Consultation with his ancestors prevented outspoken Glenmore activist Ben Mafani from attending a court hearing in Grahamstown Wednesday, the second time he has failed to appear in recent months.
A warrant for Mafani's arrest is in the pipeline after he missed his scheduled appearance in the Grahamstown Magistrate's Court on a charge of malicious damage to property.
Consultation with his ancestors prevented outspoken Glenmore activist Ben Mafani from attending a court hearing in Grahamstown Wednesday, the second time he has failed to appear in recent months.
A warrant for Mafani's arrest is in the pipeline after he missed his scheduled appearance in the Grahamstown Magistrate's Court on a charge of malicious damage to property.
Mafani said he has no intention of handing himself in but will serve his time in jail. The charge relates to a protest action he regularly repeats – the throwing of a brick through a window of the high court in Grahamstown.
He is currently out on bail after his case was postponed for plea and trial last month. Speaking to Grocott's Mail on the phone from his Glenmore home, Mafani said he'd had to go and have a conversation with his ancestors and fallen activists.
"I am waiting for the police to come and fetch me. When they take me, I am prepared to spend that three months in prison,: Mafani said, when he heard that the state had asked the court to issue a warrant for his arrest.
He said he went to the cemetery on the day he was due to appear in court. "I took some time to go to the graves of the activists who had fought with me during the forced removals, to have a conversation with them, Mafani said. It's a spiritual conversation now," he explained.
It is not the first time Mafani has failed to appear in court. In June I did not go to court, but I ended up handing myself in. However, he said that this time he would not hand himself over to the police. He said he had contacted the police, but they had not come to arrest him by yesterday morning.
Mafani is a self-proclaimed activist desperate to attract the government's attention to the plight of the residents of Glenmore, a poverty-stricken settlement born of apartheid resettlement policies.
