conditions
THE Human Rights Commission plans to hold public hearings into conditions in South African prisons and will decide next week when the hearings are to begin. A commission representative, John Mojapelo, said this week that hundreds of complaints have been received from prisoners.
The commission has selected more than 40 prisons in all nine provinces for a study to illustrate the state of prisons and their inmates. The research will also be used to prepare recommendations to the government for improving conditions.
Prisoners have made numerous allegations of maltreatment by warders and of unlawful imprisonment. In January the commission received 79 assault complaints from various prisons, and found that 77 came from Boksburg. Assaults make up the majority of complaints.
The commission has hired law students to examine and classify the complaints to prepare for the in-depth investigation and public hearings. The hearings will seek input from organisations involved with prisoners.
Commissioner Jody Kollapen said only widespread problems would be discussed at public hearings.
Meanwhile, the commission will submit proposals to the Department of Correctional Services for what it regards as urgent matters which cannot wait for the public hearings. These range from the treatment of convicts to the provision of running water where buckets are used communally.
Kollapen said the department should devise new training methods because warders were being trained to act in a brutal way. “We cannot tolerate the kind of brutality that we have experienced at Pollsmoor,” he said.
The commission was scathing in its criticism of the department about the lack of internal disciplinary action against warders accused of beating prisoners. The commission last year brought to the fore an alleged attack on inmates at Leeukop prison in Johannesburg and recommended that the guards involved be suspended pending the outcome; but the case was only referred to the police.
A department representative, Barry Eksteen, said that the police have cleared the warders of any wrongdoing.