‘In this life, I am known as Ras Gareth Prince,’ he says with a smile. We are seated at a table, drinking tea made with indigenous herbs in a Rastafarian bookshop in Muizenberg, a seaside suburb of Cape Town. Other Rastafarians sit around, drinking the tea, leafing through some of the shop’s eclectic selection of books.
‘When Ethiopia was invaded in 1935, Emperor Haile Selassie had to go into exile. People doubted him, but he returned victorious five years later,’ Prince tells me, recounting the anti-colonial story of the African leader Rastafarians worship as the Second Coming of Christ. ‘Because he went through that, we were confident in good over evil. It was just a matter of time, that’s why we endured it,’ says Prince, to cheers of ‘Jah bless!’ from the other Rastafarians. They have reason to cheer him. Earlier this year, Prince led a successful constitutional challenge at the Western Cape High Court, which ruled that smoking and growing cannabis (locally known as dagga) in private homes should be legal.
