Frightened Africans peered through the shuttered windows of ramshackle summer houses this month while Mafia hit men searched this seaside village north of Naples for black drug pushers.
The area has become home to thousands of illegal African immigrants who came to work in Italy`s main tomato-growing and mozzarella-producing region and who set up, in competition with the Camorra (the Neapolitan equivalent of the Mafia) what is known as ”The African Connection.”
Smuggling heroin, cocaine and hashish from Africa, the black traffickers threatened the drug monopoly run by local Camorra chief Antonio Bardellino. That affront made the godfather furious, according to Luigi di Stefano, police chief of Caserta, the regional capital.
”The blacks were selling first-class brown sugar (heroin) cheaper and of better quality. The addicts came from all over central Italy to buy the stuff,” Di Stefano said.
Between July and September, two dozen blacks were beaten up by Camorra soldiers. When broken bones and gashed faces failed to shut down The African Connection, six blacks were ”kneecapped”–shot in the knee.
When that didn`t work, the Camorra resorted to its traditional weapon of vendetta, the sawed-off shotgun known as the lupara.
On Oct. 23, two Senegalese, Konte Saer, 29, and Stefan Moustafa, 30, were ambushed outside a bar in Castel Volturno. Saer died instantly; Moustafa survived. In his pocket, police found 32 packets of heroin and a bankbook for a Swiss account containing $310,000.
On Dec. 4, police from Caserta found the bodies of two Ghanaian brothers, George and Bill Anang Quaye, outside the Calzone restaurant. With testimony provided by a drug addict and an African witness, four of the godfather`s hit men were arrested and charged with the murders.
”For eight days after the last murders, none of us left the houses,”
said Imanuel Lot Sagoe, 35, a Ghanaian. ”We sat behind shuttered windows, without lights, and ate whatever was left in the house. Man, we were scared stiff.
”We didn`t know why these guys were gunning for us. We only found out later that some bad people among us were dealing in drugs.”
The drug murders have exposed the Africans` plight as Europe`s unwanted nomads, existing on the fringe of society. The killings also have focused attention on a new phenomenon in Italy–the presence of perhaps as many as 500,000 illegal immigrants in search of the kind of mundane jobs that Italians no longer want to do.
”Many of us have been thrown out of other European countries. At least the Italians are big enough to close an eye or two and let us live here if we make no trouble,” said Konte Azzur, a Ghanaian.
Still, their existence is pitiful. They are illegal immigrants in a secret labor market in which employers pay half the normal rate and demand twice as much work as from Italian laborers.
They live in houses, sometimes 30 to a single home, built without permits by phantom Italian owners who turn off the gas and electricity, remove the furniture and collect 10 times the normal rent, on which the landlords then pay no taxes.
They are harassed by police, who raid their homes, search their few belongings and interrogate them at will. Two Africans alleged that police officers stole money during such raids. Police say some of the young African women work as roadside prostitutes.
”Our country is not geared for immigration. Italians have traditionally emigrated. Our laws are inadequate to accommodate the sudden rush of Africans,” said Inspector Dino Sorbo, head of the immigration police in Caserta, who openly sympathizes with the immigrants` predicament.
Most Africans arrive with five-day or one-month student visas. If they are caught with expired visas, the authorities escort them to the border (or airport) with a ticket home, paid for by the Italian government, or warn them to obtain proper documents–a feat virtually impossible under current laws.
”Guess what happens,” Police Chief Di Stefano said. ”There is just not that kind of money around to pay for these people`s return trip home.”
In 1983, the chief said, the area had only 100 Africans. Today, officials estimate there are 10,000.
The immigrants quietly faded into the flat countryside, vanishing into unoccupied summer houses wedged between tomato patches and grazing buffalo cows. With the farmers eager for cheap seasonal labor, the African colony mushroomed.
”It was a good place to live until the trouble with the drugs,” said Augustin Pulief, a Nigerian who pays $350 a month to live in a small house with his wife, sister-in-law, her husband, their two children and four friends.
With no farm work available in late fall and winter, some of the immigrants turned to peddling narcotics furnished by Africans trying to open an ”African Connection” on the Italian mainland.
”It started with a bit of hash, then coke and soon heroin was being offered. The Italian clients came from everywhere. I don`t know who brought the stuff, but I know it came from Africa,” said Kojo Kusi, 32, a Senegalese who found a job feeding buffalo cows.
The Camorra`s response forced police to take a sudden interest in the seaside ghettos, and Italian parents in nearby towns began holding rallies to protest the presence of African drug peddlers.
Last week, 700 Africans gathered at a local church to form an association to weed out the drug sellers by giving police the pushers` names and photographs of them.
”This trouble is bad for us. We want everyone to be registered by the police. We, ourselves, are going to issue ID cards,” Sagoe said. It will be a feat that Italy`s lumbering bureaucracy has been unable to accomplish.
