said in Khayelitsha yesterday.

"If we harbour the gangsters, it is the same gangsters who are going to sell
drugs to our own children," Mbeki said at a Twelve Apostles Church in Christ
service in the OR Tambo Hall.

In a clear reference to an age-old problem on the Cape Flats and many other
working-class areas around the country, Mbeki said: "Here in Cape Town, the
problem of gangsterism is made difficult because in certain areas people
within communities protect the gangsters

'This is not just the problem of the police'

"Drug dealers who bring drugs into communities don't keep them in their own
houses but keep them in the houses of people in the community - and the
people know who these gangsters are and they know what they are doing."

Mbeki said it was the duty of the church "to go out amongst the people and
say, 'We must stop that', to go out to all the communities and say, 'If we
harbour the gangsters, it is the same gangsters who are going to sell drugs
to our own children".

Those who were committing crimes should be jailed and not protected by
communities, he said.

"The people who are doing bad things must be in jail - they must not be
protected by us," he said, adding that the church had a duty "to educate our
people to say, 'This is not just the problem of the police, it is our
problem also'."

This was crucial if negative perceptions - that the entire country was
suffering from moral decline - were to be challenged.

"There are some bad elements among us ..." he said, emphasising that not all
South Africans were suffering from moral decline, as suggested by some, and
it was the duty of law-abiding citizens to send a strong message to
criminals.

"This is one of our tasks, the task of this church, to go out among our
people and say to our people, 'This behaviour is wrong, this behaviour is
bad' - not to stand and watch and complain behind the person's back, but to
say to the person, 'You must change your ways'," he said to loud applause
from the 5 000-strong crowd.

Mbeki also openly challenged the apparent notion amongst some evangelical
churches that social problems such as poverty, unemployment and housing were
not meant to be tackled by the church, but by the government.

"The Twelve Apostles Church in Christ has a task to say to all our people,
'Let us join hands with this government that we elected to solve these
problems that affect all of us so that none of us sits and stands far away
to criticise and does nothing to help our country to change and improve so
that all of us live better lives," Mbeki said.