Our movement has been approached by Mr. Velile Ben
Mafani. He informed us that tomorrow he will throw three stones, one
white, one black, and one red, through the window of the High Court in
Grahamstown. He will tie a letter stating his demands around the stones.
Mr Mafani was born in a shack settlement in Coega, just
outside Port Elizabeth two days after Christmas in 1953. His parents
worked on nearby farms, bought and sold produce from the farms and his
mother worked in kitchens. The apartheid system did not want black
people living in their own places in the cities and in the 1970s they
were threatened with forced removal to the Ciskei Bantustan which was a
human dumping ground. Mr Mafani formed an organisation called ‘Operation
Go Nowhere’ and they organised against the forced removal. But Piet
Koornhof pressured them and their struggle was defeated. On the 15th
of April 1979 the police and the bulldozers came. Mr Mafani was the
first to be put inside a police van. The door was closed. He couldn’t
see anything but he heard the screams as the shacks were destroyed and
were people loaded up on to trucks like animals to be dumped in the
Ciskei. People were told that there was a Court Order from the Hight
Court in Grahamstown ordering their eviction. They were shown the paper
but they were not allowed to read it.
Three thousand people from Coega were dumped in
Glenmore, near Peddie. Today it is more than two hours by car from
Coega. They lost their work, their cattle and their homes. They lost
everything. Soon after their arrival in Glenmore 140 people, mainly
children and old people, died. There were no funeral parlours and they
couldn’t afford coffins so the dead were just wrapped in blankets and
buried on the banks of the Fish River.
Since then Mr Mafani has never stopped challenging and struggling for justice.
See also:
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.
[ ... ]
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.
Wiki entry: Ben Mafani
