Andy Duffy
The man who killed a Dutch pensioner and stuffed the dismembered corpse into a suitcase is to take legal action against the Department of Correctional Services for transferring him to controversial high- security prison C-Max.
Jano Nortje, convicted last year of murdering a 76-year-old Dutch family friend, and triple murderer Casper Kruger were transferred to C-Max two weeks ago – apparently because they jointly tried to escape from Pretoria Maximum Security Prison earlier this year.
The transfer followed days after the prison’s evaluation committee had decided the two had been sufficiently punished for their botched walkabout.
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), backed by the Legal Aid Board, have taken up their case. LHR believes the department breached its own rules in ordering the transfer.
The LHR’s penal reform project co- ordinator, Ru-dolph Jansen, issued a letter of demand this week to Minister of Correctional Services Sipo Mzimela and provincial prisons officials to have the transfer reversed, or the prisoners’ privileges reinstated. Failing that, LHR will bring an application before the Pretoria High Court on December 23.
The legal action is the first Mzimela has faced since he opened C-Max in September.
The prison, which draws its inspiration from the United States, is supposed to prevent escape attempts and isolate prisoners judged a danger to others or themselves. Inmates spend 23 hours of the day in tiny cells, they shower and exercise in cages and they are denied any contact with fellow prisoners.
The treatment of inmates has enraged local and international human rights groups. Mzimela, eager to show the South African public that he can prevent at least some prisoners escaping, has so far brushed off their concerns.
Jansen, an advocate at the Pretoria Bar, concedes that Nortje and Kruger are “bad”. Kruger is already serving two years for an earlier escape attempt, on top of the 31- year sentence he received for murdering three men in Emmarentia.
But Jansen says the convicts’ transfer to C-Max was unlawful: “I don’t really think it fits the criteria.”
Jansen says Nortje and Kruger launched their bid for freedom in May, “wandering off” from medical facilities at the nearby Pretoria Local Prison where they were being treated for food poisoning. They were caught the same day in Johannesburg, spent a month in solitary confinement, and were demoted from high-privilege A-grade prisoners to D grade.
The prison’s institutional committee decided on November 13 that the two should be promoted back to A grade. Their transfer order to C-Max came through on November 26.
Correctional services declines to be drawn on the decision, claiming it cannot comment if legal action is pending. But department representative Chris Olckers says prison head Frank Hlatswayo, area manager Zebulon Monama and provincial commissioner Patrick Gillingham would have made the decision.
“If a prisoner’s behaviour and profile are such that he poses a risk, he is identified as a possible candidate to be transferred,” Olckers says.
C-Max had 18 inmates on the last count, including former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock. Its newest addition is the multiple rapist and murderer Moses Sithole.
Several inmates, including De Kock, are likely to be transferred early next year to a “halfway house” facility being built at C-Max – the first step back into the general prison population.