Pubdate: Fri, 03 Aug 2012 Source: New Age, The (South Africa) Copyright: 2012 TNA Media (Pty.) Contact: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5339 Author: De Wet Potgieter CORRUPT COPS SPOIL FORCE The Western Cape is home to one of the most diverse cultures in the country with most of the nightclubs in the CBD owned by Jewish businessmen. They hire the Congolese and Moroccans as bouncers. The Congolese are regarded as fearless, loyal and also much more disciplined due to their military background. The Congolese and Moroccans are the first line of defence, "protecting" and ruling the underworld of Cape Town. They are the strong-arm bouncers and bodyguards at the night spots and for the mob bosses. According to a police source, the greater Cape Town area is divided into three underworld hubs. The Cape Town hub consists mainly of the CBD, Sea Point area and the southern suburbs. The Bellville hub mainly covers the northern suburbs and the lucrative students' areas of Stellenbosch and surrounding towns are the third hub. Afrikaans and Jewish communities mainly run the nightlife with the free influx of drugs into these areas attributed by the police source as being a result of almost no visible or proactive policing of note, as a result of alleged widespread corruption in the police. According to him it had become almost impossible to launch any police raids on trouble spots and drug dens because the gangs are always forewarned by corrupt police of these planned actions. When the new owners of the controversial slum building, El Rio in Sea Point, in the run up to the Soccer World Cup wanted to get rid of the Nigerian gangsters occupying the block of flats, they brought in the Sexy Boys from the Cape Flats and with the help of an Israeli security company the building was cleared and all the Nigerian drug dealers and prostitutes flushed out of the area. It took them just two days to do the job while the police were trying in vain for several years, to restore law and order in the area. The El Rio building was for years, at the centre of drugs, violence, prostitution and lawlessness and the Jewish community living there feared that Sea Point would go in the same slum direction as Hillbrow in Johannesburg. In the run up to the Soccer World Cup, nightclubs and nightlife entertainment venues mushroomed in the Cape Town precinct and more than 1125 new liquor licenses were issued. Since then those entertainment spots have been operating around the clock making it almost impossible for an understaffed police precinct to properly and effectively control these venues. According to sources, Cape Town's gangster bosses not only run the illegal drug market, prostitution, nightclubs and extortion rackets, but also manage to effectively take control of the property market by manipulating public auctions and buying prime properties for a song. "To be honest the fiscal chain of economy would take a serious blow if the authorities close down these crime bosses leaving scores of people unemployed," as the Catch-22 as situation was described. - --- MAP posted-by: Matt