OOP means you design your thing as objects, with each object taking care of its own stuff. You don't have to use pointers, you may just use other objects as members, as you do in many other languages. Pointers just give you additional power and flexibility and if they are used in a object oriented design, its safe to assume that they should be managed by the owner object, like any other object's internal stuff.

Of course, you may prove me wrong.