Glenmore activist Velile Ben Mafani stoned and broke a window in the Grahamstown High Court on Friday morning, and then waited patiently for the police to arrive and arrest him.
Glenmore activist Velile Ben Mafani stoned and broke a window in the Grahamstown High Court on Friday morning, and then waited patiently for the police to arrive and arrest him.
When the police finally arrived after a long wait, Mafani admitted he had broken the window intentionally, and willingly climbed into the back of the police van to be taken to the police station.
It is not the first time Mafani has broken the court's windows to demonstrate his anger towards the justice system and the Eastern Cape government.
In 2007 he broke three windows at the court and was charged for malicious damage to property. He was sentenced to a R2 000 fine or a year in prison, but the sentence was suspended for five years on condition he was not convicted of a similar offence in that five-year period.
Seven months later in 2008, he did it again, was arrested and then released on a warning.
He is demanding that the people of Glenmore, who were forcefully removed from their homes in Coega in 1979 by the Apartheid government, be taken back to their place of birth. Mafani lost his wife and children during the forced removals.
"I won't keep quiet until they give me a life or death sentence, if they don't want to listen to what I say," he said. "Why is my voice not heard? Don't I belong to South Africa?”
