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 Pilane who is scheduled to be released today was jailed last week for contempt of court after an incident in the Basarwa relocation case where he is the lead state counsel. He has made history as the first senior government official to serve a jail sentence for contempt. When he tried to get bail on Saturday, the Registrar and Master of the High Court had to run around to fetch any available judge for the case. Finally, Justice Moatlhodi Marumo appeared in red t-shirt and shorts to listen to the case at 8pm. Pilane was a lone man at the High Court with no senior government official available to offer moral support. The late night urgent bail application case was graced only by court orderlies, plain-clothes policemen and Monitor team. It was not until after 11pm that Marumo eventually handed down his ruling to deny Pilane bail. After the ruling, Pilane was whisked away by plain clothes policemen and a prison warder. He was ushered into a white car which sped-off to Gaborone First Offenders Prison. Pilane, who had already spent a night in jail on Friday, represented himself as he said he had no time to engage an attorney. The Attorney General had on Friday made an attempt to represent Pilane in the bail application but Justice Unity Dow rejected the move. She said the Attorney General should be the respondent instead of representing Pilane. Pilane was sentenced to five days in jail term for contempt of court last Thursday after he refused to stand up when asked by a panel of High Court judges hearing the case in which the Basarwa have sued to government for relocating them from the Central Kala-hari Game Reserve. Pilane’s altercation with the High Court started after Justice Maruping Dibotelo ruled that a question Pilane had asked a state expert witness, Dr Kath-leen Alexander was inadmissible following an objection by Basarwa counsel, Gordon Bennett. Pilane then asked for five minutes adjournment. The court asked why and he replied that he needed an adjournment for private reasons. He allegedly came late in court after the adjournment and failed to apologise. Instead he demanded to know why the court agreed to Bennett’s objection. In the altercation that ensued, Pilane was slapped with a five day jail term for contempt of court. Justice Moatlhodi Marumo said Pilane had shown disrespect to the court’s authority. He said it was evident that Pilane was determined to defy a court order. He dismissed Pilane’s earlier reasoning saying that it was an attempt to dress up lamb as mutton. Pilane had earlier told the court that he did not stand up because the court was still passing judgment on a point of objection raised by his opponent. However after going through the minutes of the court proceedings of last Thursday, Marumo concluded that there was no judgment being delivered when Pilane refused to stand up. The judge wondered how Pilane expected the court that he looks at with disrespect to give him bail. Marumo said the fact that Pilane did not apologise after arriving late in court after asking for adjournment was proof that he did not hold the court in high regard. He said that he is not satisfied that Pilane came to the High Court with clean hands because he had on Thursday failed to go to jail after a committal warrant was issued against him. Pilane had earlier told the court that while he did not go to jail on Thursday after the committal warrant was issued, he went to the police station. He said it was the duty of the police to make him swear an oath and take him to jail. Marumo told Pilane that he should not have demanded committal warrant as the sentence was read to him in court. “I was not going to walk to prison without a committal warrant. In prison, they do not admit people without committal warrant,” Pilane said in his defence. He added that when he went to the police on Thursday afternoon, they did not arrest and take him to prison. Earlier he told Marumo that the court had misled itself when it sentenced him to jail. He claimed that the court had personalised issues when they ruled that he was in contempt. He argued that he should have been ordered to pay P150 for the offense according to the penal code. He also said his offence was not cited and added that the court had applied its power excessively in sentencing him to five days in prison. Pilane also cast doubts on judges Unity Dow and Dibotelo, whom he accused of acting hastily and abusing their powers. He said that there was a deliberate design and plan to make him spend at least one night in jail. He narrated how his efforts to apply for bail were frustrated by Dow on Friday. He said Dow rejected his earlier bail application saying that the Attorney General should not represent him in the matter. He was ordered to represent himself. He said the fact that Dow gave him only three hours to prepare his urgent application is indicative of how the judge was determined to see him go to jail. Pilane said his appeal was further frustrated by unavailability of judges to listen to the case on Friday and Saturday morning. “I did not intend to violate the dignity, repute, or authority of the court; all I sought to do was to avoid what clearly to me was an attempt by the court to ridicule, embarrass and humiliate me...were this not the intention, the court would either have let us sit or asked us both to stand...all the court was doing in so citing and punishing me was to revenge itself against my refusal to be needlessly humiliated,” he said.
In an interview with the Monitor on Saturday Pilane said he was resigned to spending another night in prison.
Asked how it was in prion he said it was okay except that it a little different from home.
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